Freedom sounds like a good idea, but not everyone is comfortable with it. To leave behind the world of rules and regulations where other people, whether directly or indirectly, in all kinds of subtle ways, decide what we think or do, and enter the world of genuine freedom, is to discover a place where only mature adults live. It can seem like a desert, sparsely populated. devoid of landmarks and signposts, inhabited only by brave and courageous frontiers-men and women who live on the edge, are able to stand on their own two feet, make their own decisions based on personal faith and personal experience and live with the consequences of those decisions regardless of what everyone else says. It’s a land where conscience is king, discernment its first minister and life a series of often difficult choices. Many, having entered it and seen for themselves how demanding it is, draw back, seeking refuge again in the more familiar and less demanding world of Law; which is what St Paul is talking about in today’s second reading.
Last week, we heard him tell the Galatians that, with the coming of Jesus, the era of the Law, which he compared to the Paedagogus or slave who looked after Roman boys until they reached their majority, was over. In Christ they now enjoyed the status of sons and the Law had no longer any authority over them. In Christ they were free men and women, the crucial point he makes today being that ‘When Christ freed us he meant us to remain free. Stand firm, therefore,’ Paul says, ‘and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.’ And in this we have the challenge facing every human being: to grow into the freedom God created us for and, having come to it not to flinch or abandon it again when the going gets tough.
And yet, despite the fact that freedom is God’s greatest gift to us, the one which most profoundly reflects the fact that we are created in his own image and likeness, many fear it. They confuse it with licence, imagining that beyond the world of Law with its rules and regulations lies only choas, anarchy and self-indulgence. And, of course, this is exactly what does happen when we confuse freedom with licence. Paul himself spoke about it in that reading. ‘You were called to liberty’ he says. ‘but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. If it does, of course, it is not genuine liberty, not real freedom, but there are plenty of examples of how we confuse the two.
A couple of weeks from now I hope to be with my friends in Madrid, a city which, in the 1970s and 80s, after the death of General Franco, saw the most amazing example of licence dressed up as freedom. After years of suppression and the imposition of the most severe form of Catholic morality, Madrid went through a period of almost uncontrolled licence. In a city where, during the years I was there, the censor would have removed from a film a scene where a couple simply kissed each other, there was an explosion of uncontrolled sexual promiscuity, of the most deviant forms of pornography, of drug abuse and every kind of vice you could imagine. It was all in the name of freedom but it was no more genuine freedom than fly in the air. And, as Jesus says at one point in the gospel, ‘You do many other things like this.’ So what exactly is this thing called freedom?
Well, it’s what Paul speaks of in that reading, what the NT calls the freedom of the children of God. If we are guided by the Spirit, Paul says, there will be no danger of yielding to self-indulgence. This is not freedom ‘from’ but freedom ‘for.’ It’s the kind of freedom the people in this morning’s Gospel lacked, the freedom to go where God was calling them, the freedom to follow Jesus, the freedom to be everything that God dreamt of them being. It’s the freedom God is offering each one of us and it has implications for every aspect of our lives.
In a consumer-driven society, for example, it is freedom from attachment to material things. These are not bad in themselves, but if seeking them rather than the kingdom of God becomes the most important thing in our lives then our capacity to respond to the call of God is severely limited. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also Jesus tells us, going on to describe how it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. You cannot serve both God and money, he says a truth with profound implications for our modern world. In the first reading, Elisha burns his plough and cooks his oxen on the fire in order to free himself to follow Elijah and only those who, like him, can use material things but let go of them when necessary can count themselves truly free in this world.
Then there is freedom from law. If you are led by the Spirit, St Paul tells us today, no law can touch you. But what does this mean? Surely without law there is anarchy and chaos. No!.. There is still a law which says we should go to Mass every Sunday, but I haven’t obeyed it for years. It has no power over me now. I do not commit murder or burgle people’s houses. But it has nothing to do with a law forbidding these things. The law is irrelevant. It’s like the peodagogus, redundant. Not so straight forward, however, is the struggle to be the people God rather than the crowd want us to be. This kind of freedom comes only after a long hard struggle. At least that is my experience.
Freedom has huge implications, too, for a society so conscious of sexuality as ours is. For many today sexual permissiveness is the ultimate freedom. But is it? Of all the forces in ourselves which drive us and have the power to make us do things we don’t really want to do and often deeply regret later, there is none more powerful than sexuality. Our sexuality can be used to love or it can be used to abuse and use others. Real freedom in this area, as in every area, is not the freedom to do what we feel like, but the freedom to do what is right, a truth millions today have not begun to understand.
To be genuinely free in so many areas of our lives is a huge challenge. Which is hardly surprising, since to be free is, ultimately, to be like the God who made us.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We live in a world facing many problems. We need to address global warming or we will destroy the planet. We know that something has to be done about world poverty before it plunges us into violent conflict between rich and poor. And yet, so often we do nothing, paralysed as we are by our inability to let go of the lavish life-style we have become used to. And so we ask God to lead us into the freedom we need to do what is right even when it involves sacrifice on our part ………………...Lord hear us
To do this, we need not only freedom, but courage and generosity of the kind we saw in the first reading. In it, Elisha burns his plough, cooks his oxen on the fire and follows Elijah. He leaves everything. The oxen and the plough were his security and the source of his income, everything he possessed. And so we pray for even a little of Elisha’s willingness to leave everything and go where God leads…….….Lord hear us
Down through the ages, tyrants, dictators and despots of have been afraid of the very idea of freedom. Supported by the rich and powerful classes, they have done everything in their power to prevent ordinary people acquiring it and, continue to do so today in many parts of the world. And so we pray that this new century will finally see an end to this abuse of power and that our own country and our government will never again be complicit in this most ancient of evils……………………Lord hear us
Sadly, the Church has often been up to its eyes in the abuse of power. Many in positions of leadership even today fear freedom and prefer instead to exercise tighter and tighter control through the use of law. And so we ask God to pour into the Church at this time a Spirit of genuine freedom, a freedom which enables us to move beyond the world of religion, enter the promised land of faith and so grow in that inner freedom which enables us to go where God leads………….……....Lord hear us
Millions today are caught up in false understandings of freedom. This is especially true in the area of sexuality where, after years of repression and denial – deeply influenced by distorted versions of christianity – people have rebelled and embraced ways of thinking and acting which cause harm to many. And so we ask for the grace we need to show the world the true face of christian thinking, restoring the link between sexuality and the giving and receiving of mature love………….Lord hear us
This last week has seen the appointment of a new Prime Minister and a new government. And so we pray for all involved, especially Gordon Brown and our own MP Des Browne. We pray especially that they will be faithful to the promises they have made, especially those which involve returning power to Parliament and the people, and that, by doing so, they will enable the country to move beyond the cynicism about politics which so endangers freedom……………………Lord hear us
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Saturday, 23 June 2007
12th Sunday of the Year C
Today’s invitation to take up our cross and follow Jesus has been understood in different ways down through the centuries. In the early days – as we saw in a homily quite recently – it meant martyrdom. After the early persecutions had died down, however – as I explained that day – some began to see taking up their cross and following Jesus as withdrawal from the world and the embracing of a life of penance and self-denial, a movement which gave birth to what came to be known as the monastic life, living as a monk. For most people, however, this was not possible, and so taking up one’s cross and following Jesus came to be seen as the acceptance of the hard things in life, a way of thinking which, in one sense, was valid but which was used by those who had power, as a way persuading the poor, to accept their lot in life rather than challenge or question the injustices and inequalities they suffered under. We see this reflected in many of the old hymns our grandparents loved so much and it’s what led Karl Marx to describe religion as the opium of the people. But history moves on, and I would like to suggest another way of understanding Jesus’ words which is relevant to the age we live in. And the clue is in the second reading.
At first sight, mind you, it doesn’t seem much of a clue. ‘You are all of you’ Paul says, ‘Sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.’ Not much there. Had those who planned the Lectionary given us the previous three verses, however, it would have been much clearer. The general point Paul is making is the one he makes all the time, which is that, as men and women of faith, we are not subject to or saved by the Law. But before faith in Christ came along, he tells the Galatians in those missing verses, the Law was like a slave looking after them. Again, not all that helpful, until we realise that the slave in question was not any old slave but an educated one known as a paidagogus who acted as a tutor to upper- class Roman boys. He was usually a Greek and, until the boy became of age, exercised a good deal of authority over him in much the way a governess would have done in an upper class British family. As soon as the boy reached manhood, however, and took on the status of ‘son’ the authority of the paidagogus ceased. He no longer had any power over the young man. And Paul’s point is obvious. The Law was like the paidagogus. It had its part to play in the early years, but now that Christ has come, we are called to maturity and the Law no longer has authority over us.
This has always been true, of course, but what I want to suggest today is that it has particular relevance to the age in which we live, largely because of the profound changes which took place in society in the second half of the last century, especially in the sixties. They had their origins much earlier, but coming to a head when they did and influenced as they were by the previously unknown phenomenon of pop culture, they had a huge impact on those who belonged to the post-war baby-boom which includes many of us here. And at the heart of this change was a massive break with the past. This had been brewing since the days of Darwin and Freud and all the other people who, for years, had been questioning and undermining traditional religious beliefs. But in the latter half of the twentieth century it finally exploded in our faces and led to things like the sexual revolution and what I often refer to as a society with a thousand versions of the truth. Not that this is all bad. In many ways it just is and part of it was the Second Vatican Council. But what it does is present men and women of faith with a whole series of new challenges and new ways of taking up our cross and following Jesus. And at the heart of it is the call to personal faith with all that that involves.
In a sense, of course, it’s a return to the early centuries when, to be a Christian, required great courage in the face of a hostile environment. Only the deeply committed had a place in the Church, those with personal faith, and the same will become more and more obvious as this new century progresses. The days when people believed what their parents and grandparents had believed because they believed them are over and will never return. Everything today is up for grabs. The Church, with its dogmas and its rules and regulations simply does not have the influence or control it once had. People no longer believe things just because someone tells them to and those who do believe find themselves constantly swimming against the current of contemporary society. This part of it will almost certainly change at some time as the Churches come to terms with this new world and learn to speak to it again in a langauge it understands, but that day still looks to be a long way off. And so to take up our cross and follow Jesus today means, among other things, being prepared to be different and to swim against the current, difficult as that can be. It means coming to terms with what it means to live in a deeply flawed Church without walking away from it. It means being alert to the signs of the times and eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel, facing the doubts and fears of the men and women of our time. What if there is no God? What if the whole notion of God is a primitive invention made redundant by the discoveries of modern science? What if we have been conned into believing a whole load of rubbish with no foundation in reality? What if all those people who have walked away from the Church in recent years are right and the sooner we all join them the better?
These are real questions and our willingness to confront them is part of the challenge of the Gospel at this moment in history. ‘But you,’ Jesus says today, ‘Who do you say I am?’ Never mind what everybody else says. What do YOU say? Answer that question for yourself. That’s what personal faith is about. And when you have answered it through deep personal prayer and reflection, be faithful to your answer no matter what anybody else says or does.
Isn’t that just what the martyrs, our ancestors in the faith, did all those centuries ago?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In a world with a thousand versions of the truth it is not surprising that many are confused. For men and women of faith, too, there are far more questions around today than there are answers. And so we ask God for the courage we need to live with these questions and recognize them as the place where he is calling us to deeper and deeper faith, a faith fit for the time we are living through…….……….....Lord hear us
Every week in the Eucharistic Prayer we pray for the grace to be alert to the signs of the times and eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel. We ask for this grace so that we can bring to the men and women of our time the Good News of the Gospel and advance with them on the way to the Kingdom. We cannot do any of this, however, unless we are prepared to experience their doubts, struggle with their question, and enter fully into the experience of what it is to be alive at this time. And so we pray for the courage to do this, never seeking refuge in the false peace that comes from what is often little more than superstition or magic………....Lord hear us
Those of us who belong to the post-war baby-boom generation can just about remember a Church and a world where there were fewer questions and more certainty. The younger generation have never known this, having lived their whole lives in that world with a thousand versions of the truth. And so we pray that, in the midst of this world, they will come to know God and answer Jesus’ question. ‘And you, who do you say that I am?’………………Lord hear us
Next week’s second reading, a continuation of todays, begins with the words; ‘When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free.’ And so we pray that, faced with the challenges to faith presented by the modern world, we will never seek refuge again in the seemingly reassuring but ultimately false certainties of the past. We pray especially for all those who, rather than face these challenges, are turning to fundamentalist ways of thinking which mirror the fundamentalism we see causing so much trouble in other parts of the world……………….Lord hear us
When Karl Marx said that religion was the opium of the people he had a valid point. Too often, religion, with its promise of future bliss, has been used as a way of stopping people addressing the real problems facing them. And so we ask for the wisdom we need to show the world that this is not the case now by responding to the many challenges facing humanity today. This week’s bulletin offers us concrete ways of addressing homelessness, slavery, the crisis in Darfur, the Arms Trade and the Environment, and we pray that, as a parish, we will respond…………….Lord hear us
The ‘paidagogus’ had a vital part to play in the development and growth of boys in ancient Rome. Girls, however, were excluded and were not given the same opportunities as their brothers. In the second reading, however, St Paul speaks of how, in Christ, there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. And so we pray that this century will finally see an end to discrimination against women all over the world………………………...Lord hear us
At first sight, mind you, it doesn’t seem much of a clue. ‘You are all of you’ Paul says, ‘Sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.’ Not much there. Had those who planned the Lectionary given us the previous three verses, however, it would have been much clearer. The general point Paul is making is the one he makes all the time, which is that, as men and women of faith, we are not subject to or saved by the Law. But before faith in Christ came along, he tells the Galatians in those missing verses, the Law was like a slave looking after them. Again, not all that helpful, until we realise that the slave in question was not any old slave but an educated one known as a paidagogus who acted as a tutor to upper- class Roman boys. He was usually a Greek and, until the boy became of age, exercised a good deal of authority over him in much the way a governess would have done in an upper class British family. As soon as the boy reached manhood, however, and took on the status of ‘son’ the authority of the paidagogus ceased. He no longer had any power over the young man. And Paul’s point is obvious. The Law was like the paidagogus. It had its part to play in the early years, but now that Christ has come, we are called to maturity and the Law no longer has authority over us.
This has always been true, of course, but what I want to suggest today is that it has particular relevance to the age in which we live, largely because of the profound changes which took place in society in the second half of the last century, especially in the sixties. They had their origins much earlier, but coming to a head when they did and influenced as they were by the previously unknown phenomenon of pop culture, they had a huge impact on those who belonged to the post-war baby-boom which includes many of us here. And at the heart of this change was a massive break with the past. This had been brewing since the days of Darwin and Freud and all the other people who, for years, had been questioning and undermining traditional religious beliefs. But in the latter half of the twentieth century it finally exploded in our faces and led to things like the sexual revolution and what I often refer to as a society with a thousand versions of the truth. Not that this is all bad. In many ways it just is and part of it was the Second Vatican Council. But what it does is present men and women of faith with a whole series of new challenges and new ways of taking up our cross and following Jesus. And at the heart of it is the call to personal faith with all that that involves.
In a sense, of course, it’s a return to the early centuries when, to be a Christian, required great courage in the face of a hostile environment. Only the deeply committed had a place in the Church, those with personal faith, and the same will become more and more obvious as this new century progresses. The days when people believed what their parents and grandparents had believed because they believed them are over and will never return. Everything today is up for grabs. The Church, with its dogmas and its rules and regulations simply does not have the influence or control it once had. People no longer believe things just because someone tells them to and those who do believe find themselves constantly swimming against the current of contemporary society. This part of it will almost certainly change at some time as the Churches come to terms with this new world and learn to speak to it again in a langauge it understands, but that day still looks to be a long way off. And so to take up our cross and follow Jesus today means, among other things, being prepared to be different and to swim against the current, difficult as that can be. It means coming to terms with what it means to live in a deeply flawed Church without walking away from it. It means being alert to the signs of the times and eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel, facing the doubts and fears of the men and women of our time. What if there is no God? What if the whole notion of God is a primitive invention made redundant by the discoveries of modern science? What if we have been conned into believing a whole load of rubbish with no foundation in reality? What if all those people who have walked away from the Church in recent years are right and the sooner we all join them the better?
These are real questions and our willingness to confront them is part of the challenge of the Gospel at this moment in history. ‘But you,’ Jesus says today, ‘Who do you say I am?’ Never mind what everybody else says. What do YOU say? Answer that question for yourself. That’s what personal faith is about. And when you have answered it through deep personal prayer and reflection, be faithful to your answer no matter what anybody else says or does.
Isn’t that just what the martyrs, our ancestors in the faith, did all those centuries ago?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In a world with a thousand versions of the truth it is not surprising that many are confused. For men and women of faith, too, there are far more questions around today than there are answers. And so we ask God for the courage we need to live with these questions and recognize them as the place where he is calling us to deeper and deeper faith, a faith fit for the time we are living through…….……….....Lord hear us
Every week in the Eucharistic Prayer we pray for the grace to be alert to the signs of the times and eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel. We ask for this grace so that we can bring to the men and women of our time the Good News of the Gospel and advance with them on the way to the Kingdom. We cannot do any of this, however, unless we are prepared to experience their doubts, struggle with their question, and enter fully into the experience of what it is to be alive at this time. And so we pray for the courage to do this, never seeking refuge in the false peace that comes from what is often little more than superstition or magic………....Lord hear us
Those of us who belong to the post-war baby-boom generation can just about remember a Church and a world where there were fewer questions and more certainty. The younger generation have never known this, having lived their whole lives in that world with a thousand versions of the truth. And so we pray that, in the midst of this world, they will come to know God and answer Jesus’ question. ‘And you, who do you say that I am?’………………Lord hear us
Next week’s second reading, a continuation of todays, begins with the words; ‘When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free.’ And so we pray that, faced with the challenges to faith presented by the modern world, we will never seek refuge again in the seemingly reassuring but ultimately false certainties of the past. We pray especially for all those who, rather than face these challenges, are turning to fundamentalist ways of thinking which mirror the fundamentalism we see causing so much trouble in other parts of the world……………….Lord hear us
When Karl Marx said that religion was the opium of the people he had a valid point. Too often, religion, with its promise of future bliss, has been used as a way of stopping people addressing the real problems facing them. And so we ask for the wisdom we need to show the world that this is not the case now by responding to the many challenges facing humanity today. This week’s bulletin offers us concrete ways of addressing homelessness, slavery, the crisis in Darfur, the Arms Trade and the Environment, and we pray that, as a parish, we will respond…………….Lord hear us
The ‘paidagogus’ had a vital part to play in the development and growth of boys in ancient Rome. Girls, however, were excluded and were not given the same opportunities as their brothers. In the second reading, however, St Paul speaks of how, in Christ, there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. And so we pray that this century will finally see an end to discrimination against women all over the world………………………...Lord hear us
Sunday, 17 June 2007
11th Sunday of the Year C
‘To err,’ Alexander Pope famously said, ‘is human; to forgive divine.’ Or, as another version of the same quote by an American called Franklin P Adams, which I found on Google, put it, ‘To err is human, to forgive infrequent.’ But whichever version you use, the message is the same. Forgiveness, as the whole of human history demonstrates, does not come easily to us. Even when we want to forgive, or would like to be able to do so, we can’t. It’s beyond us. Something inside us stops us doing it as we cling to the hurt, the resentment, the sense of injustice, the betrayal, the festering grievance, the desire for revenge which eat away at us. Many of us here will know these feelings well and in some cases, like Tam O’Shanter’s wife, will be nursing them and keeping them warm. And it’s not just as individuals that we experience them. Whole nations suffer from them as do the tribes and groupings which make up nations. Why else would it be that most of the major conflicts around the world, far from being recent in their origin, are rooted in things that happened hundreds of years ago. Some are not only as old the Bible but have their roots in it. So what can we do? Well, there’s no simple answer to that question, but we could start by looking again at today’s readings, a masterclass in the art of forgiveness.
The first one told us about David’s sin with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah which we commented on earlier. It was a truly horrific episode in David’s life which initially in the story incurred the wrath of God through the prophet Nathan. And yet, at the first sign of repentance – ‘I have sinned against the Lord’ David tells Nathan – God, not for the first or last time in David’s life, forgives him. And in this we have the first secret of forgiveness. We must be open to the possibility of people changing and moving on. If we are not; if we, as it were, freeze the moment when another person has offended us and, like a video stuck on one frame of a film, refuse to let the story continue, then, like the people of Pompeii caught in the dust and lava from Vesuvius, we will be forever trapped in that moment of unforgiveness.
Now I know that many of you will not agree with what I am about to say, but the place where I feel the sadness of this most deeply is in the prison. Our justice system can be very unforgiving and there is one particular group where I would love to see more flexibility. These are men doing life for murders they committed as teenagers. Often these crimes, horrific as they are, were the result of a moment of youthful madness. And yet the consequences, despite the rubbish you read in the papers, are life-long. Many of these men pose no threat at all to society now and instead of wasting their lives in jail could live normal lives if given the chance. Both we and they, however, are trapped in a moment now long past and as I meet them every week I am reminded of all the other moments we are trapped in and how, whether it is disputes between individuals, disputes between tribes or nations or the tragedy of lives whose whole direction is defined in a fraction of a second, only genuine conversion and forgiveness can set us free. I love the story of the man who went to see God to talk about a particular sin he was struggling with. And how, on his way out after talking to God he did it again. And so back he went. ‘I’m sorry God’ he said, ‘I’ve done it again.’ ‘Done what again,’ said God.
In the Gospel reading we find yet another crucial aspect of forgiveness. For the Pharisees in the story, the woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, covered them with kisses and anointed them with oil was a prostitute with a bad name in the town. What Jesus saw, however, was a person, a human being with a name who, although she may have earned a living through prostitution, had much more to her than that. She was someone’s daughter and possibly mother to children. She may have been a gifted artist or a wonderful singer For all we know, she might even have been working as a prostitute to earn money to care for a disabled child or her elderly parents. We just don’t know any of this stuff and even if she wasn’t Mother Teresa, there would still be many many things about her that we don’t know and so are in no position to judge her. And that is what I experience in the prison every week. I have never in my life met a murderer. I have met many men who have committed murder, but there is no way that that one action could possibly encompass everything they are as individuals. Every person I meet in the prison – itself no more than a microcosm of the wider world outside – is a unique individual with a unique life and a unique story, and if we are to be more like God, the one who understands all and so forgives all, then the first thing we must do is stop labelling people and reducing the richness and complexity of their lives to one single aspect of who they are. And if we can do this with those whom we find hard to forgive; if we can see the whole of them rather than the part that has offended us, then we have one foot at least on the road to forgivenesss.
And it’s the same with large groups of people. Just as there is no such things as ‘a prostitute,’ so there is no such thing as a young people, foreigners, economic migrants or, for that matter, Frenchmen. There are only unique individuals who happen to be young, persons with real names who come from other countries, mums and dads, sons and daughters from far away places who come here in search of work or men called Claude and Pierre who happen to have born in France. Phrases like I don’t like Frenchmen or Young people are all whatever, are ultimately absurd. When it comes to human beings, generalizations have no meaning except to demonstrate the ignorance and prejudice of those who use them.
Forgiveness is difficult. But if, having moved the video on and looked at the wider picture, we add a dose of God’s grace, it becomes possible. And then the most wonderful thing happens. People don’t seem so bad after all and the world looks a better and brighter place.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin this week by asking God to touch those parts of our lives which are caught up in resentment and the inability to forgive and move on. We pray for the grace to let go of the past and see everything that happened there in the context of a much wider picture. We pray in particular for the grace to see that the faults of those whom we find it difficult to forgive are only part of who they are and that there is so much more to them than that………………………………..Lord hear us
Sometimes we not only find it difficult to forgive but do not even want to do so. We nurse our resentments and take a dark kind of pleasure in them. We feel self-righteous and use our sense of grievance to justify our own sinful attitudes and actions, blaming others rather than facing up to the ungodliness in ourselves. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this evil, recognizing that, until we are free from it, we can never enter the presence of God………………………………..Lord hear us
There are few things in life more sad than a family that is torn apart by arguments and disagreements over things that happened in the past. Some of us will know this in our own families and may even be the cause of it. And even if we are fortunate enough not to have experienced it close to home, we will know of cases in other families. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this kind of tragedy that God will pour into them the desire to forgive and the grace they need to do it……….…Lord hear us
We live in a society which can be extremely severe in its judgements and very unforgiving in its attitudes to human weakness. Day after day, the Tabloid Press dig up stories of human frailty and proceed to crucify people in the pages of our so-called newspapers. And they do it because it sells papers. In other words, we are all collaborators in this evil. And so we pray this week for all the victims of this kind of journalism, especially this who are suffering from it this weekend………Lord hear us
To see the ultimate effects of our inability and unwillingness to forgive those whom we believe have offended us, all we have to do is look around the world. Everywhere people are continuing ancient feuds, killing and slaughtering each other as our ancestors have done for centuries. The Middle East in particular, where the great events of the Bible took place, have hardly seen peace in two thousand years. And so, despite the huge problems that exist there, we pray for that peace……….Lord hear us
The tendency to label people rather than see them as the unique individuals that they are is deep within us. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this for the evil that it is. We ask God to help us see every human being as he sees them so that we can finally stop making huge generalizations about people which, by definition, cannot possibly be true and which only show us up for the narrow-minded and deeply prejudiced people we are sometimes.……………..Lord hear us
The first one told us about David’s sin with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah which we commented on earlier. It was a truly horrific episode in David’s life which initially in the story incurred the wrath of God through the prophet Nathan. And yet, at the first sign of repentance – ‘I have sinned against the Lord’ David tells Nathan – God, not for the first or last time in David’s life, forgives him. And in this we have the first secret of forgiveness. We must be open to the possibility of people changing and moving on. If we are not; if we, as it were, freeze the moment when another person has offended us and, like a video stuck on one frame of a film, refuse to let the story continue, then, like the people of Pompeii caught in the dust and lava from Vesuvius, we will be forever trapped in that moment of unforgiveness.
Now I know that many of you will not agree with what I am about to say, but the place where I feel the sadness of this most deeply is in the prison. Our justice system can be very unforgiving and there is one particular group where I would love to see more flexibility. These are men doing life for murders they committed as teenagers. Often these crimes, horrific as they are, were the result of a moment of youthful madness. And yet the consequences, despite the rubbish you read in the papers, are life-long. Many of these men pose no threat at all to society now and instead of wasting their lives in jail could live normal lives if given the chance. Both we and they, however, are trapped in a moment now long past and as I meet them every week I am reminded of all the other moments we are trapped in and how, whether it is disputes between individuals, disputes between tribes or nations or the tragedy of lives whose whole direction is defined in a fraction of a second, only genuine conversion and forgiveness can set us free. I love the story of the man who went to see God to talk about a particular sin he was struggling with. And how, on his way out after talking to God he did it again. And so back he went. ‘I’m sorry God’ he said, ‘I’ve done it again.’ ‘Done what again,’ said God.
In the Gospel reading we find yet another crucial aspect of forgiveness. For the Pharisees in the story, the woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, covered them with kisses and anointed them with oil was a prostitute with a bad name in the town. What Jesus saw, however, was a person, a human being with a name who, although she may have earned a living through prostitution, had much more to her than that. She was someone’s daughter and possibly mother to children. She may have been a gifted artist or a wonderful singer For all we know, she might even have been working as a prostitute to earn money to care for a disabled child or her elderly parents. We just don’t know any of this stuff and even if she wasn’t Mother Teresa, there would still be many many things about her that we don’t know and so are in no position to judge her. And that is what I experience in the prison every week. I have never in my life met a murderer. I have met many men who have committed murder, but there is no way that that one action could possibly encompass everything they are as individuals. Every person I meet in the prison – itself no more than a microcosm of the wider world outside – is a unique individual with a unique life and a unique story, and if we are to be more like God, the one who understands all and so forgives all, then the first thing we must do is stop labelling people and reducing the richness and complexity of their lives to one single aspect of who they are. And if we can do this with those whom we find hard to forgive; if we can see the whole of them rather than the part that has offended us, then we have one foot at least on the road to forgivenesss.
And it’s the same with large groups of people. Just as there is no such things as ‘a prostitute,’ so there is no such thing as a young people, foreigners, economic migrants or, for that matter, Frenchmen. There are only unique individuals who happen to be young, persons with real names who come from other countries, mums and dads, sons and daughters from far away places who come here in search of work or men called Claude and Pierre who happen to have born in France. Phrases like I don’t like Frenchmen or Young people are all whatever, are ultimately absurd. When it comes to human beings, generalizations have no meaning except to demonstrate the ignorance and prejudice of those who use them.
Forgiveness is difficult. But if, having moved the video on and looked at the wider picture, we add a dose of God’s grace, it becomes possible. And then the most wonderful thing happens. People don’t seem so bad after all and the world looks a better and brighter place.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin this week by asking God to touch those parts of our lives which are caught up in resentment and the inability to forgive and move on. We pray for the grace to let go of the past and see everything that happened there in the context of a much wider picture. We pray in particular for the grace to see that the faults of those whom we find it difficult to forgive are only part of who they are and that there is so much more to them than that………………………………..Lord hear us
Sometimes we not only find it difficult to forgive but do not even want to do so. We nurse our resentments and take a dark kind of pleasure in them. We feel self-righteous and use our sense of grievance to justify our own sinful attitudes and actions, blaming others rather than facing up to the ungodliness in ourselves. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this evil, recognizing that, until we are free from it, we can never enter the presence of God………………………………..Lord hear us
There are few things in life more sad than a family that is torn apart by arguments and disagreements over things that happened in the past. Some of us will know this in our own families and may even be the cause of it. And even if we are fortunate enough not to have experienced it close to home, we will know of cases in other families. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this kind of tragedy that God will pour into them the desire to forgive and the grace they need to do it……….…Lord hear us
We live in a society which can be extremely severe in its judgements and very unforgiving in its attitudes to human weakness. Day after day, the Tabloid Press dig up stories of human frailty and proceed to crucify people in the pages of our so-called newspapers. And they do it because it sells papers. In other words, we are all collaborators in this evil. And so we pray this week for all the victims of this kind of journalism, especially this who are suffering from it this weekend………Lord hear us
To see the ultimate effects of our inability and unwillingness to forgive those whom we believe have offended us, all we have to do is look around the world. Everywhere people are continuing ancient feuds, killing and slaughtering each other as our ancestors have done for centuries. The Middle East in particular, where the great events of the Bible took place, have hardly seen peace in two thousand years. And so, despite the huge problems that exist there, we pray for that peace……….Lord hear us
The tendency to label people rather than see them as the unique individuals that they are is deep within us. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this for the evil that it is. We ask God to help us see every human being as he sees them so that we can finally stop making huge generalizations about people which, by definition, cannot possibly be true and which only show us up for the narrow-minded and deeply prejudiced people we are sometimes.……………..Lord hear us
Sunday, 10 June 2007
CORPUS CHRISTI 2007
There are a number of reasons why we come here each week. We come to praise and thank God for his presence and action in our lives. We come to be fed and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist and so become more effective witnesses to Jesus in the world. We come, too, to celebrate and build up the unity of the Body of Christ, which is the Church in St Matthew’s, so that our witnessing together as a community is more than our witnessing as single individuals. And we come so that, by prayer and reflection, we can shed the light of the Gospel on all that goes on in our lives and in the world, learning, through constant discernment, to interpret it and make sense of it all. And it’s this final reason that I want to focus on today as we reflect on the truly enormous change that has taken place, throughout the lifetime of many of us, in the way we think about the mystery of Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist, the whole reason for this thousand-year-old Feast of Corpus Christi.
The change has been quite dramatic. For many of us here our early attitudes were formed, not just by our experience of Mass, but perhaps even more by our experience of what we knew as ‘Benediction.’ As an altar boy, Benediction played a huge part in my early experience of what it was to be a Catholic. I’m sure it rained sometimes in Muirkirk, but the picture I have firmly fixed in my mind is of the smoke from the thurible drifting through the sun’s rays streaming through the windows of St Thomas’s Church on a Sunday evening. I can see it all now and hear the sound of the O Salutaris, the Tantum Ergo and the Divine Praises, not to mention hymns like Faith of Our Fathers, Full in the Panting Heart of Rome and Hail Glorious St Patrick, all of which were sung with great gusto and filled me, and I’m sure many of you in those days, with a deep sense of pride that we were Catholics and a profound sense of awe and amazement in the presence of that small, white, round host lifted up before us in the monstrance by the priest in his cope and humeral veil. This was Jesus, body blood, soul and divinity. He was present among us. We knew it and, unlike today, we never doubted it. I remember, too, the same sense of awe and wonder the day I made my First Communion and it was still with me sixteen years later when, as a newly ordained deacon in Spain, I exposed the Blessed Sacrament at Benediction myself for the first time and felt such an enormous sense of privilege. And then, of course, there were the great open-air Corpus Christi Processions. We never had them in Muirkirk – the parish was too small – but I know you did here in Kilmarnock, at Nazareth House, and invite you to remember them and be in touch today with the way people felt about them then.
Those days, of course, are gone. Jesus continues to be present among us in the Blessed Sacrament. His presence is real. That has not changed and never will. But what has changed is our attitude to it. Gone are the days when we had such a sense of it that we would never have dreamt of holding a conversation in Church. How many of us, for example, even think to genuflect now when we come into church and on quite a number of occasions in revcent years I have heard many outwardly ‘good’ Catholics ‘poo poo’ the whole idea of the Real Presence. Three times a week here in the church we have Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and have done for twenty years – a form of prayer the present Pope is very anxious that we rediscover – but only a handful come. And I know that the children who come for First Communion nowadays – not through any fault of their own - don’t have anything like the sense of awe and wonder I remember having at my First Communion in 1952. So why is this and how are we to make sense of it?
Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m not thinking of joining the Latin Mass Society. I don’t want to go back to the so-called good old days that weren’t actually as good as we think they were. But those who say that after Vatican Two we lost something are right. And one of the things we lost was that profound sense of mystery we felt at Benediction or during a solemn High Mass. There are certain truths that we can only access when the atmosphere is conducive to knowing them. A husband and wife will be much more in touch with their love for each other over a romantic candle-lit dinner to celebrate a wedding anniversary than during breakfast some Monday morning when the older weans are fighting, the baby is screaming and the school bus leaves in five minutes. And just as any couple who never take time to create that ‘right moment’ will gradually drift apart, so we, as a Church, have not in recent years developed enough ‘right moments’ around the Eucharist to stir the ancient faith of the Church in us. Personally I have no problem with people talking before or after Mass. Meeting other folk is one of the reasons we come. But I have often wondered if we should perhaps ring a bell a few minutes before Mass starts so that we can all quieten down and prepare ourselves internally for what we are about to do. The whole way we conduct ourselves throughout Mass matters. The way we sit, the way we kneel, the way we sing, the way we listen, the way we respond; all these things reveal our inner attitudes and, most importantly of all, communicate to the young faith, or lack of faith, in what we do.
Personally, I try hard every week to make our Mass a time of faith. Slowly but surely over the years we have deepened our understanding of Scripture. Better quality music has gradually replaced much of the rubbish which immediately followed the Council. But, in the end, what we need most of all is to become a more reflective contemplative people who see beyond the superficiality of our modern materialistic culture. The Feast of Corpus Christi will always be beyond the comprehension of such a culture and we need to understand that.
In 1989 I made a video for the parish in which I spoke of my dream that the day would come when this Church would be open all day for people to pray before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament….. Well, I’m still dreaming
BIDDING PRAYERS
The pre-Vatican Two Church, the Church of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, had much about it that was good and much that was seriously in need of reform. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to know the difference so that we can let go of what belongs to the past and hold on to what is permanent, rediscovering it even in cases where it has been lost or forgotten over the years………..Lord hear us
Even old truths need to be expressed in new ways which make them accessible to people who live in a different age. We saw this at Pentecost when people from every nation on earth heard the Good News of the Gospel proclaimed in their own languages. The truth about Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist has always been expressed in the language of Greek philosophy as interpreted by theologians in the Middle Ages and we ask God to give us the wisdom we need to express the same truth again now in a language fit for our time………….Lord hear us
The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine is a mystery beyond human understanding. It can only be know through the gift of faith, the highest form of knowledge available to a human being. Faith takes us beyond the limits of intelligence and we ask God to stir it in us so that we can know without understanding the great mystery that we celebrate today………..Lord hear us
One of the things that has bedeviled our attitude to the Real Presence over the years has been the way we so often misunderstand what the Church teaches. Some devotion to the Eucharist has been based, for example, on the totally erroneous idea that Jesus is a prisoner in the tabernacle waiting for us to visit him. But the doctrine of the Church specifically teaches that Jesus is not present as in a place. His presence, though real, is of a different kind. And so we ask God to help us move beyond popular but false ideas about what the Church teaches in this area………Lord hear us
The Church’s current instruction on Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament – a form of prayer Pope Benedict is anxious that we rediscover – tells us that such prayer should always be linked to the Mass. It must be directed outwards, towards the world. It should not be inward looking but should encourage us to reach out to those in need and make Jesus present in every aspect of life. And so we pray that our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament here in this church will always do that……...……Lord hear us
It is important that we try each week to celebrate the liturgy of the Mass as well as we can. A faith-filled celebration builds up the community and draws us deeper and deeper into the mystery of Jesus death and resurrection as well as opening us up to the many far-reaching implications of his presence among us in Holy Communion. It slowly but surely makes us more like Jesus in the way we think and live and we ask for that grace today…………………………..Lord hear us
The change has been quite dramatic. For many of us here our early attitudes were formed, not just by our experience of Mass, but perhaps even more by our experience of what we knew as ‘Benediction.’ As an altar boy, Benediction played a huge part in my early experience of what it was to be a Catholic. I’m sure it rained sometimes in Muirkirk, but the picture I have firmly fixed in my mind is of the smoke from the thurible drifting through the sun’s rays streaming through the windows of St Thomas’s Church on a Sunday evening. I can see it all now and hear the sound of the O Salutaris, the Tantum Ergo and the Divine Praises, not to mention hymns like Faith of Our Fathers, Full in the Panting Heart of Rome and Hail Glorious St Patrick, all of which were sung with great gusto and filled me, and I’m sure many of you in those days, with a deep sense of pride that we were Catholics and a profound sense of awe and amazement in the presence of that small, white, round host lifted up before us in the monstrance by the priest in his cope and humeral veil. This was Jesus, body blood, soul and divinity. He was present among us. We knew it and, unlike today, we never doubted it. I remember, too, the same sense of awe and wonder the day I made my First Communion and it was still with me sixteen years later when, as a newly ordained deacon in Spain, I exposed the Blessed Sacrament at Benediction myself for the first time and felt such an enormous sense of privilege. And then, of course, there were the great open-air Corpus Christi Processions. We never had them in Muirkirk – the parish was too small – but I know you did here in Kilmarnock, at Nazareth House, and invite you to remember them and be in touch today with the way people felt about them then.
Those days, of course, are gone. Jesus continues to be present among us in the Blessed Sacrament. His presence is real. That has not changed and never will. But what has changed is our attitude to it. Gone are the days when we had such a sense of it that we would never have dreamt of holding a conversation in Church. How many of us, for example, even think to genuflect now when we come into church and on quite a number of occasions in revcent years I have heard many outwardly ‘good’ Catholics ‘poo poo’ the whole idea of the Real Presence. Three times a week here in the church we have Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and have done for twenty years – a form of prayer the present Pope is very anxious that we rediscover – but only a handful come. And I know that the children who come for First Communion nowadays – not through any fault of their own - don’t have anything like the sense of awe and wonder I remember having at my First Communion in 1952. So why is this and how are we to make sense of it?
Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m not thinking of joining the Latin Mass Society. I don’t want to go back to the so-called good old days that weren’t actually as good as we think they were. But those who say that after Vatican Two we lost something are right. And one of the things we lost was that profound sense of mystery we felt at Benediction or during a solemn High Mass. There are certain truths that we can only access when the atmosphere is conducive to knowing them. A husband and wife will be much more in touch with their love for each other over a romantic candle-lit dinner to celebrate a wedding anniversary than during breakfast some Monday morning when the older weans are fighting, the baby is screaming and the school bus leaves in five minutes. And just as any couple who never take time to create that ‘right moment’ will gradually drift apart, so we, as a Church, have not in recent years developed enough ‘right moments’ around the Eucharist to stir the ancient faith of the Church in us. Personally I have no problem with people talking before or after Mass. Meeting other folk is one of the reasons we come. But I have often wondered if we should perhaps ring a bell a few minutes before Mass starts so that we can all quieten down and prepare ourselves internally for what we are about to do. The whole way we conduct ourselves throughout Mass matters. The way we sit, the way we kneel, the way we sing, the way we listen, the way we respond; all these things reveal our inner attitudes and, most importantly of all, communicate to the young faith, or lack of faith, in what we do.
Personally, I try hard every week to make our Mass a time of faith. Slowly but surely over the years we have deepened our understanding of Scripture. Better quality music has gradually replaced much of the rubbish which immediately followed the Council. But, in the end, what we need most of all is to become a more reflective contemplative people who see beyond the superficiality of our modern materialistic culture. The Feast of Corpus Christi will always be beyond the comprehension of such a culture and we need to understand that.
In 1989 I made a video for the parish in which I spoke of my dream that the day would come when this Church would be open all day for people to pray before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament….. Well, I’m still dreaming
BIDDING PRAYERS
The pre-Vatican Two Church, the Church of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, had much about it that was good and much that was seriously in need of reform. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to know the difference so that we can let go of what belongs to the past and hold on to what is permanent, rediscovering it even in cases where it has been lost or forgotten over the years………..Lord hear us
Even old truths need to be expressed in new ways which make them accessible to people who live in a different age. We saw this at Pentecost when people from every nation on earth heard the Good News of the Gospel proclaimed in their own languages. The truth about Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist has always been expressed in the language of Greek philosophy as interpreted by theologians in the Middle Ages and we ask God to give us the wisdom we need to express the same truth again now in a language fit for our time………….Lord hear us
The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine is a mystery beyond human understanding. It can only be know through the gift of faith, the highest form of knowledge available to a human being. Faith takes us beyond the limits of intelligence and we ask God to stir it in us so that we can know without understanding the great mystery that we celebrate today………..Lord hear us
One of the things that has bedeviled our attitude to the Real Presence over the years has been the way we so often misunderstand what the Church teaches. Some devotion to the Eucharist has been based, for example, on the totally erroneous idea that Jesus is a prisoner in the tabernacle waiting for us to visit him. But the doctrine of the Church specifically teaches that Jesus is not present as in a place. His presence, though real, is of a different kind. And so we ask God to help us move beyond popular but false ideas about what the Church teaches in this area………Lord hear us
The Church’s current instruction on Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament – a form of prayer Pope Benedict is anxious that we rediscover – tells us that such prayer should always be linked to the Mass. It must be directed outwards, towards the world. It should not be inward looking but should encourage us to reach out to those in need and make Jesus present in every aspect of life. And so we pray that our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament here in this church will always do that……...……Lord hear us
It is important that we try each week to celebrate the liturgy of the Mass as well as we can. A faith-filled celebration builds up the community and draws us deeper and deeper into the mystery of Jesus death and resurrection as well as opening us up to the many far-reaching implications of his presence among us in Holy Communion. It slowly but surely makes us more like Jesus in the way we think and live and we ask for that grace today…………………………..Lord hear us
Sunday, 3 June 2007
TRINITY SUNDAY
In one of the bidding prayers last Sunday we prayed for the Church that it/we would learn to speak to the people of our time in a language they understand. That, after all, is what happened on the Day of Pentecost, as all those gathered in Jerusalem for the festival – Parthians, Medes and Elamites, people from Mesapotamia, Judaea, Cappadocia Pamphyilia, Egypt and so on – all heard the apostles speaking in their own language. And how clever of God! To speak to people in a language they do not understand makes no sense at all and the picture of Pentecost painted by St Luke in Acts – itself symbolic rather than literal - is about the fundamental challenge facing the Church in every age; to take the message of the Gospel and, by presenting it in language people understand, make it accessible to them.
The great example of this, of course, was Jesus himself. In his teaching there is none of the religious language of the Jewish leaders of the time. Jesus speaks the language of daily life, drawing his imagery from the countryside, the home, the natural world and so on, describing God as a shepherd, the owner of a vineyard, a farmer, or a woman baking bread. For Jesus, none of the pious, religious words Churches have used over the centuries to describe God and which have so often acted as a barrier between people and God rather than a help. And when this happens, when our religious language proves unintelligble to people, rather than change the language and search around for new, more relevant images that will make sense to them, we do the two classic things which English speakers abroad are supposedly famed for. we shout louder and, whether it is the modern world as a whole or parts of it, like young people who see no point in going to Church any longer, we blame them for not understanding us rather than examine the way we are presenting the message. But not so Jesus. He certainly struggled to make himself understood. But when this happened, he just tried all the harder. You can see him in the Gospels, looking around for something else that will help get his point across. ‘What can I compare the kingdom of God to’ we hear him say over and over again. It’s like this, it’s like that, it’s like the other, as he draws upon image after image from people’s life experience in an attempt to find words that make sense to them and break through the barriers standing between them from the truth. And this, surely, is the challenge facing us today at the beginning of the 21st century. To speak to the people of our time about God in a language they understand so that they, too, can come to know him.
So what would we have to say about today’s Feast of the Trinity? Is there anything we could say on such a subject that would not just sound like religious mumbo jumbo to the world? Well, the first thing we could do would be to give up any attempt to explain the Trinity and, by our complete silence on the matter invite the world to recognize and ponder the fact that there are truths far beyond our comprehension before which we can only fall down in silence and humility. Or to slightly misquote Shakespeare, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’ The world today, full as it so often is of itself and its own importance - until something comes along and reminds us of our vulnerability - needs to hear this message, and it could be argued that the ideal way to celebrate Trinity Sunday would be to have a day of complete silence when all talking and specualtion about God would be banned. To even imagine that, with our puny minds, we could ever explain or understand the inner nature of God is like the sin of Adam and Eve in the great Genesis myth of the Fall. It’s to want to eat from a tree of knowledge which is not ours to eat. It’s the sin of Lucifer himself who refused to accept that God is God and we are his creatures. It is to want to be gods and I invite you to act against that sin today by taking time on this Feast to be silent before the One who is.
But when the silence is over, there are things we can say to the world on this day. We can speak to it of a God who has created us in ways which continue to both baffle and fascinate the greatest scientific minds of the age and who longs to share his life with us. We can tell them that this God whom we call Father has, in Jesus, the Son, become part of our history, shared our human experience, and become one of us. We can tell them – because many of them today know nothing of it – about the teaching of Jesus; about his call to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and so on, helping them to see that, by learning to live in this way, we become not only like Jesus but one with Jesus, joined to him, and that it is by allowing this to happen that we are drawn into the life of God with him. And we can tell them that all of this happens through the power of God’s Spirit living and working deep within each one of us. To use one very inadequate image: God is our destination: we are made to share his life: Jesus is the means, the vehicle, by which we journey into the very heart of God and the Spirit is the energy, the power, which enables us to make the journey.
But how do we know this is true and not a load of religious mumbo-jumbo? Well, we don’t, at least not in the sense that we know that two and two make four. It is not something we can prove or demonstrate beyond doubt. There is a choice involved and each of us has to confront it. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that the Spirit will lead us into the complete truth. If this is true then the mystery we celebrate today is also true for the simple reason that it is inconceivable that a people guided by the Spirit in this way could wander so far from the truth of who God is. But if what Jesus says about the Spirit today is not true; if someone has made it all up; then we are all in deep trouble. It is one or the other.
So which is it for you?
BIDDING PRAYERS
Through our baptism we are called to be bearers of the Good News to the people who share this moment in history with us. Under the influence of the same Holy Spirit who came upon the apostles at Pentecost, it is our task to find images and a language which these men and women can understand and so allow them to access the truth about who God is. And so we pray for the wisdom and guidance we need to be exercise this vocation for the sake of the world………………….…….....Lord hear us
Sometimes we blame our modern society when it turns away from God and abandons the ways of faith. But this is not a godly response. The God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit of love is not like that And so we pray for the grace we need to respond to the realities of the modern world with compassion and understanding rather than condemnation and judgement, showing it what God is really like……….Lord hear us
Since the beginning of time people have criticised the young. In every generation people think the young of their own day are worse than those who have gone before. But this is not how God sees them. He sees sons and daughters of his filled with potential. He believes in them and accompanies them as they make their way through years of growth and development. And so ask him to help us love the young and find new ways of speaking to them about the things of faith…………………Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul speaks of how the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. This is a practical love which shows itself in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless and so on and is only possible when we are open to the movement of God in us. And so we pray that the world will become more and more open to this movement, learning to leave behind what is destructive about our current way of living………..Lord hear us
The Spirit of truth, Jesus tells us again in today’s Gospel, will lead us to the complete truth. This truth, however, is far greater than we are and, as we saw of the Feast of Pentecost, can never be contained within the confines of our limited human thinking. And so we pray for the grace we need to live with mysteries we do not understand: truths which we can only know because God reveals them to us and which, even after they are revealed, are still too much for our puny intelligence…………...Lord hear us
Jesus has taught us to pray to God as Father. St Paul tells us that it is the Spirit in us who cries out ‘Abba, Father’ and that left to ourselves we could not even say that Jesus is Lord. The same Spirit, he explains, prays in us when we ourselves cannot put our prayer into words and since we were children we have been taught to begin all our our prayer in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And so we ask today for a deep sense of how the Trinity is the context in which we live our whole lives……………….....Lord hear us
The great example of this, of course, was Jesus himself. In his teaching there is none of the religious language of the Jewish leaders of the time. Jesus speaks the language of daily life, drawing his imagery from the countryside, the home, the natural world and so on, describing God as a shepherd, the owner of a vineyard, a farmer, or a woman baking bread. For Jesus, none of the pious, religious words Churches have used over the centuries to describe God and which have so often acted as a barrier between people and God rather than a help. And when this happens, when our religious language proves unintelligble to people, rather than change the language and search around for new, more relevant images that will make sense to them, we do the two classic things which English speakers abroad are supposedly famed for. we shout louder and, whether it is the modern world as a whole or parts of it, like young people who see no point in going to Church any longer, we blame them for not understanding us rather than examine the way we are presenting the message. But not so Jesus. He certainly struggled to make himself understood. But when this happened, he just tried all the harder. You can see him in the Gospels, looking around for something else that will help get his point across. ‘What can I compare the kingdom of God to’ we hear him say over and over again. It’s like this, it’s like that, it’s like the other, as he draws upon image after image from people’s life experience in an attempt to find words that make sense to them and break through the barriers standing between them from the truth. And this, surely, is the challenge facing us today at the beginning of the 21st century. To speak to the people of our time about God in a language they understand so that they, too, can come to know him.
So what would we have to say about today’s Feast of the Trinity? Is there anything we could say on such a subject that would not just sound like religious mumbo jumbo to the world? Well, the first thing we could do would be to give up any attempt to explain the Trinity and, by our complete silence on the matter invite the world to recognize and ponder the fact that there are truths far beyond our comprehension before which we can only fall down in silence and humility. Or to slightly misquote Shakespeare, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’ The world today, full as it so often is of itself and its own importance - until something comes along and reminds us of our vulnerability - needs to hear this message, and it could be argued that the ideal way to celebrate Trinity Sunday would be to have a day of complete silence when all talking and specualtion about God would be banned. To even imagine that, with our puny minds, we could ever explain or understand the inner nature of God is like the sin of Adam and Eve in the great Genesis myth of the Fall. It’s to want to eat from a tree of knowledge which is not ours to eat. It’s the sin of Lucifer himself who refused to accept that God is God and we are his creatures. It is to want to be gods and I invite you to act against that sin today by taking time on this Feast to be silent before the One who is.
But when the silence is over, there are things we can say to the world on this day. We can speak to it of a God who has created us in ways which continue to both baffle and fascinate the greatest scientific minds of the age and who longs to share his life with us. We can tell them that this God whom we call Father has, in Jesus, the Son, become part of our history, shared our human experience, and become one of us. We can tell them – because many of them today know nothing of it – about the teaching of Jesus; about his call to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and so on, helping them to see that, by learning to live in this way, we become not only like Jesus but one with Jesus, joined to him, and that it is by allowing this to happen that we are drawn into the life of God with him. And we can tell them that all of this happens through the power of God’s Spirit living and working deep within each one of us. To use one very inadequate image: God is our destination: we are made to share his life: Jesus is the means, the vehicle, by which we journey into the very heart of God and the Spirit is the energy, the power, which enables us to make the journey.
But how do we know this is true and not a load of religious mumbo-jumbo? Well, we don’t, at least not in the sense that we know that two and two make four. It is not something we can prove or demonstrate beyond doubt. There is a choice involved and each of us has to confront it. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that the Spirit will lead us into the complete truth. If this is true then the mystery we celebrate today is also true for the simple reason that it is inconceivable that a people guided by the Spirit in this way could wander so far from the truth of who God is. But if what Jesus says about the Spirit today is not true; if someone has made it all up; then we are all in deep trouble. It is one or the other.
So which is it for you?
BIDDING PRAYERS
Through our baptism we are called to be bearers of the Good News to the people who share this moment in history with us. Under the influence of the same Holy Spirit who came upon the apostles at Pentecost, it is our task to find images and a language which these men and women can understand and so allow them to access the truth about who God is. And so we pray for the wisdom and guidance we need to be exercise this vocation for the sake of the world………………….…….....Lord hear us
Sometimes we blame our modern society when it turns away from God and abandons the ways of faith. But this is not a godly response. The God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit of love is not like that And so we pray for the grace we need to respond to the realities of the modern world with compassion and understanding rather than condemnation and judgement, showing it what God is really like……….Lord hear us
Since the beginning of time people have criticised the young. In every generation people think the young of their own day are worse than those who have gone before. But this is not how God sees them. He sees sons and daughters of his filled with potential. He believes in them and accompanies them as they make their way through years of growth and development. And so ask him to help us love the young and find new ways of speaking to them about the things of faith…………………Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul speaks of how the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. This is a practical love which shows itself in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless and so on and is only possible when we are open to the movement of God in us. And so we pray that the world will become more and more open to this movement, learning to leave behind what is destructive about our current way of living………..Lord hear us
The Spirit of truth, Jesus tells us again in today’s Gospel, will lead us to the complete truth. This truth, however, is far greater than we are and, as we saw of the Feast of Pentecost, can never be contained within the confines of our limited human thinking. And so we pray for the grace we need to live with mysteries we do not understand: truths which we can only know because God reveals them to us and which, even after they are revealed, are still too much for our puny intelligence…………...Lord hear us
Jesus has taught us to pray to God as Father. St Paul tells us that it is the Spirit in us who cries out ‘Abba, Father’ and that left to ourselves we could not even say that Jesus is Lord. The same Spirit, he explains, prays in us when we ourselves cannot put our prayer into words and since we were children we have been taught to begin all our our prayer in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And so we ask today for a deep sense of how the Trinity is the context in which we live our whole lives……………….....Lord hear us
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