There are those today who would say that the first step towards loss of faith in God is the loss of a sense of sin. Certainly the author of the first reading this week, the anonymous prophet of the Exile in Babylon, would have agreed with that. The passage we heard was written in Jerusalem shortly after the people had returned there from Babylon in the year 538BC, and, looking back over the whole episode, the author sees sin as the root cause of it all. ‘We were all like men unclean’ he writes, ‘all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing. For you hid your face from us and gave us up to the power of our sins’ But now he is filled with wonder and amazement. What had happened at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar years earlier had seemed like the end of the world. And yet, forty two years on, against all the odds, the people are home again. And you can hear the prophet’s amazement. ‘No ear has heard, no eye has seen any God but you act like this’ he cries. We had long been rebels against you, we were like men unclean... and yet, Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hands.’ They had met God, not in their strength but in their weakness, a pattern repeated all through history.
And we see it in the gospels. It was the prostitutes and sinners who welcomed Jesus. The religious leaders of the day did not. And as Advent begins it’s important to understand why that was. Advent, we know, is a period of preparation for Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus as the Saviour of the World. But what do those words mean? In what sense is Jesus the Saviour of the World? Why has he saved us and what has he saved us from? These are crucial questions and only those who know what sin is can even begin to answer them. ‘If we say we have no sin in us, St John says in one of his letters, ‘then we deceive ourselves.’ And it was those who did deceive themselves, those who had no sense of their own sin, the religious leaders of the day, who rejected Jesus, while the prostitutes and sinners welcomed him. In other words – returning to where we began – a sense of sin, both personal and shared with the rest of humanity is one of the pillars on which faith rests, and it’s for that reason that I invite you to reflect a little today on the nature of sin so that, as Christmas approaches, we can have some sense of what it means to say that Jesus is Saviour.
Sin, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes. But for our reflection today I would like to take you back to something St Thomas Aquinas said about it more than seven hundred years ago. If we can understand it, then not only will we have a better awareness of what sin is, but we will also have an insight into why God loves a sinful world so much. And it may even help us see that same world through more compassionate eyes than we sometimes do. So what did he say? Well, it was very simple really. He said that man is not attracted by evil, only by apparent good, a truth reflected beautifully in the Genesis myth of the Fall where the man and the woman are conned by the Serpent into doing something which seems to promise so much – you will be like Gods – but is no sooner done that it turns to dust in their hands. And at the heart of all sin lies this same deception.
Take, for example, the materialism that lie at the root of our modern culture. The Western world is not filled with evil people set on a path of self-destruction. It’s filled with good people who have been conned into thinking that happiness lies in acquiring more and more things. The desire for happiness is deep within us. We long for it, and since only God can ultimately satisfy such a desire, every searching for it, even when we are searching in entirely the wrong place, is, deep down, a searching for God. And those whom Church-going people today would consider sexually permissive are not bad people either. At the heart of this is a perfectly legitimate rejection of old anti-the body attitudes and a determination to enjoy to the full an aspect of being human that is thoroughly good and, for people of faith, thoroughly Godly too. The fact that this basically healthy reaction to what went before so easily degenerates into something less good is simply par for the course. And even when we look at the destruction and violence going on around the world, the vast bulk of those perpetrating it, including our own government, believe it is justified. Historically, one man’s terrorist has always been another man’s freedom fighter and people who blow themselves up in crowded streets or fly planes into buildings, are not doing so because they think what they are doing is bad. To even contemplate such actions requires a profound belief in their rightness, even their Godliness, and I have no doubt that those who do such things are totally convinced of this.
And into all this comes Jesus. In his own person, symbolized by the story of the temptations in the wilderness, Jesus confronts humanity’s illusions about where happiness lies and rejects them. ‘Man does not live on bread alone’ he tells us, ‘but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ In everything he says and does he shows us that true happiness and true freedom lie; not in self-indulgence, but in love and service and the seeking of the Kingdom above all other things. He saves us from our own foolishness by showing us how to live fully human lives and by remaining faithful to this through death to resurrection, demonstrates that good is greater than evil and truth more powerful than the lie that is the root of all sin.
But the serpent is the most subtle of all the beasts,Genesis tells, and so we continue to be easily deceived. The basic problem, however, is not badness but foolishness. And so, as Jesus tells us today, we must always be alert and on our guard lest we be seduced and fooled again by some new, more subtle form of the same old lie. But as we struggle with this personally and contemplate a world engaged in the same struggle, sometimes with very critical eyes, our model is the Jesus, who, from the cross, cried out: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’
BIDDING PRAYERS
A sense of sin is only healthy if it leads us to God and deepens our awareness of his immense love for the world. It is not about feeling guilty or sitting in judgement on the world. It is about coming to know ourselves as loved sinners. It is about learning to see the world and everyone in it as God sees them; in other words, through compassionate and loving eyes. And so we ask the God who loves us more than we could ever imagine to help us understand this...................Lord hear us
And so we pray in a very special way today for people everywhere who are crushed by their own sin: those who, having made serious mistakes in their lives, see no way back: those who think they are beyond even God’s love and God’s forgiveness: those who feel so bad about themselves and what they have done that they are unable to receive or accept the love of others: that, with God’s help and the support of other people, they will come to see themselves as God sees them.....................Lord hear us
St John tells us that, if we say we have no sin in us we are deceiving ourselves. And so we ask God for a deep sense of our own personal sin as it has manifested itself throughout our lives. We pray for the grace we need to see the effect our sin has had on others, to recognize the people who have been hurt and damaged by it, so that, wherever possible, we can seek forgiveness and healing from them while there is still time.............Lord hear us
We have reflected many times over the years on the tendency to see the world as a terrible place, filled with nasty and evil people doing nasty and evil things. But as Jesus hung on the cross, this is not what he saw at all. Jesus saw a world filled, not with nasty, evil people, but confused and hurt people. He saw the crowds as sheep without a shepherd, searching for God but not knowing where to start looking, and we pray for the grace to see today’s world through his eyes......................Lord hear us
For the author of the first reading this week, the Exile in Babylon, and all that went with it, was the result of the people’s sin. No-one else had done it to them. King Nebuchadnezzar had been the immediate cause but, ultimately they had done it to themselves and brought about their own downfall. And so we pray for the world at this time so that, whether it be the environment or the financial crisis, we may see what we are doing to ourselves before it is too late....................Lord hear us
Advent begins today, but before we know where we are it will be Christmas. Between now and then we will have to live through the period of consumer-driven madness which afflicts the world every year at this time. And so we pray for the grace we need to make our way through it in a faith-filled and discerning way, enjoying what is good and wholesome about it, but, with God’s help resisting the extremes to which it can so often drive us.....................Lord hear us
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Saturday, 22 November 2008
Christ the King A
In his first encyclical letter, called, in Latin, Deus Caritas Est – God is Love, written in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI presents the world with a view of erotic, sexual love fit for the age in which we live. Along with the writings of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, known as his Theology of the Body, it forms the basis of an important knew sex-education project which will begin to be taught in schools throughout Scotland, including, of course, St Joseph’s Academy, next spring. And having spent a whole morning recently looking at it with the teachers who will be implementing it, I feel very positive about the vision it offers and am confident that, provided it is well presented, it can have a long-term beneficial impact on our young people. But for this to happen, it’s absolutely vital that the rest of us be in tune with that vision. The programme will have little chance of success if, by the time they reach secondary school, our young people have already picked up the kind of negativity around sex and sexuality which many of us grew up with and which I would like to look at briefly today.Then, hopefully, by the time we are finished, the connection between that and today’s gospel will be clearer.
At the very beginning of his encyclical, the Pope rejects the criticism made by the German philosopher, Nietzsche, that Christianity has poisoned eros causing sex and sexuality to degenerate into vice. In a phrase which surprised many by its reference to football - not something Popes tend to speak about in encyclicals - the Pope wrote; ‘Doesn’t she (the Church) blow the whistle just when the joy that is the creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the divine?’ - echoes here of that old Catholic dilemma ‘How far can you go?’ The Pope’s answer, needless to say, is that Christianity has not poisoned eros at all, that the widely held perception that the Church, ‘with all her commandments and prohibitions, turns to bitterness the most precious thing in life’ - Pope Benedict’s own words - is not true. And while, he is right to say that Christianity, at its best, has not done this, at its worst it undoubtedly has. Even in the 1940s, I am told, there were still moral text books around in the seminaries which taught that sexual intercourse, even between husband and wife, was at least venially sinful. Where else would the idea which dominated Church thinking for centuries have come from, that to withdraw from the world and live a celibate life was a superior way of living to the married state, condemning millions of ordinary people to a kind of second rate citizenship within the Church, an idea finally only put to rest by Vatican II. And why else would the Church, at particular times in history, have put prohibitions on married couples having sex during Advent, or Lent, or on a Friday, or on certain feast days, if they had not believed that, at some level, sex was an ungodly and unholy activity? And, while fundamentally this has nothing to do with authentic Christianity and everything to do with ancient distortions of it, it’s hardly surprising that people perceive us as being obsessed with sex at the expense of everything else when it comes to questions of morality.
And yet, when we turn to the four gospels, the starting point for all Christian morality, it’s all so different. You will search there in vain for evidence of a Jesus who has much to say at all about sex, the one obvious exception being his encounter with the woman caught committing adultery. And there, his words, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go and do not sin any more’ ring down through the centuries. And many times we are told that he mixed with prostitutes and sinners, always showing great compassion in the face of human weakness. In the first reading, we read how God seeks out the lost one and bandages the wounded, there being no area of human life with more lost or wounded individuals than in the area of human relationships and sexuality. I never remember jokes, but there is one from more than forty years ago that I will never forget. It’s the one about the Final Judgement where all the people are queued up waiting for their turn to face their creator, with all the Popes, bishops and priests at the front. And suddenly, the people at the back hear a huge cheer go up ahead of them as papal tiaras, bishops mitres and priest’s birettas fly up into the air. And then the news filters back. The sixth and ninth commandments, the ones about sex, don’t count. And I remember that story because, even then, as a young student, I knew there was a profound truth in it.
And yet, when it comes to matters of justice – the connection with today’s Gospel – it’s all very different. Jesus’ words in today’s story of the Final Judgement could not be more clear. Christian morality isn’t about sex and sexually related matters. It’s first and foremost very clearly about justice. It is about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, visiting those in prison and so on. A Christian is quite simply someone who lives justly in the midst of the world, doing what he/she can to bring about God’s kingdom of justice in history through living according to the teaching of his Son Jesus Christ.. And yet how we struggle to really understand this. I remember just after I came here more than twenty three years ago having a meeting in the hall to discuss the possible formation of a Justice and Peace Group. After a while, a senior parishioner, long since dead now, put his hand up and asked a question. ‘Is this Justice and Peace American?’ he said, the clear implication being that it was some kind of new-fangled thing which, like the charismatic movement or women’s lib, both topical at the time, had nothing to do with us. Nowadays, of course, we would not have a Justice and Peace Group as such for the simple reason that Justice and Peace is not something a Catholic can choose to be in or out of. It’s of the very essence of what it means to be one.
So ponder this today. Understand it. Know deep within yourself that, while sexual morality matters and we have something of immense value to say to the world about it – hence the work soon to begin with the young people in our schools - of far greater importance are questions of justice. That’s what the Feast of Christ the King is really about. That’s what we really mean when we say ‘Thy Kingdom come!’
BIDDING PRAYERS
Not without reason, many people in the world today see the Church as obsessed with sex, anti the human body and driven by reactionary ways of thinking which belong to a past age. But while there has often been truth in this, fundamentally it is not what the Church is about. Properly understood and properly explained, there is no more beautiful or positive vision of human sexuality that the Christian one, and we pray that the modern world will come, in time, to see this......................Lord hear us
Sadly, many in the Church itself have been deeply affected by negative ways of thinking about sex and sexuality. As a result, sex, even within marriage, has often been surrounded by guilt and anxiety, often causing deep unhappiness and not infrequently leading to the break-up of marriages. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this trap, that they, too, will come to see human sexuality for the wonderful gift it is from God............Lord hear us
And we pray for our young people. Born into a world where there are virtually no landmarks or guidelines in the area of sexuality, they are often left to find their own way through trial and error. As a result, many are hurt along the way. And so we pray that the new initiative we have heard about today will provide them with the support, inspiration and vision they need to make good choices about the way they live their sexuality..............Lord hear us
Hurt and damaged young people grow into hurt and damaged adults unless something is done to heal the hurt. Amidst so much confusion today concerning what it is to be a sexual person, there are millions of hurt and damaged people in our society. And so we pray that the Churches, rather than condemning, will be an instrument of the God we heard about in the first reading; the God who seeks out the lost, brings back the stray and bandages the wounded..................Lord hear us
Despite everything that has been said since the Second Vatican Council, there are still many people in the Church who see issues of Justice and Peace as an optional extra, not something essential to what it means to be a Catholic. And yet, as today’s Gospel passage makes clear, nothing could be further from the truth. To come to Mass each week carries with it an obligation to reach out to all who are in need and we pray for the wisdom we need to see what that means in our own lives............Lord hear us
The Feast of Christ the King brings to an end our latest journey through the Church’s year. Next Sunday, we begin again with the First Sunday of Advent. And so we ask God to stir in us, through the power of the Spirit, a deep sense of gratitude for all that we have received here over the last year. And we pray that, as the whole journey begins over again, we will be even more open than we have been before to the mysteries we celebrate each week together....Lord hear us
At the very beginning of his encyclical, the Pope rejects the criticism made by the German philosopher, Nietzsche, that Christianity has poisoned eros causing sex and sexuality to degenerate into vice. In a phrase which surprised many by its reference to football - not something Popes tend to speak about in encyclicals - the Pope wrote; ‘Doesn’t she (the Church) blow the whistle just when the joy that is the creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the divine?’ - echoes here of that old Catholic dilemma ‘How far can you go?’ The Pope’s answer, needless to say, is that Christianity has not poisoned eros at all, that the widely held perception that the Church, ‘with all her commandments and prohibitions, turns to bitterness the most precious thing in life’ - Pope Benedict’s own words - is not true. And while, he is right to say that Christianity, at its best, has not done this, at its worst it undoubtedly has. Even in the 1940s, I am told, there were still moral text books around in the seminaries which taught that sexual intercourse, even between husband and wife, was at least venially sinful. Where else would the idea which dominated Church thinking for centuries have come from, that to withdraw from the world and live a celibate life was a superior way of living to the married state, condemning millions of ordinary people to a kind of second rate citizenship within the Church, an idea finally only put to rest by Vatican II. And why else would the Church, at particular times in history, have put prohibitions on married couples having sex during Advent, or Lent, or on a Friday, or on certain feast days, if they had not believed that, at some level, sex was an ungodly and unholy activity? And, while fundamentally this has nothing to do with authentic Christianity and everything to do with ancient distortions of it, it’s hardly surprising that people perceive us as being obsessed with sex at the expense of everything else when it comes to questions of morality.
And yet, when we turn to the four gospels, the starting point for all Christian morality, it’s all so different. You will search there in vain for evidence of a Jesus who has much to say at all about sex, the one obvious exception being his encounter with the woman caught committing adultery. And there, his words, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go and do not sin any more’ ring down through the centuries. And many times we are told that he mixed with prostitutes and sinners, always showing great compassion in the face of human weakness. In the first reading, we read how God seeks out the lost one and bandages the wounded, there being no area of human life with more lost or wounded individuals than in the area of human relationships and sexuality. I never remember jokes, but there is one from more than forty years ago that I will never forget. It’s the one about the Final Judgement where all the people are queued up waiting for their turn to face their creator, with all the Popes, bishops and priests at the front. And suddenly, the people at the back hear a huge cheer go up ahead of them as papal tiaras, bishops mitres and priest’s birettas fly up into the air. And then the news filters back. The sixth and ninth commandments, the ones about sex, don’t count. And I remember that story because, even then, as a young student, I knew there was a profound truth in it.
And yet, when it comes to matters of justice – the connection with today’s Gospel – it’s all very different. Jesus’ words in today’s story of the Final Judgement could not be more clear. Christian morality isn’t about sex and sexually related matters. It’s first and foremost very clearly about justice. It is about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, visiting those in prison and so on. A Christian is quite simply someone who lives justly in the midst of the world, doing what he/she can to bring about God’s kingdom of justice in history through living according to the teaching of his Son Jesus Christ.. And yet how we struggle to really understand this. I remember just after I came here more than twenty three years ago having a meeting in the hall to discuss the possible formation of a Justice and Peace Group. After a while, a senior parishioner, long since dead now, put his hand up and asked a question. ‘Is this Justice and Peace American?’ he said, the clear implication being that it was some kind of new-fangled thing which, like the charismatic movement or women’s lib, both topical at the time, had nothing to do with us. Nowadays, of course, we would not have a Justice and Peace Group as such for the simple reason that Justice and Peace is not something a Catholic can choose to be in or out of. It’s of the very essence of what it means to be one.
So ponder this today. Understand it. Know deep within yourself that, while sexual morality matters and we have something of immense value to say to the world about it – hence the work soon to begin with the young people in our schools - of far greater importance are questions of justice. That’s what the Feast of Christ the King is really about. That’s what we really mean when we say ‘Thy Kingdom come!’
BIDDING PRAYERS
Not without reason, many people in the world today see the Church as obsessed with sex, anti the human body and driven by reactionary ways of thinking which belong to a past age. But while there has often been truth in this, fundamentally it is not what the Church is about. Properly understood and properly explained, there is no more beautiful or positive vision of human sexuality that the Christian one, and we pray that the modern world will come, in time, to see this......................Lord hear us
Sadly, many in the Church itself have been deeply affected by negative ways of thinking about sex and sexuality. As a result, sex, even within marriage, has often been surrounded by guilt and anxiety, often causing deep unhappiness and not infrequently leading to the break-up of marriages. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this trap, that they, too, will come to see human sexuality for the wonderful gift it is from God............Lord hear us
And we pray for our young people. Born into a world where there are virtually no landmarks or guidelines in the area of sexuality, they are often left to find their own way through trial and error. As a result, many are hurt along the way. And so we pray that the new initiative we have heard about today will provide them with the support, inspiration and vision they need to make good choices about the way they live their sexuality..............Lord hear us
Hurt and damaged young people grow into hurt and damaged adults unless something is done to heal the hurt. Amidst so much confusion today concerning what it is to be a sexual person, there are millions of hurt and damaged people in our society. And so we pray that the Churches, rather than condemning, will be an instrument of the God we heard about in the first reading; the God who seeks out the lost, brings back the stray and bandages the wounded..................Lord hear us
Despite everything that has been said since the Second Vatican Council, there are still many people in the Church who see issues of Justice and Peace as an optional extra, not something essential to what it means to be a Catholic. And yet, as today’s Gospel passage makes clear, nothing could be further from the truth. To come to Mass each week carries with it an obligation to reach out to all who are in need and we pray for the wisdom we need to see what that means in our own lives............Lord hear us
The Feast of Christ the King brings to an end our latest journey through the Church’s year. Next Sunday, we begin again with the First Sunday of Advent. And so we ask God to stir in us, through the power of the Spirit, a deep sense of gratitude for all that we have received here over the last year. And we pray that, as the whole journey begins over again, we will be even more open than we have been before to the mysteries we celebrate each week together....Lord hear us
Sunday, 16 November 2008
33rd Sunday A
Last Sunday afternoon I did what I always do. I sat down and read those readings as a first step towards what would become this week’s homily. But from Sunday to Tuesday I was quite disturbed by them, or, to be more accurate, by one of them; the first reading from the Book of Proverbs about the perfect wife with her wool and flax and fingers grasping the spindle from whom her husband will derive no little profit. Obviously I have read it many times before and been aware of how patronising it is towards women and how far removed from the experience of so many women in today’s world, but this time something different happened in me. I was angry, not at the reading, but at the faceless men responsible for giving it to us today. Had they no sense of how so many women in the Church feel about passages like this? Angry and fed-up with the stereotypes of womanhood and femininity they so often meet in a male-dominated Church, many have walked away while others just cling on by the skin of their teeth. And even if you are a woman who does not feel this way yourself or a man who cannot or is not even willing to try and understand what they are talking about, that is not the point. In British law a hate crime is a hate crime if it is perceived by the victim as a hate crime, a principle which applies surely to any situation where a person feels slighted or offended, including ways of speaking about women which many women - and men too - find offensive. The Gospel tells us that we must treat other people as we would like them to treat us, what is known as the Golden Rule, and even if they are so entrenched in the male world of the Vatican that they are incapable of understanding why, surely those who drew up the Lectionary should have shown some sensitivity to the feelings of others and chosen some other passage for this Sunday. Only the other day, to give another example, we had Paul at morning Mass reminding wives that they must obey their husbands in all things.
And then, on Tuesday, the anger subsided and I realised that, for me, the whole point of that reading this week is, in fact, the sheer irrelevance of much of what it says, a reminder to me of the very nature of the Scriptures themselves. Inspired by God and yet deeply rooted in history, they are a mixture of what is eternal and what belongs to its own time only. They contain great truths which will be true as long as men and women walk the earth and they contain other things which belong entirely to their own time and have no direct relevance to us today except that they are the packaging in which the eternal truths have come down to us. And even these eternal truths have to be adapted and applied to each moment in history. The parable of the talents speaks of how fear is the greatest obstacle to everything God is trying to do in our lives and in the world. But each of us, and each generation, has to identify the particular form that fear takes in our own experience. We have to pray the story until it becomes a story, not about fictional characters, but about ourselves and the time we live in. So let’s try and do that for a moment
In so far as the story is about ourselves as individuals, the questions we need to ask, if the not the answers to them, are fairly straight-forward. Things like: what gifts, what aspects of myself have remained buried and undeveloped because I have been afraid to do anything about them? What hopes, thoughts, desires, longings, movements of the Spirit in me have I suppressed and denied over the years because I have listened to that persistent, ungodly voice deep within myself which tells me that I can’t do it, that I’m not good enough or that, even if I were, it’s just not possible. Few of us are free of this kind of thing and if you are not sure where to start looking for it, then you could do worse than look for signs of unrest, frustration or unhappiness in yourself. And, of course, it has been by doing this very thing that so many women have been led to the point where they are now able to stand up against the historic injustices perpetrated against them, a movement which, out of fear, many men, including a male-dominated Church, have resisted and continue to resist. But the point of resistance, the thing we are afraid of, is itself very often the place where God is at work in us.
But when we turn to the much larger question of the world and the kind of Church we are called to be in the midst of it, then fear and that voice telling us we can’t do it, really kick in. Called, literally, to show the world a new way of living, the task can seem to big even to contemplate. Look at us! How can we change the world? How can we be a new kind of Church for a new age, which is what God is calling us to be? And these are legitimate questions. And yet, at the same time, we are living through a moment when the world itself is looking for exactly what we have to offer. This weekend in Washington, the twenty richest nations on the planet are meeting to begin discussions about how to respond to the recent crisis in the global economy. Twenty years ago we saw the collapse of Communism. In the last two months we have seen the collapse of Capitalism in the sense that it would already be flat on its face if it were not for the support of tax-payers all over the world. And now the world is looking for something new. And that new thing can be, and, if we are to survive in the long-term, must be the Gospel. And that is what we and millions like us are called to make a reality.
It is, of course, a huge task. But I read something recently which is relevant here. It was by a social anthropologist – whatever that is – and what he said was this. It takes ten years to change a law. It takes two generations to change behaviour. And it takes another two generations to change attitudes. It can be done and I believe will be done. But it will take time. And as someone else said, and it could have been the man in the parable, all we have to fear is fear itself.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The man in today’s parable was paralysed by fear, the greatest obstacle to all that God longs to do in us. Over and over again the bible tells us not to be afraid and yet fear continues to limit us and prevent us being the people we are capable of being. And so, at a time when the world needs new ideas and new ways of doing things, we ask God to raise up many fearless men and women of faith willing to explore new ways of doing things and who live out of hope rather than fear.................Lord hear us
It would be foolish to expect too much from the meeting of the world’s twenty richest countries taking place in Washington this weekend. It can only be one step in a longer journey, and even now the cynics are writing off any possibility of radical change in the way the world’s economies work. But as people with a deep sense of God at work in history, we pray that the day will come when people will look back on this weekend and see it as the beginning of something great.................Lord hear us
Throughout history, the tendency in a male-dominated society has been to either oppress women or idealise them in a way which itself becomes oppressive, this week’s first reading, with its romantic image of the ideal wife, which nobody could ever live up to, being an example of this. And so we pray that, in our time, age-old injustices against women, still widespread throughout the world, will be finally be seen for what they are and brought to an end.................Lord hear us
We have been shocked in recent days by the latest case of the unimaginably violent death of a toddler in our country. Even although women, as in this case, have often colluded with such violence, it has, historically, been a predominantly masculine phenomenon. And so we pray for all hidden victims of such violence in our society, whether it be physical, verbal or psychological. And we pray that men everywhere will come to see that such violence is totally unacceptable...............Lord hear us
We live in an age which, on the surface at least, is much more sensitive to the possibility that, by the way we speak or the kind of language we use, we could be hurting people or causing them offence without realising it or wanting to. Sometimes this leads to a kind of political correctness which irritates or annoys us. But we pray that, even when we don’t understand the feelings of others or feel they are unjustified, we will always be sensitive to them........Lord hear us
Next weekend the Church History Course gets under way. And so we ask God to bless it. We pray that it will help all those who take part come to a more mature and informed faith which will fill us with a profound sense of the movement of God in history and so help us make sense of the times through which we are living. But we pray most of all that the course will help us, not only to understand, but respond to the challenges of the moment in history we are living through...............Lord hear us
And then, on Tuesday, the anger subsided and I realised that, for me, the whole point of that reading this week is, in fact, the sheer irrelevance of much of what it says, a reminder to me of the very nature of the Scriptures themselves. Inspired by God and yet deeply rooted in history, they are a mixture of what is eternal and what belongs to its own time only. They contain great truths which will be true as long as men and women walk the earth and they contain other things which belong entirely to their own time and have no direct relevance to us today except that they are the packaging in which the eternal truths have come down to us. And even these eternal truths have to be adapted and applied to each moment in history. The parable of the talents speaks of how fear is the greatest obstacle to everything God is trying to do in our lives and in the world. But each of us, and each generation, has to identify the particular form that fear takes in our own experience. We have to pray the story until it becomes a story, not about fictional characters, but about ourselves and the time we live in. So let’s try and do that for a moment
In so far as the story is about ourselves as individuals, the questions we need to ask, if the not the answers to them, are fairly straight-forward. Things like: what gifts, what aspects of myself have remained buried and undeveloped because I have been afraid to do anything about them? What hopes, thoughts, desires, longings, movements of the Spirit in me have I suppressed and denied over the years because I have listened to that persistent, ungodly voice deep within myself which tells me that I can’t do it, that I’m not good enough or that, even if I were, it’s just not possible. Few of us are free of this kind of thing and if you are not sure where to start looking for it, then you could do worse than look for signs of unrest, frustration or unhappiness in yourself. And, of course, it has been by doing this very thing that so many women have been led to the point where they are now able to stand up against the historic injustices perpetrated against them, a movement which, out of fear, many men, including a male-dominated Church, have resisted and continue to resist. But the point of resistance, the thing we are afraid of, is itself very often the place where God is at work in us.
But when we turn to the much larger question of the world and the kind of Church we are called to be in the midst of it, then fear and that voice telling us we can’t do it, really kick in. Called, literally, to show the world a new way of living, the task can seem to big even to contemplate. Look at us! How can we change the world? How can we be a new kind of Church for a new age, which is what God is calling us to be? And these are legitimate questions. And yet, at the same time, we are living through a moment when the world itself is looking for exactly what we have to offer. This weekend in Washington, the twenty richest nations on the planet are meeting to begin discussions about how to respond to the recent crisis in the global economy. Twenty years ago we saw the collapse of Communism. In the last two months we have seen the collapse of Capitalism in the sense that it would already be flat on its face if it were not for the support of tax-payers all over the world. And now the world is looking for something new. And that new thing can be, and, if we are to survive in the long-term, must be the Gospel. And that is what we and millions like us are called to make a reality.
It is, of course, a huge task. But I read something recently which is relevant here. It was by a social anthropologist – whatever that is – and what he said was this. It takes ten years to change a law. It takes two generations to change behaviour. And it takes another two generations to change attitudes. It can be done and I believe will be done. But it will take time. And as someone else said, and it could have been the man in the parable, all we have to fear is fear itself.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The man in today’s parable was paralysed by fear, the greatest obstacle to all that God longs to do in us. Over and over again the bible tells us not to be afraid and yet fear continues to limit us and prevent us being the people we are capable of being. And so, at a time when the world needs new ideas and new ways of doing things, we ask God to raise up many fearless men and women of faith willing to explore new ways of doing things and who live out of hope rather than fear.................Lord hear us
It would be foolish to expect too much from the meeting of the world’s twenty richest countries taking place in Washington this weekend. It can only be one step in a longer journey, and even now the cynics are writing off any possibility of radical change in the way the world’s economies work. But as people with a deep sense of God at work in history, we pray that the day will come when people will look back on this weekend and see it as the beginning of something great.................Lord hear us
Throughout history, the tendency in a male-dominated society has been to either oppress women or idealise them in a way which itself becomes oppressive, this week’s first reading, with its romantic image of the ideal wife, which nobody could ever live up to, being an example of this. And so we pray that, in our time, age-old injustices against women, still widespread throughout the world, will be finally be seen for what they are and brought to an end.................Lord hear us
We have been shocked in recent days by the latest case of the unimaginably violent death of a toddler in our country. Even although women, as in this case, have often colluded with such violence, it has, historically, been a predominantly masculine phenomenon. And so we pray for all hidden victims of such violence in our society, whether it be physical, verbal or psychological. And we pray that men everywhere will come to see that such violence is totally unacceptable...............Lord hear us
We live in an age which, on the surface at least, is much more sensitive to the possibility that, by the way we speak or the kind of language we use, we could be hurting people or causing them offence without realising it or wanting to. Sometimes this leads to a kind of political correctness which irritates or annoys us. But we pray that, even when we don’t understand the feelings of others or feel they are unjustified, we will always be sensitive to them........Lord hear us
Next weekend the Church History Course gets under way. And so we ask God to bless it. We pray that it will help all those who take part come to a more mature and informed faith which will fill us with a profound sense of the movement of God in history and so help us make sense of the times through which we are living. But we pray most of all that the course will help us, not only to understand, but respond to the challenges of the moment in history we are living through...............Lord hear us
Saturday, 8 November 2008
32nd Sunday of the Year A
The last time we had a reading from the Book of Wisdom was on 21st July, the 16th Sunday of the Year, and I gave you that day a brief account of how it came to be written. And, since I’m sure none of you remember a word I said then, I’m going to tell you again.
It was, in fact, the last book in the Old Testament to be written, the date being around the year 50BC. The name of the author is unknown but the indications are that he was a Jew living in Alexandria, one of the principal cities of the Roman Empire. It was an important intellectual centre of the Greek-speaking world and among those who had settled there were a large number of educated Jews who, in an effort to engage with the culture of the city, were attempting to express their religious traditions in the language of Greek philosophy. But for others, this was a dangerous path to tred. For them, the Jews of Alexandria, in attempting to express their beliefs in the language of those around them, were in danger of losing touch with who they were themselves. And it was to counter this that the Book of Wisdom was written. What’s required, it says, is not Greek philosophy but the gift of wisdom, a wisdom which, as we heard this morning, is bright and does not grow dim and is quick to anticipate those who desire her. This is what’s really important.
And, of course, the situation that lay behind this was not unlike the one we face today. As the 21st century picks up pace Christians are also struggling to work out how to relate to the age in which we live. Called to be bearers of the Good News to the world, we, like the Jews of Alexandria two thousand years ago, are called to express our faith in language which is accessible to those around us. But as we do so, the same tensions that lay behind the Book of Wisdom come into play. How do we do this without losing sight of who we are? How do we live our faith in the modern world in a way which both makes it accessible to others but at the same time doesn’t distort the very truth we are called to communicate. That was the question then and it’s the question now, the answer in each case being the same; Wisdom. But what is this wisdom which walks about looking for those who are worthy of her?
Well, essentially, wisdom is another word for gift of discernment, designed to enable us recognize and respond to the movement of God in everything that happens to us. It is a sensitivity to the presence of God in all things; a sense of what is true and what is untrue in a world with a thousand versions of the truth; a feeling for what is right and what is wrong in a world filled with confusion about such things; an instinct, almost, for what is of God and what is not of God in society and in the world. And at the heart of this sensitivity, this awareness, this feel for the things of God, lies a truth many of us learned as children; that the Spirit of God lives in us. It took me years to see the truth of this and to understand that, because the Spirit lives in us, our awareness of what is of God and what is not of God also comes from inside us as the Spirit responds in a felt and identifiable way to everything that happens in and around us. This goes on in every human being, one manifestation of it being what we call conscience, but the truly discerning person is one who has learned, through prayer and reflection, to attend to this movement of the Spirit all day every day and make even the smallest decisions in the light of it. And it’s this understanding of what constitutes wisdom which helps us make sense of today’s Gospel story.The parable of the bridesmaids is nothing to do with the unwillingness of one group to share their oil with the other. It’s about an oil that, by its very nature cannot be shared and, in the context of today’s liturgy, that oil is the oil of wisdom. We cannot borrow someone else’s oil for the simple reason that each person’s wisdom grows out of prayerful reflection on his/her own unique and, ultimately untransmitable experience of God. We have to go and buy our own oil in the market-place of daily life and if we don’t do so, if our lamps are empty as a result of living shallow lives more in tune with the values of a materialistic consumer society than the kingdom of God, then, now, not just in the future, we will find ourselves left outside the wedding hall while others enjoy the feast inside.What all this means in the concrete circumstances of a given individual person’s life is impossible to say, but there are certain key things that will always be true. And I have been very struck by one of them this week in the story of Barak Obama.
No sooner was his victory announced than people began to praise the campaign he had run. And one of the phrases I read time and time again was the way he had appealed to people to listen to their good angel; to go with their hopes rather than their fears. The very language of good and bad angels, of course, is from the world of discernment and in the life of a discerning person hope will always be more powerful than fear. This is why the idea that the world is a terrible place plays no part in genuine Christian thinking even although it is found so often in Church-going people. But our hope must not become fantasy. Fantasy and unreality are never of God and Barak Obama’s awareness of this was clear in his acceptance speech where he talked about the problems that lie ahead in the reality of ‘a sinful world’ - my words not his. And herein lies a fundamental truth which any person growing in wisdom will understand. That we are not, as Paul said in the second reading, like those who have no hope; that the world is loved by God in its sinfulness and that, because of that, we are a deeply hopeful and optimistic people.
To know that this is true whatever happens is genuine wisdom and I invite you to pray today for Barak Obama that, in the years ahead, he will do what he has invited others to do; trust his good angel and always have the wisdom to go with his hopes rather than his fears.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin our prayer today by holding up before God Barak Obama and all those who exercise political leadership throughout the world at this moment in history. We pray that, in the midst of the many problems confronting humanity, God will give them the wisdom they need to trust their good angels and make out of hope rather than fear all those important decisions which affect the lives of all of us, especially the world’s poorest peoples......Lord hear us
Called to be people of faith in the 21st century, we pray also for ourselves. We pray that, no matter what happens, we, too, will have the courage we need to trust our good angels and see the world through hope-filled rather than fear-filled eyes.We are a community of loved sinners. God loves the world in its weakness and we ask him to give us the wisdom we need, not only to understand this but to live out of it every day...............Lord hear us
Faced with problems like global warming, economic meltdown, hunger and genocide in Africa as well as wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many in today’s world are filled with pessimism and despair about what the future holds for us. This is a fear felt especially strongly by many young people and accounts to a large extent for the binge-drinking eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die culture of our time. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this................Lord hear us
Despite the difficulties and risks connected with doing so, and which gave rise to the Book of Wisdom more than two thousand years ago, it remains our task as men and women of faith to find ways of expressing the ancient faith of the Church in ways which are intelligible and accessible to the men and women of our time. It is not their job to come to us. It is our job to reach out to them and we pray for the wisdom we need to do so in a way that is both truthful and effective..........................Lord hear us
The first reading describes in very beautiful language how wisdom seeks out those who long for her. To desire wisdom is to begin to experience her and we ask God to stir in each one of us a deep desire for this gift which enables us to see the world and its people as God sees them. ‘Watch for her early and you will have no trouble; you will find her sitting at your gates’ the reading told us. Watching for her means prayer and reflection and we ask God to show us how to do this.........................Lord hear us
And on this Remembrance Sunday, we pray in for all those who have died in the course of the many wars and conflicts which bedevilled the world throughout the last century and continue to do so now. We pray that as this new century advances, the world will find new ways of dealing with such conflicts so that humanity’s dream may come true and war become a thing of the past...................................Lord hear us
It was, in fact, the last book in the Old Testament to be written, the date being around the year 50BC. The name of the author is unknown but the indications are that he was a Jew living in Alexandria, one of the principal cities of the Roman Empire. It was an important intellectual centre of the Greek-speaking world and among those who had settled there were a large number of educated Jews who, in an effort to engage with the culture of the city, were attempting to express their religious traditions in the language of Greek philosophy. But for others, this was a dangerous path to tred. For them, the Jews of Alexandria, in attempting to express their beliefs in the language of those around them, were in danger of losing touch with who they were themselves. And it was to counter this that the Book of Wisdom was written. What’s required, it says, is not Greek philosophy but the gift of wisdom, a wisdom which, as we heard this morning, is bright and does not grow dim and is quick to anticipate those who desire her. This is what’s really important.
And, of course, the situation that lay behind this was not unlike the one we face today. As the 21st century picks up pace Christians are also struggling to work out how to relate to the age in which we live. Called to be bearers of the Good News to the world, we, like the Jews of Alexandria two thousand years ago, are called to express our faith in language which is accessible to those around us. But as we do so, the same tensions that lay behind the Book of Wisdom come into play. How do we do this without losing sight of who we are? How do we live our faith in the modern world in a way which both makes it accessible to others but at the same time doesn’t distort the very truth we are called to communicate. That was the question then and it’s the question now, the answer in each case being the same; Wisdom. But what is this wisdom which walks about looking for those who are worthy of her?
Well, essentially, wisdom is another word for gift of discernment, designed to enable us recognize and respond to the movement of God in everything that happens to us. It is a sensitivity to the presence of God in all things; a sense of what is true and what is untrue in a world with a thousand versions of the truth; a feeling for what is right and what is wrong in a world filled with confusion about such things; an instinct, almost, for what is of God and what is not of God in society and in the world. And at the heart of this sensitivity, this awareness, this feel for the things of God, lies a truth many of us learned as children; that the Spirit of God lives in us. It took me years to see the truth of this and to understand that, because the Spirit lives in us, our awareness of what is of God and what is not of God also comes from inside us as the Spirit responds in a felt and identifiable way to everything that happens in and around us. This goes on in every human being, one manifestation of it being what we call conscience, but the truly discerning person is one who has learned, through prayer and reflection, to attend to this movement of the Spirit all day every day and make even the smallest decisions in the light of it. And it’s this understanding of what constitutes wisdom which helps us make sense of today’s Gospel story.The parable of the bridesmaids is nothing to do with the unwillingness of one group to share their oil with the other. It’s about an oil that, by its very nature cannot be shared and, in the context of today’s liturgy, that oil is the oil of wisdom. We cannot borrow someone else’s oil for the simple reason that each person’s wisdom grows out of prayerful reflection on his/her own unique and, ultimately untransmitable experience of God. We have to go and buy our own oil in the market-place of daily life and if we don’t do so, if our lamps are empty as a result of living shallow lives more in tune with the values of a materialistic consumer society than the kingdom of God, then, now, not just in the future, we will find ourselves left outside the wedding hall while others enjoy the feast inside.What all this means in the concrete circumstances of a given individual person’s life is impossible to say, but there are certain key things that will always be true. And I have been very struck by one of them this week in the story of Barak Obama.
No sooner was his victory announced than people began to praise the campaign he had run. And one of the phrases I read time and time again was the way he had appealed to people to listen to their good angel; to go with their hopes rather than their fears. The very language of good and bad angels, of course, is from the world of discernment and in the life of a discerning person hope will always be more powerful than fear. This is why the idea that the world is a terrible place plays no part in genuine Christian thinking even although it is found so often in Church-going people. But our hope must not become fantasy. Fantasy and unreality are never of God and Barak Obama’s awareness of this was clear in his acceptance speech where he talked about the problems that lie ahead in the reality of ‘a sinful world’ - my words not his. And herein lies a fundamental truth which any person growing in wisdom will understand. That we are not, as Paul said in the second reading, like those who have no hope; that the world is loved by God in its sinfulness and that, because of that, we are a deeply hopeful and optimistic people.
To know that this is true whatever happens is genuine wisdom and I invite you to pray today for Barak Obama that, in the years ahead, he will do what he has invited others to do; trust his good angel and always have the wisdom to go with his hopes rather than his fears.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin our prayer today by holding up before God Barak Obama and all those who exercise political leadership throughout the world at this moment in history. We pray that, in the midst of the many problems confronting humanity, God will give them the wisdom they need to trust their good angels and make out of hope rather than fear all those important decisions which affect the lives of all of us, especially the world’s poorest peoples......Lord hear us
Called to be people of faith in the 21st century, we pray also for ourselves. We pray that, no matter what happens, we, too, will have the courage we need to trust our good angels and see the world through hope-filled rather than fear-filled eyes.We are a community of loved sinners. God loves the world in its weakness and we ask him to give us the wisdom we need, not only to understand this but to live out of it every day...............Lord hear us
Faced with problems like global warming, economic meltdown, hunger and genocide in Africa as well as wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many in today’s world are filled with pessimism and despair about what the future holds for us. This is a fear felt especially strongly by many young people and accounts to a large extent for the binge-drinking eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die culture of our time. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this................Lord hear us
Despite the difficulties and risks connected with doing so, and which gave rise to the Book of Wisdom more than two thousand years ago, it remains our task as men and women of faith to find ways of expressing the ancient faith of the Church in ways which are intelligible and accessible to the men and women of our time. It is not their job to come to us. It is our job to reach out to them and we pray for the wisdom we need to do so in a way that is both truthful and effective..........................Lord hear us
The first reading describes in very beautiful language how wisdom seeks out those who long for her. To desire wisdom is to begin to experience her and we ask God to stir in each one of us a deep desire for this gift which enables us to see the world and its people as God sees them. ‘Watch for her early and you will have no trouble; you will find her sitting at your gates’ the reading told us. Watching for her means prayer and reflection and we ask God to show us how to do this.........................Lord hear us
And on this Remembrance Sunday, we pray in for all those who have died in the course of the many wars and conflicts which bedevilled the world throughout the last century and continue to do so now. We pray that as this new century advances, the world will find new ways of dealing with such conflicts so that humanity’s dream may come true and war become a thing of the past...................................Lord hear us
Saturday, 1 November 2008
31st Sunday of the Year A
I received this week the most recent copy of The Way, a review of Christian spirituality published by the British Jesuits. Looking at the lists of articles on offer I felt a bit like a child in a sweety shop. I wanted to read them all at once. But the one I chose to read first was, perhaps not surprisingly, entitled, What is Specific to an Ignatian Model of Spiritual Direction? After all, I spend a lot of time doing spiritual direction according to the Ignatian model and so the question of what is specific to it, what makes it different from other forms of spiritual direction, goes to the very heart of what I do. There are, of course, basic things which are common to all spiritual direction. It is, after all, the same God we are dealing with. But the article in question spelt out a number of things which, put together, constitute the essence of the Ignatian approach, the one that struck me most being the fact that, for St Ignatius, spiritual direction is always in the context of the Church, a very important point in an age when so many people claim to be spiritual without any reference to the Church or to the wider Christian community. According to the author of the article, the spiritual director must be deeply rooted in the Church even if the person coming for direction isn’t yet quite so rooted. He or she must be a person who understands the Church, is familiar with the theology of the Church and, most importantly of all, loves the Church. And although some of you may find this surprising, I consider myself a person who loves the Church deeply.
But how can I say this? Have I not spent a lot of the last twenty three years highlighting and drawing to your attention the faults and weaknesses of the Church? Yes, I have, and will, God willing, continue to do so for as long as I am here. And I’m in good company. In the first reading today, the prophet Malachi slates the religious leaders of his day for profaning God’s Covenant with his people and by their teaching causing many to stray. And in the Gospel Jesus continues this long tradition, telling the people they must do what the Pharisees tell them, since the occupy the seat of Moses, but must not do what they do, since they don’t not practise what they preach, taking the places of honour at banquets, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and putting burdens on people they won’t carry themselves. And there are only two reasons for indulging in this kind of criticism. In the case of the Church, you either do it because you hate the Church and want to pull it down, or you do it because you love the Church and want it to be all that it is called to be. People who couldn’t care less don’t speak the way Malachi and Jesus did in today’s readings. Only those who care deeply speak the way they did. It wasn’t those who favoured the status quo who loved the Covenant in Malachi’s day. It was those who cried out against the abuses of the time. It was not the Pharisees who really loved the Law. It was those who, like Jesus, could see to the heart of it, could’nt bear to see what was happening to it and wanted to see it fulfilled rather than observed in a empty mechanical way. And it is not those who think the Church is beyond criticism or who defend the indefensible who love the Church today, but those who care so deeply about it that they work tirelessly to transform it and make it a more effective witness to the presence of God in the world of the 21st century. And it is against this background that I have so much hope for the church history course we are about to have in the parish.
For years I have been saying to you that only men and women of personal faith, people who have met God and know God rather than simply having heard of him, will survive in the Church of the 21st century. But in an age when every sign of human weakness in the Church and in society is exposed for all to see, it is also vital that that faith be robust enough to withstand every kind of scandal or unsavoury revelation. The leaflet advertising the history course has a quote in it from Henri de Lubac, a French theologian who helped lay the foundations of the Second Vatican Council. As an old man in his nineties he was made a cardinal, a gesture which was designed to acknowledge, not only his own work, but the work of others like him who for years had been treated with suspicion by the Church but who, in the end, were vindicated, even although many of them, unlike de Lubac, did not live long enough to see it. And what he says takes us to the heart of this week’s liturgy and why we are having the history course at all. If we do not learn to love the Church in its sinfulness- he writes- we will not love the Church loved by the Lord, but rather some figment of our romantic imagination.
And so the whole course is designed to help us face the reality rather than the fantasy. It will help us, God willing, come to a deeper understanding of the journey the Church has been making and continues to make through history so that, to quote Pope John XXIII, the person who started the process of renewal we are currently living through, we can read the signs of times and face up to the challenge of the gospel at this moment in history. I have met too many people over the years who have no sense whatsoever of just how much the Church has changed over the centuries. They seem to think that, prior to the Second Vatican Council, nothing in the Church had changed since the days when Jesus said Mass in Latin and Peter was Pope in the way Joseph Ratzinger is today. But the way Mass is celebrated has change many times over the centuries and the present model of how to be Pope dates back no further than the mid-nineteenth century. And we could say the same about so many things.
In the second reading today, St Paul thanks God for the way the people of Thessalonika have accepted the gospel for what it is, God’s message and not some human thinking. The Church is the vessel in which that message makes its way through history and my prayer is that, by studying the vessel, the message itself will become clearer.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin our prayer today by holding up before God the Church throughout the world. We pray that it will have at this time a deep sense of where it has come from and how it got to where it is now, so that it can discern with clarity what God is calling it to at the beginning of the 21st century. We pray that it will be true to its origins, faithful to its long tradition and yet profoundly open to the new things God is longing to do in and through it now.........................Lord hear us
We live in an age when the media is merciless its exposure of the weaknesses and mistakes of both individuals and institutions. And so, along with everyone else, the Church has, in recent years, had to endure its weaknesses being exposed to full public gaze. For many people, their faith has been neither robust nor mature enough to withstand the impact of these revelations, and they have walked away, shocked and disillusioned. And so we pray for them today..................Lord hear us
And so we ask God to give to all of us here present a faith which is both mature and robust, a faith so deep and so based on personal experience that it can withstand and survive anything and everything the modern world, so often anti-faith in its thinking, throws at us. And we ask this grace in a particular way for young people today, exposed as they are to so many versions of the truth that it is often very difficult for them to know what true actually is.................Lord hear us
In every age there are prophets who question the status quo, challenge current ways of thinking and speak unwelcome truths to the world. And so we ask God to raise up in the Church today many such prophetic voices. We pray, too, that the Church will have the courage and openness it needs to hear those voices and listen to what they say so that it can become all that it is called to be and not settle for something less than what God has in mind for it...............Lord hear us
Both the prophet Malachi in the first reading this morning and Jesus in the Gospel are very critical of the religious leaders of their day. Jesus tells us that ‘Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted’ and yet, throughout history, Church leaders have fallen into the trap of wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassles and have people call them Rabbi. And so we pray that in the 21st century this will finally become a thing of the past................Lord hear us
Finally, we ask God to bless the church history course we are about to have in the parish. It will require a commitment of both time and effort from us and we ask God to give us both. We pray, too, for those who have agreed to lead us through the course in the coming months that their presence here will be a source of blessing both for themselves and for us. But we pray most of all that the course will lead us to God and to a deep, mature and realistic love of the Church..............Lord hear us
But how can I say this? Have I not spent a lot of the last twenty three years highlighting and drawing to your attention the faults and weaknesses of the Church? Yes, I have, and will, God willing, continue to do so for as long as I am here. And I’m in good company. In the first reading today, the prophet Malachi slates the religious leaders of his day for profaning God’s Covenant with his people and by their teaching causing many to stray. And in the Gospel Jesus continues this long tradition, telling the people they must do what the Pharisees tell them, since the occupy the seat of Moses, but must not do what they do, since they don’t not practise what they preach, taking the places of honour at banquets, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and putting burdens on people they won’t carry themselves. And there are only two reasons for indulging in this kind of criticism. In the case of the Church, you either do it because you hate the Church and want to pull it down, or you do it because you love the Church and want it to be all that it is called to be. People who couldn’t care less don’t speak the way Malachi and Jesus did in today’s readings. Only those who care deeply speak the way they did. It wasn’t those who favoured the status quo who loved the Covenant in Malachi’s day. It was those who cried out against the abuses of the time. It was not the Pharisees who really loved the Law. It was those who, like Jesus, could see to the heart of it, could’nt bear to see what was happening to it and wanted to see it fulfilled rather than observed in a empty mechanical way. And it is not those who think the Church is beyond criticism or who defend the indefensible who love the Church today, but those who care so deeply about it that they work tirelessly to transform it and make it a more effective witness to the presence of God in the world of the 21st century. And it is against this background that I have so much hope for the church history course we are about to have in the parish.
For years I have been saying to you that only men and women of personal faith, people who have met God and know God rather than simply having heard of him, will survive in the Church of the 21st century. But in an age when every sign of human weakness in the Church and in society is exposed for all to see, it is also vital that that faith be robust enough to withstand every kind of scandal or unsavoury revelation. The leaflet advertising the history course has a quote in it from Henri de Lubac, a French theologian who helped lay the foundations of the Second Vatican Council. As an old man in his nineties he was made a cardinal, a gesture which was designed to acknowledge, not only his own work, but the work of others like him who for years had been treated with suspicion by the Church but who, in the end, were vindicated, even although many of them, unlike de Lubac, did not live long enough to see it. And what he says takes us to the heart of this week’s liturgy and why we are having the history course at all. If we do not learn to love the Church in its sinfulness- he writes- we will not love the Church loved by the Lord, but rather some figment of our romantic imagination.
And so the whole course is designed to help us face the reality rather than the fantasy. It will help us, God willing, come to a deeper understanding of the journey the Church has been making and continues to make through history so that, to quote Pope John XXIII, the person who started the process of renewal we are currently living through, we can read the signs of times and face up to the challenge of the gospel at this moment in history. I have met too many people over the years who have no sense whatsoever of just how much the Church has changed over the centuries. They seem to think that, prior to the Second Vatican Council, nothing in the Church had changed since the days when Jesus said Mass in Latin and Peter was Pope in the way Joseph Ratzinger is today. But the way Mass is celebrated has change many times over the centuries and the present model of how to be Pope dates back no further than the mid-nineteenth century. And we could say the same about so many things.
In the second reading today, St Paul thanks God for the way the people of Thessalonika have accepted the gospel for what it is, God’s message and not some human thinking. The Church is the vessel in which that message makes its way through history and my prayer is that, by studying the vessel, the message itself will become clearer.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin our prayer today by holding up before God the Church throughout the world. We pray that it will have at this time a deep sense of where it has come from and how it got to where it is now, so that it can discern with clarity what God is calling it to at the beginning of the 21st century. We pray that it will be true to its origins, faithful to its long tradition and yet profoundly open to the new things God is longing to do in and through it now.........................Lord hear us
We live in an age when the media is merciless its exposure of the weaknesses and mistakes of both individuals and institutions. And so, along with everyone else, the Church has, in recent years, had to endure its weaknesses being exposed to full public gaze. For many people, their faith has been neither robust nor mature enough to withstand the impact of these revelations, and they have walked away, shocked and disillusioned. And so we pray for them today..................Lord hear us
And so we ask God to give to all of us here present a faith which is both mature and robust, a faith so deep and so based on personal experience that it can withstand and survive anything and everything the modern world, so often anti-faith in its thinking, throws at us. And we ask this grace in a particular way for young people today, exposed as they are to so many versions of the truth that it is often very difficult for them to know what true actually is.................Lord hear us
In every age there are prophets who question the status quo, challenge current ways of thinking and speak unwelcome truths to the world. And so we ask God to raise up in the Church today many such prophetic voices. We pray, too, that the Church will have the courage and openness it needs to hear those voices and listen to what they say so that it can become all that it is called to be and not settle for something less than what God has in mind for it...............Lord hear us
Both the prophet Malachi in the first reading this morning and Jesus in the Gospel are very critical of the religious leaders of their day. Jesus tells us that ‘Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted’ and yet, throughout history, Church leaders have fallen into the trap of wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassles and have people call them Rabbi. And so we pray that in the 21st century this will finally become a thing of the past................Lord hear us
Finally, we ask God to bless the church history course we are about to have in the parish. It will require a commitment of both time and effort from us and we ask God to give us both. We pray, too, for those who have agreed to lead us through the course in the coming months that their presence here will be a source of blessing both for themselves and for us. But we pray most of all that the course will lead us to God and to a deep, mature and realistic love of the Church..............Lord hear us
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