Towards the end of last week’s homily I made a brief reference to what Ignatius Loyola considered the basis of all christian ministry. He called it spiritual conversation and saw it as the fundamental way in which Jesus’ command to teach all nations is carried out in society. We do it, he says, by engaging with the people we meet along the way, talking to them, as Jesus does on the road to Emmaeus, about what’s going on in their lives and, when appropriate, when they bring the subject up, speak to them about the things of God. And St Peter says the same in today’s second reading. ‘Always have your answer ready’ he says, ‘for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have.’ You don’t have to preach at people, he is saying. But, when they ask you, have your answer ready, and give it with courtesy and respect, words that are echoed in Pope Paul V1’s great 1975 document on Evangelization. In it, he lists eight ways in which the world of our day will be re-evangelized, and spiritual conversation, even if he doesn’t call it that, is first among them. So what exactly is our reason for the hope that we have, and, more importantly, how are we going to express it in a way which makes sense to people today? Because an explanation which people cannot understand, which makes no sense to them, is not an explanation at all. Well, that’s our subject this week.
For many christians the answer to both questions, the reason for our hope and the way to explain it to others, lies in the Bible. But, while the Bible is the inspired Word of God, there’s no point in offering it as the reason for the hope we have. And this is because it is a circular argument. We cannot give the Bible as the reason we believe to people who do not themselves believe in the Bible and expect our answer to satisfy them. If we are serious about answering their question, then we have to start from some common ground. And the Bible simply is not that common ground, especially when it’s associated in the minds of many with creationism and other forms of christian fundamentalism. So, if the Bible won’t do, where do we go next?
Well, for many Catholics the next stopping point is the teaching of the Church: the ‘My God I believe in thee and all thy Church doth teach’ approach to things. But again, this is a circular argument and so useless as a starting point for evangelization. For one thing, even when what the Church teaches is true, it’s often expressed in language that’s completely foreign to the modern mind. An example of this would be Transubstantiation, an idea that depends on the philosophy of Aristotle, a way of thinking which is completely at odds with what we know today about the physical world. And so in his encyclical letter on the Eucharist, written over forty years ago, Pope Paul VI invited theologians to find other ways of expressing the truth of Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist which were faithful to the truth but which reflected modern ways of thinking. Just as with the Bible, you cannot say that what the Church says is true because the Church says it. It’s an absurd argument which convinces only the already convinced. So where next?
Well, for many, the next stop is reason, the idea that we can convince people and justify what we believe by logic and reasoned argument. And up to a point this is true. Faith is not stupid. A lot of it makes perfect sense and there are plenty of people in the world writing very learned books to illustrate this. Some of them may even convince a few people. But reason can only go so far. You can, if you like, take the horse to the water but you cannot make it drink. As a means of knowing God and the things of God; as a way of reaching out to the world with the message of the Gospel, reason and logic in themselves are as inadequate as the Bible and Church teaching. It’s not that there is anything wrong with them in themselves. Far from it. For men and women of faith they are vital and essential. But as a starting point for explaining to those who ask the reason for the hope we have they simply will not do. They take too much for granted and so what we need to do is find some common ground where we can all meet and that common ground is personal experience.
We live in an age of personal experience. This is the I’ve been there, done it, bought the tee-shirt age, an approach to truth which, of course, raises its own difficulties. It often leads to the kind of relativism John Paul II and Benedict XVI have warned against for years; the idea that truth is what an individual thinks it is or wants it to be. This is the age of a thousand competing versions of the truth and we have reflected often on the need for discernment in the face of such a culture. We need to be able to tell truth from falsehood and, for men and women who already believe, this is where the Bible, the Teaching of the Church and reason come in.
But for the millions who do not yet believe, the answer lies elsewhere and is powerfully expressed by Pope Paul VI when he says in his document on Evangelization, ‘Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.’ There’s the key. That’s how to respond to those who ask the reason for the hope we have. We live it. We show people what the love of God is like by loving them the way God loves. We open people up to the teaching of Jesus by living it both as individuals and as parish communities. We don’t go down the town and preach at people on the street corners. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, work for peace, show tolerance to others in their weakness, refuse to judge or condemn any human being, and when people ask us, ‘Why do you do this? What is the reason for the love and the hope that you have?’ then, with courtesy and respect, we tell them.
For many in Peter’s day, as we heard earlier, doing this was a crime punishable by death. And so I leave you with the old question. If it were a crime today to witness to Jesus, would there be enough evidence to convict us either as individuals or as a parish?
BIDDING PRAYERS
It is only possible to give an answer to those who ask us about the reason for the hope we all have if we have that hope in us personally in the first place. And so we ask the Spirit of God to stir the gift of hope in us today, drawing us beyond the fear and pessimism about the world which so often fills the hearts of religious church-going people. We ask God to enable us instead to be for all the people we meet in the course of our lives a source of joy and encouragment…………………....Lord hear us
The call to be witnesses to the presence of Jesus in the world is lived out first and foremost – not in doing unusual or extraordinary things – but in the ordinary events of our lives. We are called to make Jesus present in our homes, in the places where we work, in the streets where we live and in all our encounters with the people around us. We do this by living the values of the gospel in a prayerful and reflective way, seeking to serve rather than be served, give rather than receive, and we pray for the grace we need to do this…………………Lord hear us
St Peter reminds us in today’s second reading that in all our dealings with others we must treat them with courtesy and respect. And so we pray for the grace we need to do this, always respecting the views and opinions of others, never acting arrogantly towards them, never judging or condemning them, always speaking well rather than badly of them and, in every circumstance, putting the best interpretation possible on what they say and do……….…………………..Lord hear us
St Peter in the second reading is writing to people who knew from experience what it was to be persecuted for their christian faith. Things today are very different, although in today’s world people continue to suffer for what they believe. Many, like our ancestors in faith, are imprisoned and some, like the early martyrs, die for their beliefs. And so we pray for them and for the courage to face whatever little sufferings come our way, remembering, as St Peter says today, that it is better to suffer for doing right rather than for doing wrong…………….…………………….Lord hear us
Thursday of this coming week is the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost is just two weeks away. And so, in this week’s gospel, we hear Jesus speak of how he will send us another Advocate, the Spirit of truth. And so we pray for the grace we need to recognize truth in today’s complex world, knowing how to distinguish it from the many falsehoods that surround us………………...Lord hear us
If we are to re-evangelize the modern world – the great challenge of our time – then we must learn to express the great truths of faith in a language that the men and women of our time can understand. We must enter into their world rather than expect them to enter ours. We must speak their language rather than demand that they speak ours. We must make the first move rather than wait for them to do so. We must reach out to them rather than wait for them to come to us. And so we pray for the generosity of spirit we need to do this…………….Lord hear us
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Saturday, 19 April 2008
5th Sunday of Easter A
I would like to say something today I have never said before, although I should warn you in advance not to get too excited about it. I’ve always been aware of it over the years but have been very reluctant to mention it. And it’s to do with the Second Vatican Councils’s Constitution on the Liturgy, one of the most important documents to emerge from the Council, and the one which had the most immediate and visible impact in that it changed for ever the way we celebrate Mass.
In it, the Council Fathers speak of the different ways in which the Risen Jesus is present among us when we gather here on a Sunday. He is present among us in our coming together as a community – wherever two are three are gathered in my name I am there in the midst of them. He is present in the Word which is alive and active with power, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, to read our most secret emotions and thoughts. And he is present in a very particular way in the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine, what we call the Real Presence, even although, as the Council is at pains to point out, the others are real too. But the document lists one other way in which the Risen Jesus is present among us at Mass and that’s the one I never speak about. I almost feel afraid to do so in case it sounds arrogant or presumptious, but what the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy says is that, as well as in the community, in the Word and in the Eucharist, the Risen Jesus is also present in the person of the ordained priest:…me! So why, after twenty three years of avoiding it every time the subject has come up, am I saying it to you today? Well, its because of what St Peter says in the second reading. Speaking to us through those first century Christians he says to you today: ‘You are a chosen people. A royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light,’ words that could be as easily interpreted as arrogant or presumptious as the ones I have avoided for so long. So how are we to understand them in a way which avoids this danger and opens us up to their rich meaning?
Well, the key lies in the Greek word, karisma, which means a divinely given gift. The important thing about such gifts or charisms is that they are given to individuals for the good of others, the classic example of this being the gift of prophecy in the Old Testament. More often than not it was a gift which brought nothing but trouble to the individual who received it, called, as he was, to proclaim to the people a message they usually didn’t want to hear. And while its not always as bad as that – although it can be - there is always an element of it in any charism. Basically a charism is a gift from God which carries with it very serious responsibilities and it is in that context that we have to understand the fact that all of us here – myself through ordination and the rest of you through baptism – share in the priesthood of Jesus. We are, whether we have understood it yet or not, all those amazing things the second reading speaks of. We really are a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart.
And essentially this means that what I am called to do as an ordained priest within the parish community you are called to do in and for the world. As we gather each week, I exercise what is called ministerial priesthood by offering in Jesus’ name and on your behalf, the great sacrifice of thanksgiving which is the Eucharist. But you are not mere spectators at this sacrifice. As a priestly people you also offer the sacrifice. And you do so on behalf of all the people in the streets and houses around us, some of whom know nothing of God. And so, until they do, until the day comes when we are all able to do this together, you praise God on their behalf, you thank God on their behalf, you bring their needs before God in the same way that I do for you each day. But you do this, not only on behalf of people, but on behalf of creation, the whole cosmos, everything that exists. That’s what it means to celebrate Eucharist….Boring indeed!
But there’s even more to it than that. We are also a people of the Word. Given what we heard today in the first reading about the Apostles appointing deacons to hand out food so that they themselves could get on with preaching the Word, it is perhaps not surprising that the Council should identify the preaching of the Word as the primary duty of the ordained priest, putting it before even the celebration of the Eucharist. And so, as your parish priest, I have a very serious obligation to prepare a homily each week. I am almost afraid to say it, but the homily at Mass, designed to open up the Word and make it relevant to daily life, is not fundamentally a speech or a lecture to be agreed or disagreed with. To the extent that it is Spirit-filled, it becomes part of the Word and a congregation’s first response, despite the inevitably flawed nature of the priest himself, has to be to listen in faith.
But, as a priestly people, you are not just listeners, not just receivers of the Word. You are also called to be bearers of it to others. And as lay men and women you exercise this aspect of your baptismal priesthood, not by giving homilies, but by engaging with people. For St Ignatius the basis of all ministry was what he called ‘spiritual conversation.’ He sent his followers out into the world to meet people, talk with them, listen to them and, only when appropriate, when they raised the subject, speak to them about the things of God and help them make sense of their lives by shining the light of faith on their experience. And we can only do this if we ourselves have been shaped and formed over the years by exposure to the Word. Any priest, ordained or otherwise, who is not steeped the Word of God, is simply not fit for purpose a sobering thought for all of us.
And yet if only we believed. If we did, Jesus tells us today, we would, through the power of the Spirit, perform even great works than he did. Can you imagine it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In today’s reading from the acts of the Apostles we hear how the first deacons came to be appointed. They were called to the ministry of service in the community and in our own day we are seeing a return to this ideal. Already several mature, married men in the diocese are preparing to be ordained deacons and we ask God to guide them on their journey and raise up many more in our midst who will undertake this ancient ministry within the Church……………………….Lord hear us
In that same reading from Acts we heard how important it was for the Apostles to devote themselves to prayer and the service of the word. And so we pray for ordained priests throughout the diocese today that they, too, will be men committed to prayer and the service of the word. We pray that the word will be preached and proclaimed to people in our parishes in a way which sheds the light of faith on all our daily experience, enabling us, in our turn, to be bearers of that same word to others whom we meet in the course of our lives…………...Lord hear us
If we are to be bearers of the word to others, men and women who are able to help those whom we meet interpret their life-experience in the light of God’s word, then we must put behind us for ever the idea that faith is a purely private, personal matter. Many of us, sadly, grew up in a Church which often thought this way, but, as the reading on the back of this week’s bulletin makes clear, there is no place for such an notion today. And so we pray that our faith will be of the kind that enables us to engage with the world……………………....Lord hear us
It is through our baptism that we share in the priesthood of Jesus. In many ways the whole of the Second Vatican Council was about rediscovering the meaning of this most fundamental of all the sacraments. And so we ask God to stir in us a deep sense of what baptism means so that, even if we have not always understood it in the past and its power has lain dormant and undeveloped in us, we can become now the people God longs for us to be……………….……….Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Peter speaks of how the stone rejected by the builders has become the corner stone. And so we pray for the insight we need to recognize how, in God’s providence, events in our own lives which seemed negative or meaningless at the time have become, with the passing of the years, more significant and more important than we first thought, revealing to us a God who writes straight with crooked lines and turns all things to good……………Lord hear us
On Monday, the new St Joseph’s Academy and the new St Andrew’s Primary School and Nursery open their doors for the first time. This is an important moment in the story of the Catholic community in Kilmarnock and we ask God to be with everyone involved in the weeks and months ahead. We pray, too, for a deep sense of gratitude for all that has gone before and hold up before God everyone who has helped bring us to this point in what is an on-going story…………………Lord hear us
In it, the Council Fathers speak of the different ways in which the Risen Jesus is present among us when we gather here on a Sunday. He is present among us in our coming together as a community – wherever two are three are gathered in my name I am there in the midst of them. He is present in the Word which is alive and active with power, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, to read our most secret emotions and thoughts. And he is present in a very particular way in the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine, what we call the Real Presence, even although, as the Council is at pains to point out, the others are real too. But the document lists one other way in which the Risen Jesus is present among us at Mass and that’s the one I never speak about. I almost feel afraid to do so in case it sounds arrogant or presumptious, but what the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy says is that, as well as in the community, in the Word and in the Eucharist, the Risen Jesus is also present in the person of the ordained priest:…me! So why, after twenty three years of avoiding it every time the subject has come up, am I saying it to you today? Well, its because of what St Peter says in the second reading. Speaking to us through those first century Christians he says to you today: ‘You are a chosen people. A royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light,’ words that could be as easily interpreted as arrogant or presumptious as the ones I have avoided for so long. So how are we to understand them in a way which avoids this danger and opens us up to their rich meaning?
Well, the key lies in the Greek word, karisma, which means a divinely given gift. The important thing about such gifts or charisms is that they are given to individuals for the good of others, the classic example of this being the gift of prophecy in the Old Testament. More often than not it was a gift which brought nothing but trouble to the individual who received it, called, as he was, to proclaim to the people a message they usually didn’t want to hear. And while its not always as bad as that – although it can be - there is always an element of it in any charism. Basically a charism is a gift from God which carries with it very serious responsibilities and it is in that context that we have to understand the fact that all of us here – myself through ordination and the rest of you through baptism – share in the priesthood of Jesus. We are, whether we have understood it yet or not, all those amazing things the second reading speaks of. We really are a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart.
And essentially this means that what I am called to do as an ordained priest within the parish community you are called to do in and for the world. As we gather each week, I exercise what is called ministerial priesthood by offering in Jesus’ name and on your behalf, the great sacrifice of thanksgiving which is the Eucharist. But you are not mere spectators at this sacrifice. As a priestly people you also offer the sacrifice. And you do so on behalf of all the people in the streets and houses around us, some of whom know nothing of God. And so, until they do, until the day comes when we are all able to do this together, you praise God on their behalf, you thank God on their behalf, you bring their needs before God in the same way that I do for you each day. But you do this, not only on behalf of people, but on behalf of creation, the whole cosmos, everything that exists. That’s what it means to celebrate Eucharist….Boring indeed!
But there’s even more to it than that. We are also a people of the Word. Given what we heard today in the first reading about the Apostles appointing deacons to hand out food so that they themselves could get on with preaching the Word, it is perhaps not surprising that the Council should identify the preaching of the Word as the primary duty of the ordained priest, putting it before even the celebration of the Eucharist. And so, as your parish priest, I have a very serious obligation to prepare a homily each week. I am almost afraid to say it, but the homily at Mass, designed to open up the Word and make it relevant to daily life, is not fundamentally a speech or a lecture to be agreed or disagreed with. To the extent that it is Spirit-filled, it becomes part of the Word and a congregation’s first response, despite the inevitably flawed nature of the priest himself, has to be to listen in faith.
But, as a priestly people, you are not just listeners, not just receivers of the Word. You are also called to be bearers of it to others. And as lay men and women you exercise this aspect of your baptismal priesthood, not by giving homilies, but by engaging with people. For St Ignatius the basis of all ministry was what he called ‘spiritual conversation.’ He sent his followers out into the world to meet people, talk with them, listen to them and, only when appropriate, when they raised the subject, speak to them about the things of God and help them make sense of their lives by shining the light of faith on their experience. And we can only do this if we ourselves have been shaped and formed over the years by exposure to the Word. Any priest, ordained or otherwise, who is not steeped the Word of God, is simply not fit for purpose a sobering thought for all of us.
And yet if only we believed. If we did, Jesus tells us today, we would, through the power of the Spirit, perform even great works than he did. Can you imagine it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In today’s reading from the acts of the Apostles we hear how the first deacons came to be appointed. They were called to the ministry of service in the community and in our own day we are seeing a return to this ideal. Already several mature, married men in the diocese are preparing to be ordained deacons and we ask God to guide them on their journey and raise up many more in our midst who will undertake this ancient ministry within the Church……………………….Lord hear us
In that same reading from Acts we heard how important it was for the Apostles to devote themselves to prayer and the service of the word. And so we pray for ordained priests throughout the diocese today that they, too, will be men committed to prayer and the service of the word. We pray that the word will be preached and proclaimed to people in our parishes in a way which sheds the light of faith on all our daily experience, enabling us, in our turn, to be bearers of that same word to others whom we meet in the course of our lives…………...Lord hear us
If we are to be bearers of the word to others, men and women who are able to help those whom we meet interpret their life-experience in the light of God’s word, then we must put behind us for ever the idea that faith is a purely private, personal matter. Many of us, sadly, grew up in a Church which often thought this way, but, as the reading on the back of this week’s bulletin makes clear, there is no place for such an notion today. And so we pray that our faith will be of the kind that enables us to engage with the world……………………....Lord hear us
It is through our baptism that we share in the priesthood of Jesus. In many ways the whole of the Second Vatican Council was about rediscovering the meaning of this most fundamental of all the sacraments. And so we ask God to stir in us a deep sense of what baptism means so that, even if we have not always understood it in the past and its power has lain dormant and undeveloped in us, we can become now the people God longs for us to be……………….……….Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Peter speaks of how the stone rejected by the builders has become the corner stone. And so we pray for the insight we need to recognize how, in God’s providence, events in our own lives which seemed negative or meaningless at the time have become, with the passing of the years, more significant and more important than we first thought, revealing to us a God who writes straight with crooked lines and turns all things to good……………Lord hear us
On Monday, the new St Joseph’s Academy and the new St Andrew’s Primary School and Nursery open their doors for the first time. This is an important moment in the story of the Catholic community in Kilmarnock and we ask God to be with everyone involved in the weeks and months ahead. We pray, too, for a deep sense of gratitude for all that has gone before and hold up before God everyone who has helped bring us to this point in what is an on-going story…………………Lord hear us
Saturday, 12 April 2008
4th Sunday of Easter A
To understand what Jesus is saying in today’s gospel we have to forget all about the ‘one man and his dog’ approach to shepherding. It was a great TV programme in its day, but it had nothing to do with the shepherding Jesus knew. There were no collies running around then. As I have had the privilege of seeing many times in Spain, the shepherd walked in front of his sheep and they followed him wherever he went. It was a truly beautiful thing to watch. All day he would lead them from one place to another in search of good pasture and in the evening, along with all the other shepherds in the area, would bring them to the sheep-fold, a walled enclosure in the middle of a field, where all the flocks would spend the night together in safety.
You can imagine, however, the scene the following morning as the shepherds prepared for the day ahead. The sheep were all mixed in together by now and the way they found their way to where they were supposed to be was by recognizng the shepherd’s voice. ‘One by one,’ Jesus tells us, ‘The shepherd calls his own sheep and leads them out. He goes ahead of them and the sheep follow because they know his voice. They do not follow strangers but run away from them: they do not recognize the voice of strangers.’ And Jesus’ point is obvious. He is the shepherd who calls us to follow him. But there are other voices competing for our attention. These belong to thieves and brigands and, if we want to live our lives to the full - the reason, Jesus tells us, why he came into the world, - then we must not listen to them. We must do what the sheep do and run away from them, following the voice of the shepherd instead. But where are these voices? What do they sound like and what are they telling us? Well, their name is legion in the world today and I invite you to recognize just a few of them.
The first and loudest in today’s world is the voice of consumersim. I know I keep going on about it – hardly a week goes past without my mentioning it – but this is only because I believe it is fundamental to understanding the world we live in. Consumersim is the heart of an economic system which depends for its existence on our spending more and more money buying more and more things. And to keep itself afloat it has to use every means at its disposal to convince us of a lie, the lie that doing this will make us happy. Every day on television, on the sides of buses, on advertizing hoardings the lie screams out at us, in sharp contrast to what Jesus tells us in the gospels about the man who built bigger barns to hold his extra crops only for God to demand his soul of him the very night he finished building. Jesus also tells us that a rotten tree bears rotten fruit, and all around us we see the results of consumerism as the very future of the planet is threatened by the way it gobbles up the world’s resources at an unsustainable rate to keep feeding its insatiable need for energy.
Then there’s that other voice, equally loud and persistent in today’s world, which tells us that, in a modern scientific age, faith in God is a thing of the past, a relic of a byegone age. Few of us are unaffected by this idea, so prevalent is it in the media and elsewhere. But it’s not true. There are, of course, aspects of religion which do belong to a byegone age. They are mere superstition or magic, and the quicker we get rid of them the better. But mature, informed, adult faith has nothing to fear from science. At the frontiers of science there are many men and women of deep faith and if anyone tells you differently, like the sheep in the story, take no notice of them. Only two weeks ago, the Tablet carried the story of Mgr Georges Lemaitre, a parish priest all his life in Belgium until his death in 1966, who laid the foundations of the big-bang theory, convincing Einstein, among others, that the cosmos was not static but dynamic.
And there are many other voices ringing in our ears today which, in terms of this morning’s gospel, are the voices of thieves and brigands. There is the voice of narrow nationalism, loud and vociferous in Britain today, especially in the tabloid press, which tells us all manner of lies about foreigners and people different from ourselves. But as followers of Jesus we must have no truck with what this voice is saying. Then there’s the voice of self-interest, the ‘there’s no such thing as society’ voice, which encourages us to look after number one all the time at the expense of other people. I met a mother this week who, having tried all her life to instil the values of the gospel in her teenage daughter, was horrified to hear her speak so uncaringly of others and defend the idea that it is acceptable to use and manipulate them and do whatever is necessary to get what you want. But as a teenager, that deeply ungodly voice has been shouting its ugly message in her ear throughout the whole of her young life.
Another influential voice today is the voice of pessimism which whispers in the ears of many, telling them that life is pointless, that is has no meaning. Even when things were bad in the past, people had always God to fall back on. Sometimes this led to religion becoming what Karl Marx called ‘the opium of the people,’ - and that was not good. But, at its best, there was much more to it than that. Belief in God gave people hope at times when that was all they had, but today, when so many have lost touch with God, this hope is just not there. And I have no doubt this explains much of the drug-taking in our society today and is at least a starting point in any attempt to get to the root of so much self-harm and even suicide among the young at this time.
We are bombarded by lies. The sheep-fold is surrounded by thieves and brigands peddling their false versions of reality. The one voice telling us the complete truth is the voice of Jesus. He is the Good Shepherd. He is the one who offers us the fullness of life. His voice is encouraging, but also challenging, and I invite you to hear it today. And after all these years you don’t need me to tell you what it’s saying.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week, Peter addresses the people on the day of Pentecost, calling them to repentance. ‘Save yourselves’ he says, ‘from this perverse generation.’ Then, as now, many of the ideas current in society were not of God. False ideas and false ways of thinking were everywhere and the early Church did what Jesus had done. It called the people beyond these to new and more truthful ways of thinking and living. And so we pray for that same grace now…………Lord hear us
In the second reading, the same Peter, years later, speaks from experience of how it is often necessary to suffer, as Jesus did, for doing what is right. That has been true in every age and it will be true today for anyone who hears the call of God and stands up against the voices in society which peddle lies and falsehoods. But someone has to do this if the truth is to be proclaimed and we pray for the courage we need to be the ones who do it in our own part of the world……………………...………Lord hear us
The economic system we live under is deeply flawed and contains within itself a number of serious evils. It is ultimately unsustainable in terms of the way it uses the world’s resources. It leads, despite well intentioned attempts to correct this, to the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer. And most seriously of all in the long term, it tells us a profound lie about where the happiness we all seek lies. And so we ask God to lead us beyond this way of thinking to discover new gospel-based ways of organising ourselves and living together as one people…….….Lord hear us
Atheism has become the religion of our modern age. It is actively preached by committed disciples who see it as their mission to destroy forever what, for them, is the great lie of traditional religion. But at the root of this phenomenon is a failure to understand. Many aspects of traditional religion do need to be removed from the world but beyond that lies the wonderful world of faith, as yet unknown to the disciples of atheism. And so we pray that the world of our time will come to know the real God and that that knowledge will form the basis of a better future for the whole of humanity in the course of the third millennium………………...Lord hear us
The sense that life has no meaning is widespread in our day, especially among those in the rich West who either have no access to material possessions or have found out the hard way that happiness does not lie in acquiring them. As a result, many seek refuge in drug-taking which provides a temporary respite from the despair and hopelessness that more and more becomes their daily reality. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this lie………………………Lord hear us
Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. And so we ask God to do what he has always done, give us what we need rather than what we want. The Church is facing many challenges in this area and we pray for the grace to face them rather than expect God to wave a magic wand and fix them. We pray, especially, for the insight to see where God is leading us at this time so that we can be the kind of Church he is calling us to be in the 21st century…………….Lord hear us
You can imagine, however, the scene the following morning as the shepherds prepared for the day ahead. The sheep were all mixed in together by now and the way they found their way to where they were supposed to be was by recognizng the shepherd’s voice. ‘One by one,’ Jesus tells us, ‘The shepherd calls his own sheep and leads them out. He goes ahead of them and the sheep follow because they know his voice. They do not follow strangers but run away from them: they do not recognize the voice of strangers.’ And Jesus’ point is obvious. He is the shepherd who calls us to follow him. But there are other voices competing for our attention. These belong to thieves and brigands and, if we want to live our lives to the full - the reason, Jesus tells us, why he came into the world, - then we must not listen to them. We must do what the sheep do and run away from them, following the voice of the shepherd instead. But where are these voices? What do they sound like and what are they telling us? Well, their name is legion in the world today and I invite you to recognize just a few of them.
The first and loudest in today’s world is the voice of consumersim. I know I keep going on about it – hardly a week goes past without my mentioning it – but this is only because I believe it is fundamental to understanding the world we live in. Consumersim is the heart of an economic system which depends for its existence on our spending more and more money buying more and more things. And to keep itself afloat it has to use every means at its disposal to convince us of a lie, the lie that doing this will make us happy. Every day on television, on the sides of buses, on advertizing hoardings the lie screams out at us, in sharp contrast to what Jesus tells us in the gospels about the man who built bigger barns to hold his extra crops only for God to demand his soul of him the very night he finished building. Jesus also tells us that a rotten tree bears rotten fruit, and all around us we see the results of consumerism as the very future of the planet is threatened by the way it gobbles up the world’s resources at an unsustainable rate to keep feeding its insatiable need for energy.
Then there’s that other voice, equally loud and persistent in today’s world, which tells us that, in a modern scientific age, faith in God is a thing of the past, a relic of a byegone age. Few of us are unaffected by this idea, so prevalent is it in the media and elsewhere. But it’s not true. There are, of course, aspects of religion which do belong to a byegone age. They are mere superstition or magic, and the quicker we get rid of them the better. But mature, informed, adult faith has nothing to fear from science. At the frontiers of science there are many men and women of deep faith and if anyone tells you differently, like the sheep in the story, take no notice of them. Only two weeks ago, the Tablet carried the story of Mgr Georges Lemaitre, a parish priest all his life in Belgium until his death in 1966, who laid the foundations of the big-bang theory, convincing Einstein, among others, that the cosmos was not static but dynamic.
And there are many other voices ringing in our ears today which, in terms of this morning’s gospel, are the voices of thieves and brigands. There is the voice of narrow nationalism, loud and vociferous in Britain today, especially in the tabloid press, which tells us all manner of lies about foreigners and people different from ourselves. But as followers of Jesus we must have no truck with what this voice is saying. Then there’s the voice of self-interest, the ‘there’s no such thing as society’ voice, which encourages us to look after number one all the time at the expense of other people. I met a mother this week who, having tried all her life to instil the values of the gospel in her teenage daughter, was horrified to hear her speak so uncaringly of others and defend the idea that it is acceptable to use and manipulate them and do whatever is necessary to get what you want. But as a teenager, that deeply ungodly voice has been shouting its ugly message in her ear throughout the whole of her young life.
Another influential voice today is the voice of pessimism which whispers in the ears of many, telling them that life is pointless, that is has no meaning. Even when things were bad in the past, people had always God to fall back on. Sometimes this led to religion becoming what Karl Marx called ‘the opium of the people,’ - and that was not good. But, at its best, there was much more to it than that. Belief in God gave people hope at times when that was all they had, but today, when so many have lost touch with God, this hope is just not there. And I have no doubt this explains much of the drug-taking in our society today and is at least a starting point in any attempt to get to the root of so much self-harm and even suicide among the young at this time.
We are bombarded by lies. The sheep-fold is surrounded by thieves and brigands peddling their false versions of reality. The one voice telling us the complete truth is the voice of Jesus. He is the Good Shepherd. He is the one who offers us the fullness of life. His voice is encouraging, but also challenging, and I invite you to hear it today. And after all these years you don’t need me to tell you what it’s saying.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week, Peter addresses the people on the day of Pentecost, calling them to repentance. ‘Save yourselves’ he says, ‘from this perverse generation.’ Then, as now, many of the ideas current in society were not of God. False ideas and false ways of thinking were everywhere and the early Church did what Jesus had done. It called the people beyond these to new and more truthful ways of thinking and living. And so we pray for that same grace now…………Lord hear us
In the second reading, the same Peter, years later, speaks from experience of how it is often necessary to suffer, as Jesus did, for doing what is right. That has been true in every age and it will be true today for anyone who hears the call of God and stands up against the voices in society which peddle lies and falsehoods. But someone has to do this if the truth is to be proclaimed and we pray for the courage we need to be the ones who do it in our own part of the world……………………...………Lord hear us
The economic system we live under is deeply flawed and contains within itself a number of serious evils. It is ultimately unsustainable in terms of the way it uses the world’s resources. It leads, despite well intentioned attempts to correct this, to the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer. And most seriously of all in the long term, it tells us a profound lie about where the happiness we all seek lies. And so we ask God to lead us beyond this way of thinking to discover new gospel-based ways of organising ourselves and living together as one people…….….Lord hear us
Atheism has become the religion of our modern age. It is actively preached by committed disciples who see it as their mission to destroy forever what, for them, is the great lie of traditional religion. But at the root of this phenomenon is a failure to understand. Many aspects of traditional religion do need to be removed from the world but beyond that lies the wonderful world of faith, as yet unknown to the disciples of atheism. And so we pray that the world of our time will come to know the real God and that that knowledge will form the basis of a better future for the whole of humanity in the course of the third millennium………………...Lord hear us
The sense that life has no meaning is widespread in our day, especially among those in the rich West who either have no access to material possessions or have found out the hard way that happiness does not lie in acquiring them. As a result, many seek refuge in drug-taking which provides a temporary respite from the despair and hopelessness that more and more becomes their daily reality. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this lie………………………Lord hear us
Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. And so we ask God to do what he has always done, give us what we need rather than what we want. The Church is facing many challenges in this area and we pray for the grace to face them rather than expect God to wave a magic wand and fix them. We pray, especially, for the insight to see where God is leading us at this time so that we can be the kind of Church he is calling us to be in the 21st century…………….Lord hear us
Saturday, 5 April 2008
3rd Sunday of Easter
The spiritual reading on the back of last week’s bulletin, provided each week, not by me, but by Maureen Bradley, took me back nineteen years to when I did the Spiritual Exercise of St Ignatius in North Wales. It reminded us that, in one of the Resurrection stories, the disciples were told by an angel that they were to meet the Risen Jesus, not in the Holy City of Jerusalem, but in Galilee, the place where their homes, their jobs and their families were. And as I read it I remembered how powerfully that whole idea struck me in March 1989. The wonderful experience which had been the Exercises was drawing to a close and the question starting to surface was ‘what now; where is all this taking me; will it last?’ And the answer came so powerfully in that phrase: ‘You will see him in Galilee.’ It was partly geographical. Galillee, like Scotland, was in the north, Jerusalem, like Wales, in the south, but it helped me see with a clarity that is very hard to describe to you now, where the Exercises were leading. It was in Kilmarnock, in St Matthew’s, in my daily life as a priest that I would meet the Risen Jesus. And that is where we will all meet him. There is no other place. In all that is ordinary and mundane, in everyhting that happens to us from one day to the next: that is where we meet him. That is Galilee for each one of us.
And we see it again in today’s story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaeus. As Jesus joins them on the road, they are talking about everything that has happened. They are not saying the rosary or singing hymns. They are talking about what is going on in their lives and Jesus, good listener that he was, invites them to talk even more about it. Only when they have done so, laying out before him, not only the bare facts, but their own reactions to them - their disappointment, their sadness, their fears and so on – does Jesus himself begin to speak. The raw material of this whole episode is their own personal experience, what is going on, what is happening to them and within them, what they are feeling, and to be in touch with this is the first step towards meeting the Risen Jesus on the road. And it’s the same for all of us.
Possibly the greatest disasater to befall Christianity down through the ages has been the idea that the world can be divided into what are called the sacred and the profane. It is a fundamentally heretical notion, but all of us, sadly, are deeply affected by it. Essentially, it says that some things – churches, priests, nuns, pilgrimages, saying prayers and so on – are holy, while others – cooking, running a business, going out for a meal, playing sport etc etc etc – are not. And yet this is profoundly untrue and, being untrue, also dangerous. It misses the point entirely, the point being that everything we do is sacred, everything we do is holy, in the sense that God is in it, and so it’s where we will meet the Risen Jesus. My old friend who ‘kent whit ah wis tryin tae dae and didnae want it’ simply had not understood. He thought that if God escaped out of a Sunday and found his way into the rest of the week it would mean doing holy things like going to Church and stopping doing unholy things like enjoying himself. But he could not be more wrong. And until we understand just how wrong he is our faith will always function at the margins of our life and never at the centre where it belongs. And so the key to a living faith lies in our answer to the question Jesus asks in today’s gospel: ‘What matters are you discussing as you walk along?’ In other words, what is going on in your life? What are your concerns, your worries, your hopes, your disappoinments, your dreams, your joys, your sorrows? What are you doing right now? What has gone on in your life today? If we want to meet the Risen Jesus on our journey through life, then this is where we must start. Our God is the God of reality and only in what is real will we find him.
But, having identified the answers to these questions, what do we do with them? Well, leaving aside for now the hugely important matter of personal prayer and reflection, the other thing we do with the reality that is our lives is bring it here to Mass on a Sunday. God alone knows how often I have heard the phrase ‘Mass is boring.’ But, of course, it cannot be anything else if we treat it as a spectator sport or turn up expecting to be entertained. I know myself that on the odd weekend when perhaps a missionary comes to speak at Mass and I have not had to prepare a homily, Mass that week means less to me. And it’s because the more we prepare for it the more it will mean to us. And the way to prepare is to reflect prayerfully on our experience, name it for ourselves and then bring it here so that, as happened on the road to Emmaeus, the Risen Jesus can touch it with the Word. The Word of God, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, is alive and active, with power to judge secret emotions and thoughts. And until we have experienced that ourselves: until we have felt the Word of God jump out of the page and grab us by the throat; until we have sat here and known within ourselves that the Word today is talking about ‘me’; until we have felt our hearts burn within us as we listen to it, we have not lived. But, of course, we have, and I invite you today to remember those times and be thankful for them
The Word of course – again as it did on the road to Emmaeus – leads to the Eucharist and the breaking of bread. No matter what is going on in our lives; whether we are going through good times of bad, sad times of happy times, times of hope or times of despair, the fundamental dynamic or movement underpinning it all is the never-ending process of death and resurrection. Our God is a God who turns darkness into life, despair into hope, sadness into joy and, in the end, death into life. What we celebrate in the Eucharist is the ultimate triumph of Jesus both in our personal lives and in history. It’s a message of incredible hope for the world which, once understood, could never ever be boring.
BIDDING PRAYERS
One of the great challenges of our time is how to restore the link between life and faith, tragically broken by the heretical idea that the world is divided into what is holy or sacred and what is unholy or profane. This idea was rejected by the Church in the very early centuries, but it has persisted down through the ages, done great harm and deeply affected all of us. And so we ask God to finally lead us beyond it and enable us to see the goodness in everything that God has made…………………Lord hear us
Perhaps the most tragic consequences of dividing the world into the sacred and the profane has been the deep fear in us that letting God into the centre of our lives would mean stopping doing the things that we enjoy and starting to do holy, pious religious things. There is no truth in this, but it is the fundamental reason why so many reject God or confine him to a Sunday. And yet it is not possible to live life to the full until we know God, and we pray for the grace to see this……………………...Lord hear us
Another challenge facing Catholics today is to rediscover the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God and put them back at the centre of our lives. Sadly, they have not occupied this place in recent centuries and one of the aims of the Second Vatican Council was to correct this. Much progress has been made. But there is much still to be done. And so we ask God to stir in us a desire to know the Bible better and put it once again where it belongs, at the very centre of our lives, where it can touch our experience on a daily basis and throw the light of God on it……………..Lord hear us
Another tragedy of recent history has been the way attendance at Sunday Mass came to be seen as little more than the fulfillment of an obligation. But the Eucharist is infinitely more than this. Since the very beginning it has been the place where the community of faith meets to be fed by the Word and recognize the Risen Jesus in the Breaking of Bread. For men and women of faith it is a living, vibrant experience, central to our lives, and we pray that all who come here, especially the young, will experience it as this rather than as something boring……Lord hear us
No sooner have the two disciples in today’s story recognized Jesus in the Breaking of Bread than they return to Jerusalem to tell the others what has happened to them. This desire to share with others their experience of the Risen Jesus has been the driving force of the Church down through the ages, and we pray for the grace to experience it ourselves so that we can be what we are called to be, witnesses to the presence of the Risen Jesus in the modern world……………………Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St Peter reminds us that God has no favourites. As witnesses to the presence of Jesus in today’s world, we are called to love, not as the world loves, but as God loves. And so we pray for the grace we need to be more like God in the way we love and reach out in a special way to those whom the world depises and pushes to the margins of our society…………………………Lord hear us
And we see it again in today’s story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaeus. As Jesus joins them on the road, they are talking about everything that has happened. They are not saying the rosary or singing hymns. They are talking about what is going on in their lives and Jesus, good listener that he was, invites them to talk even more about it. Only when they have done so, laying out before him, not only the bare facts, but their own reactions to them - their disappointment, their sadness, their fears and so on – does Jesus himself begin to speak. The raw material of this whole episode is their own personal experience, what is going on, what is happening to them and within them, what they are feeling, and to be in touch with this is the first step towards meeting the Risen Jesus on the road. And it’s the same for all of us.
Possibly the greatest disasater to befall Christianity down through the ages has been the idea that the world can be divided into what are called the sacred and the profane. It is a fundamentally heretical notion, but all of us, sadly, are deeply affected by it. Essentially, it says that some things – churches, priests, nuns, pilgrimages, saying prayers and so on – are holy, while others – cooking, running a business, going out for a meal, playing sport etc etc etc – are not. And yet this is profoundly untrue and, being untrue, also dangerous. It misses the point entirely, the point being that everything we do is sacred, everything we do is holy, in the sense that God is in it, and so it’s where we will meet the Risen Jesus. My old friend who ‘kent whit ah wis tryin tae dae and didnae want it’ simply had not understood. He thought that if God escaped out of a Sunday and found his way into the rest of the week it would mean doing holy things like going to Church and stopping doing unholy things like enjoying himself. But he could not be more wrong. And until we understand just how wrong he is our faith will always function at the margins of our life and never at the centre where it belongs. And so the key to a living faith lies in our answer to the question Jesus asks in today’s gospel: ‘What matters are you discussing as you walk along?’ In other words, what is going on in your life? What are your concerns, your worries, your hopes, your disappoinments, your dreams, your joys, your sorrows? What are you doing right now? What has gone on in your life today? If we want to meet the Risen Jesus on our journey through life, then this is where we must start. Our God is the God of reality and only in what is real will we find him.
But, having identified the answers to these questions, what do we do with them? Well, leaving aside for now the hugely important matter of personal prayer and reflection, the other thing we do with the reality that is our lives is bring it here to Mass on a Sunday. God alone knows how often I have heard the phrase ‘Mass is boring.’ But, of course, it cannot be anything else if we treat it as a spectator sport or turn up expecting to be entertained. I know myself that on the odd weekend when perhaps a missionary comes to speak at Mass and I have not had to prepare a homily, Mass that week means less to me. And it’s because the more we prepare for it the more it will mean to us. And the way to prepare is to reflect prayerfully on our experience, name it for ourselves and then bring it here so that, as happened on the road to Emmaeus, the Risen Jesus can touch it with the Word. The Word of God, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, is alive and active, with power to judge secret emotions and thoughts. And until we have experienced that ourselves: until we have felt the Word of God jump out of the page and grab us by the throat; until we have sat here and known within ourselves that the Word today is talking about ‘me’; until we have felt our hearts burn within us as we listen to it, we have not lived. But, of course, we have, and I invite you today to remember those times and be thankful for them
The Word of course – again as it did on the road to Emmaeus – leads to the Eucharist and the breaking of bread. No matter what is going on in our lives; whether we are going through good times of bad, sad times of happy times, times of hope or times of despair, the fundamental dynamic or movement underpinning it all is the never-ending process of death and resurrection. Our God is a God who turns darkness into life, despair into hope, sadness into joy and, in the end, death into life. What we celebrate in the Eucharist is the ultimate triumph of Jesus both in our personal lives and in history. It’s a message of incredible hope for the world which, once understood, could never ever be boring.
BIDDING PRAYERS
One of the great challenges of our time is how to restore the link between life and faith, tragically broken by the heretical idea that the world is divided into what is holy or sacred and what is unholy or profane. This idea was rejected by the Church in the very early centuries, but it has persisted down through the ages, done great harm and deeply affected all of us. And so we ask God to finally lead us beyond it and enable us to see the goodness in everything that God has made…………………Lord hear us
Perhaps the most tragic consequences of dividing the world into the sacred and the profane has been the deep fear in us that letting God into the centre of our lives would mean stopping doing the things that we enjoy and starting to do holy, pious religious things. There is no truth in this, but it is the fundamental reason why so many reject God or confine him to a Sunday. And yet it is not possible to live life to the full until we know God, and we pray for the grace to see this……………………...Lord hear us
Another challenge facing Catholics today is to rediscover the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God and put them back at the centre of our lives. Sadly, they have not occupied this place in recent centuries and one of the aims of the Second Vatican Council was to correct this. Much progress has been made. But there is much still to be done. And so we ask God to stir in us a desire to know the Bible better and put it once again where it belongs, at the very centre of our lives, where it can touch our experience on a daily basis and throw the light of God on it……………..Lord hear us
Another tragedy of recent history has been the way attendance at Sunday Mass came to be seen as little more than the fulfillment of an obligation. But the Eucharist is infinitely more than this. Since the very beginning it has been the place where the community of faith meets to be fed by the Word and recognize the Risen Jesus in the Breaking of Bread. For men and women of faith it is a living, vibrant experience, central to our lives, and we pray that all who come here, especially the young, will experience it as this rather than as something boring……Lord hear us
No sooner have the two disciples in today’s story recognized Jesus in the Breaking of Bread than they return to Jerusalem to tell the others what has happened to them. This desire to share with others their experience of the Risen Jesus has been the driving force of the Church down through the ages, and we pray for the grace to experience it ourselves so that we can be what we are called to be, witnesses to the presence of the Risen Jesus in the modern world……………………Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St Peter reminds us that God has no favourites. As witnesses to the presence of Jesus in today’s world, we are called to love, not as the world loves, but as God loves. And so we pray for the grace we need to be more like God in the way we love and reach out in a special way to those whom the world depises and pushes to the margins of our society…………………………Lord hear us
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