I wonder how many men here would remember the answer if I suddenly said, ‘Introibo ad altare Dei.’ I say men, because this was the opening line of the old Latin Mass and, since girls were not allowed to be altar servers then, it’s highly unlikely that any of you the women here were ever initiated into the almost Masonic mysteries of what was known in those days as ‘the Latin,’ the answer in this case, whispered at the foot of the altar steps so that nobody could hear it, being ‘Ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam.’ Or how about ‘Sursum Corda, a much easier example? More of you, I suspect would know that the answer to that one is ‘Habemus ad Dominum.’ Moving into the vernacular, however, the phrase from those bye-gone days that I would like to reflect on today was our response whenever a priest said the words; ‘Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and we shall be created;’ to which generations of Catholics replied, ‘And thou shalt renew the face of the earth.’ For as long as any of us here can remember, and for years before that, we have been asking the Spirit to renew the face of the earth. And so the question I am inviting you to reflect on today is this. Is anybody listening? Is there anybody out there?
Well, speaking for myself, I know there is. And yet, although I know it, in terms of certainty I am only 95% rather than 100% sure. And the reason for this, as I have said so often, is that, with faith, there is always an element of not knowing which reflects the fact that 1. God always leaves us free to believe or not believe and 2. There are always things about the real God, as opposed to the gods we create for ourselves, which are unknowable and beyond the power of human words to describe. Every day, wherever I look, in all that happens, I see the Spirit of God renewing the face of the earth. But even as I do, I have to keep choosing to believe it and trust that it is true. I cannot prove it and often when I speak to people about the presence of God in everything that happens I see a familiar look come over their faces and I know they don’t really understand what I am talking about.And, ultimately, I have no answer to that except to invite you to listen again to what I have to say and then ask yourself a very simple question. Do I believe that? For me, the evidence is everywhere: in the history of the Church, in everything that goes on in the world, in the lives of those I meet and, in my own personal experience. But what you believe about it all is something you must decide for yourself. So let’s look at each of the four areas I have just mentioned.
For me, the whole history of the Church which many of us have looked at more closely in recent months, is the most amazing and wonderful story of God’s renewing Spirit at work. Yes, terrible things have gone on. Horrific things were done in the Church’s name. Some of the Popes were an utter disgrace. And in our own time we have the desperately sad story of abuse in the Church highlighted again last week by that report on the appalling cruelty and sexual abuse which went on for years and years in schools and children’s homes in Ireland. And yet, the Church is so much more than that. And its more than that because, deep within everything that has happened, the Spirit of Pentecost has been at work. The God whom the Old Testament called a restorer of ruined buildings, has never stopped doing his work and the result is that we are still here. And you know what gave me the most joy about the history course? The number of people who told me afterwards that seeing the weakness of the Church exposed so honestly and so openly for all to see, without any attempt to hide what had happened, had made them love that Church more, not less.
And its the same with the world. Deep within everything that goes on in this very flawed world of ours, God is at work, drawing us to himself. In recent months, we have seen the crisis in the banking and financial system and now we hear almost nothing else but stories of MPs and their expenses. And yet, deep within all of that, for those who have eyes to see, something truly wonderful is happening. At last the goddess money, whom we have worshipped for so long, is being exposed for the fraud she is. Her feet of clay are there for all to see and people everywhere have been shocked by the sheer extent of the greed and self-serving irresponsibility which has been going on everywhere. And as this has happened, slowly but surely a window of opportunity has opened up for us. Whether we take advantage of it or not, only time will tell. History is littered with windows of opportunity which came to nothing and this may well happen again now. But the Spirit of Pentecost never gives up. The restorer of ruined buildings is never at rest, and all around us, if we take the trouble to look, there are green shoots of moral and spiritual recovery. Only a couple of days ago, an article in the Guardian, typical of many which have popped up all over the place in recent months, spoke of how the current crisis is not the work of bankers or politicians but the result of the selfish, materialistic pursuit of pleasure through sel-indulgence which is at the root of our whole culture. It speaks of the bankruptcy of our whole economic system and ends by quoting Franklin Roosevelt who, in his first inaugural address as President of the United States famously said that it was time to drive the money-changers from the temple. And in this as in so much more, lots of it in the ordinary daily events of my own life, I see and experience the renewing Spirit of Pentecost at work.
But, of course, I could be completely mistaken. Maybe I am just imagining it. Maybe I am making it all up because it is what I want to believe. Maybe all these things have nothing to do with God. Maybe there is no God. Maybe the events of history are purely random, with no direction, no purpose and certainly no Holy Spirit working deep within them to bring about the creator’s dream for all that he has made. But that is not what I believe.
What matters more, of course, is what you believe.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The Gospel cannot be partly true, half true or a little bit true. It is either the most important truth to emerge in human history or the greatest deception ever inflicted on the world. If it is the first, then it deserves our complete commitment. If it is the second, then we should have nothing to do with it except work to remove every trace of it from society. And so, on this feast of Pentecost, we pray for the grace to decide one way or the other which it is and then live out of that decision.............Lord hear us
If Pentecost is true, then, as a men and women led by the Spirit, we are called to be a people deeply committed to the world. At the heart of today’s feast is the command of Jesus to reach out to all nations, to break down the barriers that separate people from one another and work for the coming of God’s kingdom where there is no more distinction between Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free man. And so we pray for the generosity of spirit we need to think in this way....................Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St Paul speaks of how there are a variety of gifts, all from the same Spirit. The particular way these gifts are given to us, he says, is for a good purpose. No two of us are the same and yet the Spirit lives and moves in each of us. And so we pray for a deep sense of this truth. We pray, especially, for those whose self-image is so low that they cannot bring themselves to believe it, leaving the wider community deprived of something only they can give.....................Lord hear us
We heard, today, how the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. But St John is talking about more than physical doors. He is talking about closed minds which refuse to admit the truth, closed eyes which refuse to see the truth and closed ears which refuse to hear the truth. At the root of this is fear: fear of where the truth will lead and what it will mean to open up the doors of our minds and hearts. And so we ask God to lead us beyond this fear...........Lord hear us
The phrase ‘reading the signs of the times’ has been fundamental to the Church’s thinking for the last fifty years. Coined by Pope John XXIII when he called the Second Vatican Council, it speaks of the need to examine and sift through everything that goes on in the world to discern how the Spirit is moving in and through the events of history. And so we ask God to teach us and guide us as we try to do this here in St Matthew’s........Lord hear us
From a faith perspective, everything that happens in the world is an opportunity to be in touch with the movement of God and respond to it. Many, if not most of these opportunities, are squandered. History is one long story of opportunities lost. But God never gives up. Every new situation provides us with a whole new set of them, and we pray that the world will not squander the opportunity for serious reflection and radical long-term change offered by the current financial crisis.......Lord hear us
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Saturday, 23 May 2009
7th Sunday of Easter
In the homily at his inauguration Mass in Westminster Cathedral on Thursday, the new leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, called for ‘respectful dialogue’ and ‘creative conversation’ between Religion in Britain and our modern, secular society. And in its leading article the following day, the Guardian newspaper, while agreeing that what the Archbishop was seeking was desireable, spoke of how difficult it will be to achieve it. Reflecting on where the difficulty lies, the article contained the following sentence: “On two of the central moral questions of the day, sexuality and scientific research, the Catholic leadership clings to an absolutist position that alienates liberals, even those brought up as Catholics,” words which, whatever side of the divide you are on, few would disagree with, especially those who took part in our recent Church History Course. So what is going on here? And why is the Church so often at odds with the modern world? Well, that’s what I hope we can come to a deeper understanding of this morning, aided and abetted by the readings we have just heard. And so we turn first to the gospel.
In it, Jesus twice prays for us that we may be consecrated in the truth. But at the very heart of the Church’s problem with the world lies a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes truth. The Church famously thinks in centuries and changes very slowly and one of the consequences of this is that its answer to the question ‘what is truth?’ is one which our western developed world largely abandoned a very long time ago. For the Church, whose thinking, for historical reasons we don’t have time to go into, is rooted in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, who lived in Athens four hundred years before the birth of Christianity, truth is objective and unchangeable. Ultimatetely, truth is revealed to us by the God who is truth and our job, as creatures, is to seek that truth and conform our minds to it. Aristotle, in fact, defined truth as the mind conforming itself to reality. And while, in the scientific field, this understanding of truth remains as valid today as ever it was and is the whole basis of scientific research, in the world of morality and ideas such thinking makes no sense to millions today. Just think of the number of moral issues on which the world’s thinking has changed over the last fifty years, the most obvious example being society’s attitude to the very issue the Guardian mentioned, human sexuality. Things which were once strictly forbidden,and not just by the Churches, are widely accepted today, a change which makes no sense to those who still base their thinking on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. From their perspective, and this is the position of the Catholic Church, right and wrong are not decided by an opinion poll. Some things are right and others are wrong regardless of what we think and our job is not to change them to suit ourselves or to be in tune with the latest fashion, but to conform to them. And the great example of this in modern times was Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’ which caused so much trouble for so many people, including some of you here. I don’t want to go into the issues behind that Encyclical today, but it is important to understand why the Pope said what he said despite the fact that a Commission set up by himself had advised him to say something very different. He said it because he believed he had no option but say it. The Church, in his mind, had already spoken on the subject in an earlier statement by Pope Pius XI and even if he wanted to – and he probably did – he could not change that. To do so would have been to suggest that what had been true once was no longer true and that, for him, was not possible. He thought that to do so would be to undermine the teaching authority of the Church, the great irony being that that is exactly what did happened after ‘Humanae Vitae.’The problem, of course, is that history shows that many things the Church once thought were true turned out not to be and vice-versa. But that’s another story. I just hope that this homily will help us understand where the Church is coming from and why it is so often in conflict with a world where truth is often reduced to what we want it to be.
And there’s another example in the first reading where we hear how the eleven went about choosing a successor to Judas. By first praying and then drawing lots, rather than having interviews or psychological assessments, as we would do today, the early Church is acknowledging that this important decision is the work of the Spirit and will be made through a process of discernment rather than through discussion or debate among themselves. Truth, in other words, comes from God. Praying and then drawing lots, the equivalent of tossing a coin, is, admittedly, a pretty primitive form of discernment. But the truth the early Church is trying to express here is obvious and continues to be the basis of the Church’s understanding of ministry right up to the present day. Whether it be priesthood, lay involvement at Mass or exercising leadership of some kind in the community, no one can take this upon him or herself. It is not like applying for a job or planning a career. At least it shouldn’t be. Ministry in the Christian community is no-one’s by right. God, the source of everything that exists, calls those to ministry whom he chooses to call and it is the Church’s job to discern that call in individuals and confirm it.
And again, without going into the issue itself, I invite you to at least understand where the Church is coming from on the contentious issue of women priests. Pope John Paul II spelt out for us several years ago how he saw it. For him, the Church had no power to ordain women, even if it wanted to. Such a decision is God’s, not the Church’s, and, for him, if not for many others in the Church, God made known his decision when Jesus chose only men as apostles. Only time will tell, of course, if this remains the Church’s position. There have been many changes of direction over the centuries and there will be others in the future too. But the important thing for us today is not whether the Pope was right or not. It’s to come to a more mature appreciation of the Church’s problem with the very nature of truth in our modern society.
We can’t resolve it. But we can, at least, understand it.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In his homily on Thursday, the new Archbishop of Westminster called for a dialogue between believers and unbelievers which goes beyond superficial slogans. He called for a society where people genuinely listen to each other and are prepared to attribute to each other the best and not the worst of motives. And so we pray for this grace for ourselves: the grace to enter into the minds of people who think differently from ourselves and rejoice in the elements of the truth we find there.................Lord hear us
Whether truth is absolute or not, whether it is purely objective or can change according to the circumstances we find ourselves in, is a philosophical debate which can and will go on between people of good will. But what cannot be true is that truth is simply what we want it to be. There are times when truth is bigger and greater than we are, times when, whether it suits us or not, we must submit to it. And so we pray for the wisdom to understand this...Lord hear us
Many today confuse legality with morality and vice-versa. But, as many MPs have discovered in recent days, there are things which are legal but immoral. Equally, there are things which are illegal but morally right, as is the case with those who fight against unjust regimes in many parts of the world. And so we pray that the people of Britain will have the moral maturity we need to understand this distinction and not fall into the trap of thinking that what is legal is automatically right.......Lord hear us
The area of our lives where once firmly held truths have given way to what many today would see as moral chaos, has been the area of sexuality. Huge changes in the way we think about sexual morality have taken place over the last fifty years, and, for better or for worse, we are living today with the consequences. We pray, however, that God, in his infinite love and providence, will lead the world to more balanced ways of thinking about sex worthy of who we are as human beings..........Lord hear us
Many here will remember only too well the furore which followed the publication, in 1968, of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae.’ It began a period of controversy and pain in the Church from which many never recovered. Some left the Church in protest while others, who did not go that far, were left with feelings of anger and resentment which still hang around today. And so, all these years later, we ask God to heal whatever hurt remains from that time..........Lord hear us
For many people in the Church today, the issue which causes most unhappiness and disappointment is the way women, as they see it, are prevented from exercising their proper role in the life of the Church. For some this is about the ordination of women, but it is about much more than that. It is about what many see as a male-dominated culture which has no place in the modern world. And so we pray for the grace we need to understand what it is like for those who feel this way.......Lord hear us
In it, Jesus twice prays for us that we may be consecrated in the truth. But at the very heart of the Church’s problem with the world lies a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes truth. The Church famously thinks in centuries and changes very slowly and one of the consequences of this is that its answer to the question ‘what is truth?’ is one which our western developed world largely abandoned a very long time ago. For the Church, whose thinking, for historical reasons we don’t have time to go into, is rooted in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, who lived in Athens four hundred years before the birth of Christianity, truth is objective and unchangeable. Ultimatetely, truth is revealed to us by the God who is truth and our job, as creatures, is to seek that truth and conform our minds to it. Aristotle, in fact, defined truth as the mind conforming itself to reality. And while, in the scientific field, this understanding of truth remains as valid today as ever it was and is the whole basis of scientific research, in the world of morality and ideas such thinking makes no sense to millions today. Just think of the number of moral issues on which the world’s thinking has changed over the last fifty years, the most obvious example being society’s attitude to the very issue the Guardian mentioned, human sexuality. Things which were once strictly forbidden,and not just by the Churches, are widely accepted today, a change which makes no sense to those who still base their thinking on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. From their perspective, and this is the position of the Catholic Church, right and wrong are not decided by an opinion poll. Some things are right and others are wrong regardless of what we think and our job is not to change them to suit ourselves or to be in tune with the latest fashion, but to conform to them. And the great example of this in modern times was Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’ which caused so much trouble for so many people, including some of you here. I don’t want to go into the issues behind that Encyclical today, but it is important to understand why the Pope said what he said despite the fact that a Commission set up by himself had advised him to say something very different. He said it because he believed he had no option but say it. The Church, in his mind, had already spoken on the subject in an earlier statement by Pope Pius XI and even if he wanted to – and he probably did – he could not change that. To do so would have been to suggest that what had been true once was no longer true and that, for him, was not possible. He thought that to do so would be to undermine the teaching authority of the Church, the great irony being that that is exactly what did happened after ‘Humanae Vitae.’The problem, of course, is that history shows that many things the Church once thought were true turned out not to be and vice-versa. But that’s another story. I just hope that this homily will help us understand where the Church is coming from and why it is so often in conflict with a world where truth is often reduced to what we want it to be.
And there’s another example in the first reading where we hear how the eleven went about choosing a successor to Judas. By first praying and then drawing lots, rather than having interviews or psychological assessments, as we would do today, the early Church is acknowledging that this important decision is the work of the Spirit and will be made through a process of discernment rather than through discussion or debate among themselves. Truth, in other words, comes from God. Praying and then drawing lots, the equivalent of tossing a coin, is, admittedly, a pretty primitive form of discernment. But the truth the early Church is trying to express here is obvious and continues to be the basis of the Church’s understanding of ministry right up to the present day. Whether it be priesthood, lay involvement at Mass or exercising leadership of some kind in the community, no one can take this upon him or herself. It is not like applying for a job or planning a career. At least it shouldn’t be. Ministry in the Christian community is no-one’s by right. God, the source of everything that exists, calls those to ministry whom he chooses to call and it is the Church’s job to discern that call in individuals and confirm it.
And again, without going into the issue itself, I invite you to at least understand where the Church is coming from on the contentious issue of women priests. Pope John Paul II spelt out for us several years ago how he saw it. For him, the Church had no power to ordain women, even if it wanted to. Such a decision is God’s, not the Church’s, and, for him, if not for many others in the Church, God made known his decision when Jesus chose only men as apostles. Only time will tell, of course, if this remains the Church’s position. There have been many changes of direction over the centuries and there will be others in the future too. But the important thing for us today is not whether the Pope was right or not. It’s to come to a more mature appreciation of the Church’s problem with the very nature of truth in our modern society.
We can’t resolve it. But we can, at least, understand it.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In his homily on Thursday, the new Archbishop of Westminster called for a dialogue between believers and unbelievers which goes beyond superficial slogans. He called for a society where people genuinely listen to each other and are prepared to attribute to each other the best and not the worst of motives. And so we pray for this grace for ourselves: the grace to enter into the minds of people who think differently from ourselves and rejoice in the elements of the truth we find there.................Lord hear us
Whether truth is absolute or not, whether it is purely objective or can change according to the circumstances we find ourselves in, is a philosophical debate which can and will go on between people of good will. But what cannot be true is that truth is simply what we want it to be. There are times when truth is bigger and greater than we are, times when, whether it suits us or not, we must submit to it. And so we pray for the wisdom to understand this...Lord hear us
Many today confuse legality with morality and vice-versa. But, as many MPs have discovered in recent days, there are things which are legal but immoral. Equally, there are things which are illegal but morally right, as is the case with those who fight against unjust regimes in many parts of the world. And so we pray that the people of Britain will have the moral maturity we need to understand this distinction and not fall into the trap of thinking that what is legal is automatically right.......Lord hear us
The area of our lives where once firmly held truths have given way to what many today would see as moral chaos, has been the area of sexuality. Huge changes in the way we think about sexual morality have taken place over the last fifty years, and, for better or for worse, we are living today with the consequences. We pray, however, that God, in his infinite love and providence, will lead the world to more balanced ways of thinking about sex worthy of who we are as human beings..........Lord hear us
Many here will remember only too well the furore which followed the publication, in 1968, of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae.’ It began a period of controversy and pain in the Church from which many never recovered. Some left the Church in protest while others, who did not go that far, were left with feelings of anger and resentment which still hang around today. And so, all these years later, we ask God to heal whatever hurt remains from that time..........Lord hear us
For many people in the Church today, the issue which causes most unhappiness and disappointment is the way women, as they see it, are prevented from exercising their proper role in the life of the Church. For some this is about the ordination of women, but it is about much more than that. It is about what many see as a male-dominated culture which has no place in the modern world. And so we pray for the grace we need to understand what it is like for those who feel this way.......Lord hear us
Saturday, 16 May 2009
6th Sunday of Easter. B.
Last week, as we reflected briefly on the life of St Paul, we saw how the fact that he had been born and brought up in Tarsus, in what we would think of today as Eastern Turkey, had helped prepare him for his later work of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. In Tarsus he had had daily contact with the pagan religions of the Roman Empire and so was familiar with both their religious terminology and their religious language when, years later, he began his work of preaching the Gospel. But for Peter, the other great figure of the early Church, things were very different. Coming from Galilee, Peter would have had slightly more contact with the pagan world than the people around Jerusalem had. But, essentially, the world beyond the boundaries Palestine would have been unknown territory to him. And so, before he could respond to Jesus command to go out and teach all nations, God had to teach him something. He had to open up Peter’s mind, broaden his horizons and prepare him for the work that lay ahead. And in chapter ten of Acts, from which today’s reading comes, we see how God did this.
We have looked at this story before, of course, but I want to remind you again of what happened. It was all to do with this man, Cornelius, whom we hear about in the reading. As a result of a dream he had had, Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had sent two of his slaves to Jaffa to bring Peter to Caesarea. At the same time, Peter himself was having a vision while at prayer in which he had seen a big sheet come down from heaven filled with every kind of animal, reptile and bird, while a voice, the voice of God, told him to eat. But Peter had refused on the grounds that, as a Jew, he did not eat what was unclean, his “Certainly not Lord. I have never eaten anything unclean” – religion being used as a reason for not doing what God asked - being one of the great jokes of Scripture. But God had insisted. “What God has made clean” the voice had said, “you have no right to call unclean,” something so important, so vital for the growth of the Church throughout the world, that we are told it was repeated three times.
And so, when Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house, he utters those words we heard today. “The truth I have now come to realise is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Beside these words of Peter, Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man” quote when he set foot on the moon forty years ago pales into insignificance. As he and the other astronauts of that era looked at our world from space they were deeply aware of the oneness of it all. But Christianity had proclaimed that oneness two thousand years earlier. The prophets had dreamt of it in their own historically limited way, imagining a time in the future when all the nations of the earth would flock to Jerusalem. And, of course, today’s psalm, like many other passages in the Old Testament, speaks of how all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God, our response being, ‘The Lord has shown his salvation to the nations.’ But it is only with Pentecost, when people from every nation on earth heard the Gospel proclaimed in his or her own language, that the dream of a world where all barriers between peoples would cease to exist begins to take root. “There is no more distinction” Paul writes later in one of his letters, “between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female.”And even now, two thousand years on, the world is still struggling to come to terms with such a far reaching and radical vision for humanity.
But to be an Easter people, a people of the Resurrection, is to be totally committed to this ideal. In the Gospel today, Jesus commands us to love one another the way he has loved us and in the second reading St John tells us that anyone who fails to love the way God loves does not know God. And it’s as simple as that. We can perform religious actions until they are coming out our ears, but, if we are not aware at some level of ourselves of a movement which is drawing us outwards, beyond narrow self-interest, beyond national boundaries, beyond prejudice in all its shapes and forms, to embrace every human being on the face of the earth, then I’m afraid it’s true. We have never met God. We may be resisting this movement. We may be steeped still in prejudice and narrow ways of thinking. But if, at some level of ourselves we do not know that this is wrong, then we do not know God. Or, to use another language altogether, we are in mortal sin; we do not have the life of God in us.
And so, in the face of such a possibility, I invite you to take a long hard look at yourself today. Look, first, for the things in you that are not compatible with the truth which Peter came to realise that day and which changed his whole view of the world. Look at your often unspoken prejudices; the thoughts that pass through your head, often unbidden, about people different from yourself. Think of your attitude to foreigners. The very word ‘foreigner,’ in English seems to suggest some kind of inferiority. Foreigners speak funny languages, eat funny food, wear funny clothes. They are not like us and not being like us, the subtext is that they are not as good as us. Just think of the way we in Britain speak about Europe. We are part of Europe, but we speak of it as if it were some kind of foreign place filled with people we prefer not to mix with. And then, apart from the Frogs, the Huns and various Degos, there are all the others: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Pakis and many others. Its not just the language we use. Often the attitudes which lie behind the words are so deeply imbedded in our culture that we don’t even notice them. And I haven’t even mentioned the English and our appalling attitude to them here in Scotland.
So look into yourself today and recognize this stuff at work. The fact that it’s there just means that you are human. But if, at a deeper level, we don’t recognize that these things are wrong, completely at odds with the Gospel and want to be free of them, then we are in serious bother. We do not know God.
BIDDING PRAYERS
As many predicted at the time, the end of the cold war between The United States and the Soviet Union has resulted in recent years in a whole series of smaller conflicts all over the world. In many cases old scores have been settled and old wounds re-opened, some of which continue to fester and seem incurable. But we pray that, as this new century advances, the peoples of the world will learn to put such things behind them and find new ways of living together in peace..............Lord hear us
In the course of the 20th century, the world saw the growth of many international bodies aimed at resolving ancient conflicts and disputes. We had The League of Nations, The United Nations, The International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, the European Union, The British Commonwealth and many others. None of these bodies is perfect. All of them are imperfect. But we pray that, in time, they and those which follow them, will bring about what the world needs and longs for.............Lord hear us
Suspicion and fear of those different from ourselves is as old as humanity itself. It is one of the main forces that has shaped our history. We are, by nature, deeply conservative and attached to what we know. And yet, in recent years, there are signs of progress. Not only do we travel more, but we have learned to eat and enjoy food from many different countries. And so we pray that this process, slow as it is, will gradually broaden our minds and extend our horizons.............Lord hear us
In the face of the current financial crisis affecting the world, one of the great dangers, experts tells us, is that we retreat into protectionism, looking after ourselves at the expense of others. But what humanity needs at this time is the very opposite of this. In an age of globalisation, the peoples of the world need to work together. Our futures are inter-twined and no country can solve the big problems we face in isolation. And so we ask God for the wisdom we need at this time...........Lord hear us
Many of us here are descended from people who came to Scotland in the past in search of a better life. The majority were from Ireland, but people came, too, from places as far apart as Italy, Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. Now, today, many are coming from other places too, also in search of a better life for themselves and their families And so we pray that, as the grand children and great grand children of immigrants ourselves, we will not fail to welcome them now.......Lord hear us
The future of humanity is not known to us. All kinds of things could happen in the future. But if this future is to be one in which the world finally puts prejudice and fear behind it and embraces a new way of living rooted in the Gospel, then we will need many men and women of vision who will challenge old ways of doing things and show the world that there are alternatives to what has always been. And so we ask God to raise up such visionaries and prophets among us here.....Lord hear us
We have looked at this story before, of course, but I want to remind you again of what happened. It was all to do with this man, Cornelius, whom we hear about in the reading. As a result of a dream he had had, Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had sent two of his slaves to Jaffa to bring Peter to Caesarea. At the same time, Peter himself was having a vision while at prayer in which he had seen a big sheet come down from heaven filled with every kind of animal, reptile and bird, while a voice, the voice of God, told him to eat. But Peter had refused on the grounds that, as a Jew, he did not eat what was unclean, his “Certainly not Lord. I have never eaten anything unclean” – religion being used as a reason for not doing what God asked - being one of the great jokes of Scripture. But God had insisted. “What God has made clean” the voice had said, “you have no right to call unclean,” something so important, so vital for the growth of the Church throughout the world, that we are told it was repeated three times.
And so, when Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house, he utters those words we heard today. “The truth I have now come to realise is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Beside these words of Peter, Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man” quote when he set foot on the moon forty years ago pales into insignificance. As he and the other astronauts of that era looked at our world from space they were deeply aware of the oneness of it all. But Christianity had proclaimed that oneness two thousand years earlier. The prophets had dreamt of it in their own historically limited way, imagining a time in the future when all the nations of the earth would flock to Jerusalem. And, of course, today’s psalm, like many other passages in the Old Testament, speaks of how all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God, our response being, ‘The Lord has shown his salvation to the nations.’ But it is only with Pentecost, when people from every nation on earth heard the Gospel proclaimed in his or her own language, that the dream of a world where all barriers between peoples would cease to exist begins to take root. “There is no more distinction” Paul writes later in one of his letters, “between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female.”And even now, two thousand years on, the world is still struggling to come to terms with such a far reaching and radical vision for humanity.
But to be an Easter people, a people of the Resurrection, is to be totally committed to this ideal. In the Gospel today, Jesus commands us to love one another the way he has loved us and in the second reading St John tells us that anyone who fails to love the way God loves does not know God. And it’s as simple as that. We can perform religious actions until they are coming out our ears, but, if we are not aware at some level of ourselves of a movement which is drawing us outwards, beyond narrow self-interest, beyond national boundaries, beyond prejudice in all its shapes and forms, to embrace every human being on the face of the earth, then I’m afraid it’s true. We have never met God. We may be resisting this movement. We may be steeped still in prejudice and narrow ways of thinking. But if, at some level of ourselves we do not know that this is wrong, then we do not know God. Or, to use another language altogether, we are in mortal sin; we do not have the life of God in us.
And so, in the face of such a possibility, I invite you to take a long hard look at yourself today. Look, first, for the things in you that are not compatible with the truth which Peter came to realise that day and which changed his whole view of the world. Look at your often unspoken prejudices; the thoughts that pass through your head, often unbidden, about people different from yourself. Think of your attitude to foreigners. The very word ‘foreigner,’ in English seems to suggest some kind of inferiority. Foreigners speak funny languages, eat funny food, wear funny clothes. They are not like us and not being like us, the subtext is that they are not as good as us. Just think of the way we in Britain speak about Europe. We are part of Europe, but we speak of it as if it were some kind of foreign place filled with people we prefer not to mix with. And then, apart from the Frogs, the Huns and various Degos, there are all the others: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Pakis and many others. Its not just the language we use. Often the attitudes which lie behind the words are so deeply imbedded in our culture that we don’t even notice them. And I haven’t even mentioned the English and our appalling attitude to them here in Scotland.
So look into yourself today and recognize this stuff at work. The fact that it’s there just means that you are human. But if, at a deeper level, we don’t recognize that these things are wrong, completely at odds with the Gospel and want to be free of them, then we are in serious bother. We do not know God.
BIDDING PRAYERS
As many predicted at the time, the end of the cold war between The United States and the Soviet Union has resulted in recent years in a whole series of smaller conflicts all over the world. In many cases old scores have been settled and old wounds re-opened, some of which continue to fester and seem incurable. But we pray that, as this new century advances, the peoples of the world will learn to put such things behind them and find new ways of living together in peace..............Lord hear us
In the course of the 20th century, the world saw the growth of many international bodies aimed at resolving ancient conflicts and disputes. We had The League of Nations, The United Nations, The International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, the European Union, The British Commonwealth and many others. None of these bodies is perfect. All of them are imperfect. But we pray that, in time, they and those which follow them, will bring about what the world needs and longs for.............Lord hear us
Suspicion and fear of those different from ourselves is as old as humanity itself. It is one of the main forces that has shaped our history. We are, by nature, deeply conservative and attached to what we know. And yet, in recent years, there are signs of progress. Not only do we travel more, but we have learned to eat and enjoy food from many different countries. And so we pray that this process, slow as it is, will gradually broaden our minds and extend our horizons.............Lord hear us
In the face of the current financial crisis affecting the world, one of the great dangers, experts tells us, is that we retreat into protectionism, looking after ourselves at the expense of others. But what humanity needs at this time is the very opposite of this. In an age of globalisation, the peoples of the world need to work together. Our futures are inter-twined and no country can solve the big problems we face in isolation. And so we ask God for the wisdom we need at this time...........Lord hear us
Many of us here are descended from people who came to Scotland in the past in search of a better life. The majority were from Ireland, but people came, too, from places as far apart as Italy, Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. Now, today, many are coming from other places too, also in search of a better life for themselves and their families And so we pray that, as the grand children and great grand children of immigrants ourselves, we will not fail to welcome them now.......Lord hear us
The future of humanity is not known to us. All kinds of things could happen in the future. But if this future is to be one in which the world finally puts prejudice and fear behind it and embraces a new way of living rooted in the Gospel, then we will need many men and women of vision who will challenge old ways of doing things and show the world that there are alternatives to what has always been. And so we ask God to raise up such visionaries and prophets among us here.....Lord hear us
Saturday, 9 May 2009
5th Sunday of Easter. B.
You may not have even heard of it, and even if you have, it has probably not had much impact on your life, but for the last ten months or so we have been living through what Pope Benedict declared in 2008 ‘The Year of St Paul.’ And so, before it comes to an end next month, I thought we might spend a few minutes today thinking about Paul and reflecting on what his story has to tell us about what it means to be a Christian in our own time. Who was he? What did he do? And what is his relevance to our own lives today?
Well, he was born in Tarsus, probably around 5-10 AD, making him ten years or so younger than Jesus himself. The fact that he was born in Tarsus was itself significant. Tarsus was in what we think of today as Turkey and in those days it had a large Jewish community of the ‘diaspora’. In other words, Jews who, through contact with the Roman Empire, had spread out into the wider world around the Mediterranean. Paul himself was a very devout Jew but, living in Tarsus, he was equally familiar with the pagan religions of the Empire. This knowledge shines through his letters and becomes the foundation for his later ministry to the gentiles, enabling him, both literally and metaphorically, to speak a language they could understand and reminding us that, if we are to continue the work of evangelization today, then we, too, must learn to understand and speak the language of the men and women of our own time. Paul, through his background and upbringing, was a kind of bridge between the Jewish and pagan worlds and much of what we think of today as Christianity is more influenced by those pagan ideas Paul picked up in Tarsus than we realise. The whole notion, for example, of ‘Redemption.’...But that’s another story!
Despite all this pagan influence, however, Paul was a deeply committed Jew and it was this that brought him to Jerusalem as a young man to study under the famous teacher Gamaliel. And it was his enthusiasm for Judaism that led him, in time, to persecute the new Christian Church. Convinced that this new heretical sect were a threat to everything he believed in, he set about destroying it. Outside Damascus, however, all that changed.What actually happened is not as clear as we might think. Paul himself in his letters makes no reference to Damascus or being knocked off his horse or any of that stuff. Only Luke, in Acts, mentions such things. And even if they did happen, people have speculated about what exactly might have been going on. All kinds of psychological explanations have been offered and have included such things as sunstroke or a form of epilepsy often connected with visions and strange religious experiences. But what is certain is that somewhere along the way something happened to Paul which changed his whole life. And that is what matters. And I would draw a parallel between this and many of the things that go on in the Church today. All over the world there are stories of visions and revelations which people believe in. Most of them, however, the Church refuses to have anything to do with and I would have nothing to do with them either. As I am perfectly entitled to do as a Catholic, I don’t personally believe that Our Lady, for example, has ever appeared anywhere. But that does not mean that people who go to places where these things are alleged to have happened do not experience God there. Many clearly do. But in the end, whether it is Lourdes, Fatima or the road to Damascus, there is only one things that matters, and it is spelt out for us in the second reading. No vision, no religious experience is worth a penny unless it bears fruit in something real that is not just mere words. The evidence of God at work is always practical, Christ-like love.
And in Paul’s case the fruits are obvious. He immediately begins to proclaim the Gospel in Damascus where he had gone to arrest the followers of Jesus. When, three years later, he went to Jerusalem, however, people there, as we heard in the first reading, were very suspicious of him and he had to be smuggled out of the city, lowered from a window, and sent off to Tarsus for his own safety. And so began a period of quite a few years in Paul’s life that we often forget about: years of prayer and reflection in the Arabian desert around Petra where his conversion experience deepened and God prepared him for the work that lay ahead. And this reminds us that, if we are to be bearers of the Gospel to the men and women of our time, we, too, need to spend time in training and preparation. But how willing we are to embrace such training is the big question.
Paul’s conversion happened in 36AD and it was not until ten years later, in 46AD, that the first of his three great missionary journeys through Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, Greece, possibly Spain, and finally Rome began. These lasted twenty years, involving great hardship and much travelling, ending with his death in Rome by beheading in 64AD under the Emperor Nero.
So what relevance does all this have to the world of the 21st century? What does it have to say to us as we confront the challenge of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel to those who share this moment in history with us? Well, it tells, first of all, that conversion is always possible. That if Saul can become Paul then no human being is beyond redemption. It also tells us that, to be a follower of Jesus, we do not have to be perfect. Paul certainly wasn’t. He was a carnaptious and difficult little man who fell out with one person after another. Noone seems to have been able to put up with him for too long. But what he had was courage and a deep commitment to the person of Jesus. Jesus really was the vine and Paul the branch which, cut off from Jesus, could do nothing. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul took seriously the task of teaching all nations and, through faith, was able to achieve what to others seemed impossible. And in that sense, he is a model for our time. Called to evangelize the world of our time, many think it cannot be done. But such negativity and pessimism had no part in Paul’s thinking. He was open to the new thing God was doing in the world and was willing to play his part in it. And what we need today are a few more like him.
BIDDING PRAYERS
Paul’s experience and knowledge of the pagan world, acquired during his years in Tarsus, prepared him for the work of taking the Good News to the gentile nations. This experience broadened his mind and enabled him to understand ways of thinking very different from his own. And so we pray that, through our travels abroad as well as our contact with people from other countries who come here to Scotland, our minds will be broadened in the same way............Lord hear us
Paul, in an experience he himself gives no details of, met the Risen Jesus in his life and this experience changed him. From being a persecutor of the Church, he became its greatest champion. And so we ask God to raise up in our time many Pauls from among the ranks of those who, in recent years, have walked away from the Church and become its greatest critics. We ask God to turn this experience to good and provide from the ranks of such critics the modern apostles we need..........Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St John tells us that our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active. We are, in other words, to love one another the way Jesus told us to. Only by doing this, he tells us, can we be certain that we are children of the truth. And so we pray that everything we do and say here each week as we gather to be fed and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist will bear fruit in the way we reach out to all around us who are in need........Lord hear us
Spiritual writers down through the ages warn us against attaching importance to things like visions, private revelations and other questionable religious experiences. Those who sometimes had such things, the great mystics, attached no importance to them, realising that they could be caused by things which had nothing to do with God. And so, in an age of uncertainty when such things tend to proliferate, we pray for the grace and wisdom we need to understand this........Lord hear us
In the first reading today, we hear how the Hellenists argued with Paul and wanted to kill him. They could see very clearly that what Paul was preaching involved a break with the past and they were determined to resist this with all their might. They were, in effect, doing to Paul what he had done to others before his conversion. Their minds were closed and they did not want Paul or anyone else to open them up. And so we pray for anyone among us today caught in that same trap............Lord hear us
After his conversion, Paul withdrew for a number of years to reflect on what had happened and to allow the experience to deepen in him. This was like a time of retreat and reflection when God trained him for the work that lay ahead. And so we pray for ourselves, faced as we are with the seemingly impossible task of re-evangelizing the world of our own time, that we will be open to and prepared to undertake the training or re-training we need today.......Lord hear us
Well, he was born in Tarsus, probably around 5-10 AD, making him ten years or so younger than Jesus himself. The fact that he was born in Tarsus was itself significant. Tarsus was in what we think of today as Turkey and in those days it had a large Jewish community of the ‘diaspora’. In other words, Jews who, through contact with the Roman Empire, had spread out into the wider world around the Mediterranean. Paul himself was a very devout Jew but, living in Tarsus, he was equally familiar with the pagan religions of the Empire. This knowledge shines through his letters and becomes the foundation for his later ministry to the gentiles, enabling him, both literally and metaphorically, to speak a language they could understand and reminding us that, if we are to continue the work of evangelization today, then we, too, must learn to understand and speak the language of the men and women of our own time. Paul, through his background and upbringing, was a kind of bridge between the Jewish and pagan worlds and much of what we think of today as Christianity is more influenced by those pagan ideas Paul picked up in Tarsus than we realise. The whole notion, for example, of ‘Redemption.’...But that’s another story!
Despite all this pagan influence, however, Paul was a deeply committed Jew and it was this that brought him to Jerusalem as a young man to study under the famous teacher Gamaliel. And it was his enthusiasm for Judaism that led him, in time, to persecute the new Christian Church. Convinced that this new heretical sect were a threat to everything he believed in, he set about destroying it. Outside Damascus, however, all that changed.What actually happened is not as clear as we might think. Paul himself in his letters makes no reference to Damascus or being knocked off his horse or any of that stuff. Only Luke, in Acts, mentions such things. And even if they did happen, people have speculated about what exactly might have been going on. All kinds of psychological explanations have been offered and have included such things as sunstroke or a form of epilepsy often connected with visions and strange religious experiences. But what is certain is that somewhere along the way something happened to Paul which changed his whole life. And that is what matters. And I would draw a parallel between this and many of the things that go on in the Church today. All over the world there are stories of visions and revelations which people believe in. Most of them, however, the Church refuses to have anything to do with and I would have nothing to do with them either. As I am perfectly entitled to do as a Catholic, I don’t personally believe that Our Lady, for example, has ever appeared anywhere. But that does not mean that people who go to places where these things are alleged to have happened do not experience God there. Many clearly do. But in the end, whether it is Lourdes, Fatima or the road to Damascus, there is only one things that matters, and it is spelt out for us in the second reading. No vision, no religious experience is worth a penny unless it bears fruit in something real that is not just mere words. The evidence of God at work is always practical, Christ-like love.
And in Paul’s case the fruits are obvious. He immediately begins to proclaim the Gospel in Damascus where he had gone to arrest the followers of Jesus. When, three years later, he went to Jerusalem, however, people there, as we heard in the first reading, were very suspicious of him and he had to be smuggled out of the city, lowered from a window, and sent off to Tarsus for his own safety. And so began a period of quite a few years in Paul’s life that we often forget about: years of prayer and reflection in the Arabian desert around Petra where his conversion experience deepened and God prepared him for the work that lay ahead. And this reminds us that, if we are to be bearers of the Gospel to the men and women of our time, we, too, need to spend time in training and preparation. But how willing we are to embrace such training is the big question.
Paul’s conversion happened in 36AD and it was not until ten years later, in 46AD, that the first of his three great missionary journeys through Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, Greece, possibly Spain, and finally Rome began. These lasted twenty years, involving great hardship and much travelling, ending with his death in Rome by beheading in 64AD under the Emperor Nero.
So what relevance does all this have to the world of the 21st century? What does it have to say to us as we confront the challenge of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel to those who share this moment in history with us? Well, it tells, first of all, that conversion is always possible. That if Saul can become Paul then no human being is beyond redemption. It also tells us that, to be a follower of Jesus, we do not have to be perfect. Paul certainly wasn’t. He was a carnaptious and difficult little man who fell out with one person after another. Noone seems to have been able to put up with him for too long. But what he had was courage and a deep commitment to the person of Jesus. Jesus really was the vine and Paul the branch which, cut off from Jesus, could do nothing. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul took seriously the task of teaching all nations and, through faith, was able to achieve what to others seemed impossible. And in that sense, he is a model for our time. Called to evangelize the world of our time, many think it cannot be done. But such negativity and pessimism had no part in Paul’s thinking. He was open to the new thing God was doing in the world and was willing to play his part in it. And what we need today are a few more like him.
BIDDING PRAYERS
Paul’s experience and knowledge of the pagan world, acquired during his years in Tarsus, prepared him for the work of taking the Good News to the gentile nations. This experience broadened his mind and enabled him to understand ways of thinking very different from his own. And so we pray that, through our travels abroad as well as our contact with people from other countries who come here to Scotland, our minds will be broadened in the same way............Lord hear us
Paul, in an experience he himself gives no details of, met the Risen Jesus in his life and this experience changed him. From being a persecutor of the Church, he became its greatest champion. And so we ask God to raise up in our time many Pauls from among the ranks of those who, in recent years, have walked away from the Church and become its greatest critics. We ask God to turn this experience to good and provide from the ranks of such critics the modern apostles we need..........Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St John tells us that our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active. We are, in other words, to love one another the way Jesus told us to. Only by doing this, he tells us, can we be certain that we are children of the truth. And so we pray that everything we do and say here each week as we gather to be fed and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist will bear fruit in the way we reach out to all around us who are in need........Lord hear us
Spiritual writers down through the ages warn us against attaching importance to things like visions, private revelations and other questionable religious experiences. Those who sometimes had such things, the great mystics, attached no importance to them, realising that they could be caused by things which had nothing to do with God. And so, in an age of uncertainty when such things tend to proliferate, we pray for the grace and wisdom we need to understand this........Lord hear us
In the first reading today, we hear how the Hellenists argued with Paul and wanted to kill him. They could see very clearly that what Paul was preaching involved a break with the past and they were determined to resist this with all their might. They were, in effect, doing to Paul what he had done to others before his conversion. Their minds were closed and they did not want Paul or anyone else to open them up. And so we pray for anyone among us today caught in that same trap............Lord hear us
After his conversion, Paul withdrew for a number of years to reflect on what had happened and to allow the experience to deepen in him. This was like a time of retreat and reflection when God trained him for the work that lay ahead. And so we pray for ourselves, faced as we are with the seemingly impossible task of re-evangelizing the world of our own time, that we will be open to and prepared to undertake the training or re-training we need today.......Lord hear us
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