I’ve spoken to you before, I think, about ‘Marcan sandwiches,’ the not very academic-sounding term used by Scripture scholars to describe the kind of thing we saw in today’s Gospel story. It refers to a number of passages in his Gospel where the St Mark begins one story, in this case the story of Jairus’s daughter, seems to digress into another, the story of the woman with the haemorrhage, and then returns to the story he had started with to bring it to a conclusion. And this has nothing to do with his being sidetracked or distracted. It’s done very deliberately, the whole point being that these are not two separate stories at all, but one story made up of three parts. The little girl and the woman are not two different people. They are the same person at different stages in life, and, as such, they are each one of us. And so, with this in mind, I offer for your consideration the following interpretation of this profound passage.
And the first thing I invite you to consider is that the so-called ‘sickness’ the little girl is suffering from is not a real sickness at all. What’s happening, I suggest, is that she is moving from childhood to adolescence – she is twelve after all - and her father doesn’t like it. It can be very difficult for any parent to watch a son or daughter enter those difficult teenage years. The loss of that so attractive childlike innocence; the loss of physical closeness and the ability to show affection; the having to watch a child’s capacity to play and delight in simple things give way to the boorishness and awkwardness of the teenage years, are all very painful for a loving parent, and, in this sense, the father in our story, Jairus by name, is experiencing the death of the little girl he has known up to now as she turns into a woman with all that that is going to mean for her in the future. At which point part one our story ends, we fast forward a number of years, to find that our little girl has become the woman with the haemorrhage. So what has happened to her?
Well, life has happened to her, as it happens to each one of us. Her years of innocence and childhood over, she has been worn out by the trials and tribulations which make up any person’s life. There have been deaths and illnesses to face, children to bring up, relationships which have turned sour and it’s clearly a long time since she has known real happiness. She hasn’t laughed properly for years and the ability she had in such abundance as a little girl, the ability to run and jump and enjoy things, the ability to play, seems dead in her. And I would suggest that this loss of the capacity to play is especially true of women. The women in the old separated and divorced group, still one of the best groups I have ever been part of, used to say of men that ‘ they’re aye playin’ at somethin. If it’s no fitba, it’s golf; if it’s no golf it’s derts; and if it’s no derts is snooker.’ And, of course they were right. But this capacity to play is a strength in men, not a weakness, the real tragedy being that, in so many women, burdened with the responsibility of caring for the physical needs of a family from an early age, the capacity to play dies, leaving men, so often, to do the playing with the children while women iron, cook or clean the toilet. And this, I suggest, is what has happened to this woman. In her own person she represents the very worst that events can do to us, men and women. Her energy for life, her energy for fun and enjoyment, her energy above all for play have drained away and she is deeply unhappy. In which condition she comes to Jesus. And so we come to part three of our story.
And in this third part we find the key to the whole episode. And it’s where St Mark tells us that Jesus went into the place where the child lay. Jesus knows exactly what’s wrong with this woman and what needs to happen to her. Elsewhere in the Gospels, he tells us that, unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. And this woman standing before him is a living example of what he means. Jesus is not talking about childishness. Childishness is a quality found in children or in adults who have never grown up. Being childlike is an entirely different thing. It is in many ways the whole purpose of life and not everyone achieves it. It’s to have passed from childhood into adulthood, to have faced all that life can throw at us and emerge at the other side into our wisdom years with our capacity to be thankful, enjoy things and, in the most profound sense of the word ‘play’ still intact.I have quoted before the United States President who said that, ‘for the simplicity that comes before complexity I would not give a fig. But for the simplicity that comes after complexity, I would give you my right arm.’ And that is what today’s Gospel stories are about. As Jesus looks at the woman he sees, not an old woman, but the child in her who has fallen asleep. Those around him laugh and say that the child is dead and that nothing can bring her back to life again; that the woman has been so exhausted and damaged by life that all the doctors in the world could not cure her. But for Jesus, that is never true, not for her and not for us. The child in us is not dead either. He or she is only asleep. There are two kinds of old people; those who have come to terms with all that has happened and, despite it all, are fundamentally grateful for their lives. And then there are those who end up bitter and resentful, impossible to please and never happy. And if we are to avoid becoming the second, it’s vitally important that we nourish the child in us - as Jesus says, give her something to eat – and make sure that we never lose that childlike capacity to enjoy, to dance, to laugh and to play.
And we have a particular opportunity to do that at this time of the year. Whether you stay at home or go away somewhere this summer, give the child in you room to breathe. Play, dance, laugh, have fun, do silly things, enjoy yourself, and, if you do, I promise you, you will not be far from the kingdom of God.
BIDDING PRAYERS
This week’s first reading from the book of Wisdom contains an extraordinarily beautiful and positive view of the world. ‘Death’ it says, ‘was not God’s doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living...the world’s created things have health in them, in them no fatal poison is found...This positive, deeply optimistic view of creation is fundamental to our Catholic tradition, and we ask God to stir in us today a deep sense of this truth....Lord hear us
Sadly, not everyone sees the world in this way. For many sad and disappointed individuals, nothing is ever good enough. No matter what others do, they are wrong. The past was always better. Everything that happens is seen through negative and critical eyes. The child in them appears dead and with it their capacity to enjoy God’s world the way they once did when they were young. And so we ask God to protect us all from this tragic outcome to our lives.......Lord hear us
There are many people, of course, for whom life has been particularly hard, and it is not all surprising that they feel angry, depressed or unfairly treated sometimes. Faith in God does not stop bad things happening and there is no guarantee whatsoever that life will be fair. Some seem to have things relatively easy while others go from one crisis to another. And so we pray for those in the community who have a hard road to travel, that God will give them the strength they need..............Lord hear us
The little girl in today’s Gospel was on the verge of adolescence, a potentially difficult and stressful time for all concerned. But it is also a time of immense growth and development, a time filled with great possibilities, which requires patience and tolerance from all concerned. And so we pray for families struggling with this challenging moment in their lives. We pray especially for parents who, like Jairus, are grieving for a child who is moving away from them for a time............Lord hear us
The greatest pain of all, however, is the real loss of a child who dies. There is no experience quite like it, whether the child in question is two, twenty two or sixty two. And so we pray for all in the community who live day after day, year after year, with this unique pain. We pray that those around will be sensitive to the ache which accompanies them wherever they go and never fall into the trap of thinking that, with the passage of the years, they will have got over it...............Lord hear us
And as the school year ends and people begin to go on holiday, we pray that this summer, whether home or away, will be a deeply spiritual experience for us all: that it will be a time of fun and laughter; a time for eating and drinking with friends; a time for appreciating the beauty of creation as well as the beauty of things made by human hands; a time for music and dancing; so that the child in each of us can come alive and learn to play again in the midst of God’s beautiful world.......... Lord hear us
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Saturday, 20 June 2009
12th Sunday of the Year B
When Churchhill described Britain and the United States as two countries separated by a common language, he was touching into something absolutely fundamental. Language is crucial to what it means to be human. It’s the means by which we communicate with each other and, as such, is the most obvious thing separating us from the animal world. And yet, wonderful as language is, it is fraught with difficulties. Designed to communicate what is in our minds, it can often, without our realising it, become a barrier to that communication. And I’m not thinking of foreign languages. They are no problem, because we know from the start that we don’t understand them. The problem arises when we are speaking the same language as others, using the same words as they are, and yet no genuine communication is taking place. When we know this is happening we can deal with it and gradually come to an understanding. But the real problem arises when we think we are communicating and aren’t, when we think we understand what someone else is saying and in reality the communication which lies at the heart of language is not actually taking place. And in this, we have one of the great problems with the Scriptures read at Mass. They have been translated for us into a language we think we understand. But the thoughts behind the words belong to a different era and a different culture, with the result that, although we understand the individual words, the thoughts which were in the mind of the author and which he is trying to communicate with us over the centuries, very often, like an e-mail lost in cyberspace or Captain Kirk not quite making it back to the Starship Enterprise in one of those amazing transporters, fail to reach us. And we have a classic example of this in today’s readings
The key word in this week’s liturgy is the word water. It seems a simple enough word to understand. Everybody knows what water is. And yet, but behind such an apparently simple word, lies a meaning which, unless we can enter into the mindset of a long-lost culture, we can never really understand today’s liturgy.The first reading was from the book of Job, a book which explores the age-old question of why, if there’s a God, bad things happen in life. For much of the book, Job complains about this and the passage we heard just now was taken from a very long section towards the end where God gives Job his answer. It speaks about the sea being pent up behind closed doors when it leapt tumultuous from the womb and God wrapping it in a robe of mist and making dark clouds its swaddling clothes. But these images mean nothing to us today until we know something about the ancient creations myths which lie behind them and in which the waters of the sea represented a primeval chaos powerful enough to resist even God. By depicting God as treating these powers like a baby, wrapping them in swaddling clothes and placing them securely in a play-pen, the author is speaking to us of the power of God over evil and encouraging us, through Job, to trust him completely even when things are falling apart all around us..
And this same idea is contained in the Gospel passage about the calming of the storm which we heard today as well as in that other well-known story where Jesus is said to have walked on water. Throughout the Scriptures, and not just in Job, control over the sea and the calming of storms are signs of God’s power and loving care for his people. As well as that, calm untroubled sleep of the kind we see in Jesus as the storm rages around him, is, again throughout the Old Testament, a sign of perfect trust in God. And so this whole story, aimed first and foremost at the Church of the first century, is an invitation to trust at a time when all kinds of storms are raging. The age of persecution had a;ready begun and the cry ‘Master, do you not care, we are going down,’ is the cry of many in the early Church who feared that God had abandoned them and that the Church was about to be swamped by the chaos waves that were breaking all over it. And so, in the story, Jesus awakes from his untroubled sleep, calms the storm and speaks those words that ring down through the ages, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’
So what does all this mean for us? Well, it reminds us again that if we hear passages from the Bible which make no sense to us, the lack is in us rather than in the passage itself: and that, if the Scriptures are ever going to have the central place in our lives the Second Vatican Council dreamt of them having, we are all going to have to learn more about them. And that’s why, despite a number of other excellent suggestions, next year’s adult education course in the parish will be on the Bible.
But the real relevance of it all lies in the fact that the words of Jesus today, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ are directed at us too. The recent Church History Course showed those who took part that storms have raged around the ‘Bark of Peter’ all through history. And they continue to rage today in all shapes and forms. Just as was the case in those early days, many feel now that God has abandoned his people and that everything we once held dear is going down the tubes. But this has never been true and is not true now. Yes, there are storms raging. Big waves are crashing over the side and we are shipping water, sometimes on a truly alarming scale. Large numbers of people have walked away from the Church in recent years. Scandals, like the one surrounding the recent Ryan Report, are making people ask whether the Church can actually survive in what was once Catholic Ireland, and that’s before the next report comes out about child abuse by more than a hundred priests in Dublin. Years of superstition and religious mumbo-jumbo, along with a chronic unwillingnes to engage with the modern world, have left us looking sometimes as if we belong to the dark ages, alienating us from millions of people today whose thinking has been shaped by the world of modern science.
But the Church will survive. Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of time. There is nothing to fear. The question is: do we believe that and do we still want to be part of that Church?
BIDDING PRAYERS
As storms rage around the Church today, the great temptation is to lose faith in the providence of God and want to go back to what seemed to be a safer place. But this kind of nostalgia for a past which never actually existed has always been an illusion and is an illusion now. History only moves in one direction and that is forward. And so we pray for the Church that, despite the storms battering it, it will embrace both the present and the future with trust and confidence in God...................Lord hear us
One of the most common causes of loss of faith in religious people is the idea that, if we say our prayers and believe in God, he will stop bad things happening to us. But this is absurd and is rooted in a false idea of who God is. Things like ill health or the death of loved ones are inevitable in life. Sooner or later they touch all of us. What faith does is enable us to find hope and meaning in the midst of them and we pray for the wisdom and maturity we need to understand this................Lord hear us
And so we pray in a special way for all present here or in the wider community around us who are struggling to deal with things like sickness or loss at this particular time. We ask God not only to be with them – which he always is – but to give them today a deep, felt sense of that presence, so that, as the storm rages around them or within them, they will hear the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel. ‘Quiet now, be calm. Why are you so frightened?’...............Lord hear us
False images of God are passed on from one generation to the next. And so, as the time for Confirmation and First Communion comes to an end for another year, we pray for all the parents and children who have been involved over recent weeks. We ask God to give the parents in particular the commitment they need to renew, deepen and purify their own faith of all superstition and religious mumbo-jumbo, so that what they hand on to their children is healthy and true............Lord hear us
Many if not most of the conflicts going on in the world today, whether between nations or among individuals, have their root in a failure to communicate. We may be speaking the same language, but often the listening part of our brain is switched off. We all hear what we want to hear and block out unwelcome truths which, if we really heard them, would force us to change in some way. And so we ask God to open up the minds of people everywhere to what others are saying................Lord hear us
This weekend, the Church History Course came to an end with the pilgrimage to the Ruthwell Cross, near Annan. And so we thank God for the blessings he has poured on us over recent months. Next year’s course will have as its aim to help us understand better the Bible and the readings from it which play such an important part in Mass each week, and even now we ask God to stir in many people here a desire to be part of it............Lord hear us
The key word in this week’s liturgy is the word water. It seems a simple enough word to understand. Everybody knows what water is. And yet, but behind such an apparently simple word, lies a meaning which, unless we can enter into the mindset of a long-lost culture, we can never really understand today’s liturgy.The first reading was from the book of Job, a book which explores the age-old question of why, if there’s a God, bad things happen in life. For much of the book, Job complains about this and the passage we heard just now was taken from a very long section towards the end where God gives Job his answer. It speaks about the sea being pent up behind closed doors when it leapt tumultuous from the womb and God wrapping it in a robe of mist and making dark clouds its swaddling clothes. But these images mean nothing to us today until we know something about the ancient creations myths which lie behind them and in which the waters of the sea represented a primeval chaos powerful enough to resist even God. By depicting God as treating these powers like a baby, wrapping them in swaddling clothes and placing them securely in a play-pen, the author is speaking to us of the power of God over evil and encouraging us, through Job, to trust him completely even when things are falling apart all around us..
And this same idea is contained in the Gospel passage about the calming of the storm which we heard today as well as in that other well-known story where Jesus is said to have walked on water. Throughout the Scriptures, and not just in Job, control over the sea and the calming of storms are signs of God’s power and loving care for his people. As well as that, calm untroubled sleep of the kind we see in Jesus as the storm rages around him, is, again throughout the Old Testament, a sign of perfect trust in God. And so this whole story, aimed first and foremost at the Church of the first century, is an invitation to trust at a time when all kinds of storms are raging. The age of persecution had a;ready begun and the cry ‘Master, do you not care, we are going down,’ is the cry of many in the early Church who feared that God had abandoned them and that the Church was about to be swamped by the chaos waves that were breaking all over it. And so, in the story, Jesus awakes from his untroubled sleep, calms the storm and speaks those words that ring down through the ages, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’
So what does all this mean for us? Well, it reminds us again that if we hear passages from the Bible which make no sense to us, the lack is in us rather than in the passage itself: and that, if the Scriptures are ever going to have the central place in our lives the Second Vatican Council dreamt of them having, we are all going to have to learn more about them. And that’s why, despite a number of other excellent suggestions, next year’s adult education course in the parish will be on the Bible.
But the real relevance of it all lies in the fact that the words of Jesus today, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ are directed at us too. The recent Church History Course showed those who took part that storms have raged around the ‘Bark of Peter’ all through history. And they continue to rage today in all shapes and forms. Just as was the case in those early days, many feel now that God has abandoned his people and that everything we once held dear is going down the tubes. But this has never been true and is not true now. Yes, there are storms raging. Big waves are crashing over the side and we are shipping water, sometimes on a truly alarming scale. Large numbers of people have walked away from the Church in recent years. Scandals, like the one surrounding the recent Ryan Report, are making people ask whether the Church can actually survive in what was once Catholic Ireland, and that’s before the next report comes out about child abuse by more than a hundred priests in Dublin. Years of superstition and religious mumbo-jumbo, along with a chronic unwillingnes to engage with the modern world, have left us looking sometimes as if we belong to the dark ages, alienating us from millions of people today whose thinking has been shaped by the world of modern science.
But the Church will survive. Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of time. There is nothing to fear. The question is: do we believe that and do we still want to be part of that Church?
BIDDING PRAYERS
As storms rage around the Church today, the great temptation is to lose faith in the providence of God and want to go back to what seemed to be a safer place. But this kind of nostalgia for a past which never actually existed has always been an illusion and is an illusion now. History only moves in one direction and that is forward. And so we pray for the Church that, despite the storms battering it, it will embrace both the present and the future with trust and confidence in God...................Lord hear us
One of the most common causes of loss of faith in religious people is the idea that, if we say our prayers and believe in God, he will stop bad things happening to us. But this is absurd and is rooted in a false idea of who God is. Things like ill health or the death of loved ones are inevitable in life. Sooner or later they touch all of us. What faith does is enable us to find hope and meaning in the midst of them and we pray for the wisdom and maturity we need to understand this................Lord hear us
And so we pray in a special way for all present here or in the wider community around us who are struggling to deal with things like sickness or loss at this particular time. We ask God not only to be with them – which he always is – but to give them today a deep, felt sense of that presence, so that, as the storm rages around them or within them, they will hear the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel. ‘Quiet now, be calm. Why are you so frightened?’...............Lord hear us
False images of God are passed on from one generation to the next. And so, as the time for Confirmation and First Communion comes to an end for another year, we pray for all the parents and children who have been involved over recent weeks. We ask God to give the parents in particular the commitment they need to renew, deepen and purify their own faith of all superstition and religious mumbo-jumbo, so that what they hand on to their children is healthy and true............Lord hear us
Many if not most of the conflicts going on in the world today, whether between nations or among individuals, have their root in a failure to communicate. We may be speaking the same language, but often the listening part of our brain is switched off. We all hear what we want to hear and block out unwelcome truths which, if we really heard them, would force us to change in some way. And so we ask God to open up the minds of people everywhere to what others are saying................Lord hear us
This weekend, the Church History Course came to an end with the pilgrimage to the Ruthwell Cross, near Annan. And so we thank God for the blessings he has poured on us over recent months. Next year’s course will have as its aim to help us understand better the Bible and the readings from it which play such an important part in Mass each week, and even now we ask God to stir in many people here a desire to be part of it............Lord hear us
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Corpus Christi
My visit to Wales last week to direct a retreat at Llantarnum Abbey, near Newport, for the Sisters of St Joseph of Annecy was, as always, a thoroughly Godly experience. In one respect, however, it was a journey into the past. This was nothing to do with the sisters themselves. They were great. Nor was it to do with the accommodation. I had a lovely little cottage at the bottom of the garden all to myself. No: it was nothing to do with these things. It was to do with the TV reception in the area. For some reason, Channel Five was unavailable, and with Channel Four entirely in Welsh, I was reduced to just three stations. Can you imagine it: trying to survive for a whole week with only BBC1, BBC2 and ITVWales? It was tough going, I can tell you. But God works in strange ways and in this case it was through the fact that, deprived of TV channels, I listened more to the radio. As a result, I heard the first of this year’s Reith Lectures on Radio 4, and this has became the starting point for today’s homily.
The lectures are being given this year by a man called Michael Sandel who lectures at Harvard University, and his theme, one we ourselves have returned to over and over again in recent months, is the current financial and political crises and what they tell us about ourselves and the morality of our public life. As we have done many times, he detects in our society today a restless impatience with politics as it is and a need to develop deeper moral and spiritual values. We cannot, he argues, allow economists to tell us what to do. They can advise us when we need their advice, but in the end there are things which money cannot buy and things which it can buy but shouldn’t. What we are witnessing, he says, is the end of the era of market triumphalism, an era which, he argues, began with Thatcher and Reagan, continued through Blair and Clinton, and has now been seen for the fundamentally flawed theory it always was. He didn’t quote Pope John Paul II, but he could have done when, in his encyclical on work, the Pope wrote that economies exist for people and not people for economies. We used to be a society with a market economy. Now, Sandel claims, we have become a market society, a society which, to shift to an image you have heard from me many times over the years, worships the goddess money, lives by her commandments, treats as heretics those who question her and sacrifices every day on her altar the lives of millions of human beings who are created for something so much better. And now, as I suggested to you myself two weeks ago, the world has a window of opportunity. There are those who just want the current crisis to pass so that we can get back to what we were doing before, as many fear is starting to happen with the banks. But there is an alternative view, a far more prophetic and far-seeing view, which demands that we reflect on what has happened, learn from it and embrace profound change. Professor Sandel calls for nothing less than a new kind of politics, dominated, not by personal greed – the ‘what’s in it for me mentality’ – but by a deep commitment to the whole concept of the common good, a term taken straight from St Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages.
So why am I saying all this to you today on the Feast of Corpus Christi? Should I not be talking about holy things like Transubstantiation and Benediction instead of all this political and economic stuff? Surely that is not what you come to Mass for. If you want to hear that you can watch Newsnight on TV. Well, there are those who take that view, maybe even some of you here, but it is a view which I believe is completely and utterly mistaken and, as it happens, is completely at odds with the teaching of the Church over the last fifty years The world today is faced with huge moral issues, issues of right and wrong, which inevitably take us into the world of politics and economics and if there were only one day in the whole year for speaking about these things, it would be today, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. So what do I mean by this?
Well, as the world struggles at the beginning of a new millennium to come to terms with questions of what is the right way for human beings to live and organise our society, the Mass, the Eucharist, which we celebrate each week, holds up before us two fundamental truths. And the first of these is the truth that we are created in the image and likeness of a God who poured himself out for us and died on a cross for us. In other words, if we are to become what we are created to be, if we are to achieve the happiness we all long for, if we are to discover what it means to be fully human, then it will be by giving rather than receiving, pouring ourselves out for others rather than dominating them, serving rather than being served and ultimately dying to self so as to become the people we really are. And until we begin to understand this, there will be no new politics not dominated by greed and self-interest.
And the second truth we celebrate here each week is the truth that, in the Risen Jesus, really present among us under the appearances of bread and wine, we are united with every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. Every celebration of the Eucharist is an invitation to become more like the one who comes to us in Holy Communion, to become other Christs, and as this begins to happen the whole way we see the world will begin to change. It will mean an end to barriers between peoples. It will involve washing the feet of those who, under the old tired, failed way of thinking, were our enemies. It will be the beginning of the end of the ‘What’s in it for me’ approach to economic policy, the unquestioned presumption that the job of every government is to look after the national interest, and the start of new global thinking which embraces the whole of humanity.
None of this, of course will come easily. But there are already signs of it happening, the green shoots of moral and spiritual recovery, if you like. And the key is here, right under our noses. It’s what the Mass and the Feast of Corpus Christi have always been about.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The Eucharist, far from being a cosy, comfortable gathering, challenges at many different levels those who even begin to understand it. Every Mass should have a health warning attached to it in that it calls us embrace ways of thinking and living which are radically at odds with the values of the world we live in. To come to Mass and be open to what happens here is a dangerous and subversive thing to do, and we pray for the grace to see that today..........Lord hear us
Above all, the Eucharist challenges us to reach beyond the limits of traditional human thinking. A world divided into friends and enemies, those who are on our side and those who are against us, the deserving or undeserving poor, makes no sense to those who enter seriously into the mystery of the Eucharist and receive the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion. In Jesus, we are united in love with every human being without exception and we pray for the grace to see that too.........Lord hear us
The Eucharist also challenges our understanding. In today’s Gospel, we heard how Jesus took bread and said ‘This is body.’ He then took wine and said ‘This is my blood,’ words which millions have believed to be true for centuries and which for a thousand years has been celebrated on the Feast of Corpus Christi. But now, many no longer believe this because it does not make sense to us and we cannot explain it. And so we ask God to free us from such intellectual arrogance................Lord hear us
Our current anger with politicians, while understandable, is also dangerous. Through politics, we shape the kind of world we live in. Major decisions are made about how our money is spent, what we are going to invest in, what groups we are going to help, whose country we are going to invade and so on. These are major moral as well as political and economic questions and must not be left to politicians alone. And so we pray for the commitment we need to play our part in the process..............Lord hear us
In his Reith lecture, professor Michael Sandel has said that there are things which money can’t buy as well as things which it can buy but shouldn’t. We must not, he went on, allow economists to tell us what to do. Without realising it or wanting it to happen, he argues, we have become a society ruled by market forces. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to seek the things in life which really matter and not be seduced by the false values of the consumerism that surrounds us.............Lord hear us
And we pray for those who govern our country. Like the rest of us, they are flawed human beings. But they are not monsters. Many of them are good people who went into politics with the best of intentions, even if they have subsequently been seduced and led astray by an expenses system which has corrupted many. But they are human beings who play an important part in our society. And so, as sinners ourselves, unable, therefore, to throw the first stone, we pray for them today...........Lord hear us
The lectures are being given this year by a man called Michael Sandel who lectures at Harvard University, and his theme, one we ourselves have returned to over and over again in recent months, is the current financial and political crises and what they tell us about ourselves and the morality of our public life. As we have done many times, he detects in our society today a restless impatience with politics as it is and a need to develop deeper moral and spiritual values. We cannot, he argues, allow economists to tell us what to do. They can advise us when we need their advice, but in the end there are things which money cannot buy and things which it can buy but shouldn’t. What we are witnessing, he says, is the end of the era of market triumphalism, an era which, he argues, began with Thatcher and Reagan, continued through Blair and Clinton, and has now been seen for the fundamentally flawed theory it always was. He didn’t quote Pope John Paul II, but he could have done when, in his encyclical on work, the Pope wrote that economies exist for people and not people for economies. We used to be a society with a market economy. Now, Sandel claims, we have become a market society, a society which, to shift to an image you have heard from me many times over the years, worships the goddess money, lives by her commandments, treats as heretics those who question her and sacrifices every day on her altar the lives of millions of human beings who are created for something so much better. And now, as I suggested to you myself two weeks ago, the world has a window of opportunity. There are those who just want the current crisis to pass so that we can get back to what we were doing before, as many fear is starting to happen with the banks. But there is an alternative view, a far more prophetic and far-seeing view, which demands that we reflect on what has happened, learn from it and embrace profound change. Professor Sandel calls for nothing less than a new kind of politics, dominated, not by personal greed – the ‘what’s in it for me mentality’ – but by a deep commitment to the whole concept of the common good, a term taken straight from St Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages.
So why am I saying all this to you today on the Feast of Corpus Christi? Should I not be talking about holy things like Transubstantiation and Benediction instead of all this political and economic stuff? Surely that is not what you come to Mass for. If you want to hear that you can watch Newsnight on TV. Well, there are those who take that view, maybe even some of you here, but it is a view which I believe is completely and utterly mistaken and, as it happens, is completely at odds with the teaching of the Church over the last fifty years The world today is faced with huge moral issues, issues of right and wrong, which inevitably take us into the world of politics and economics and if there were only one day in the whole year for speaking about these things, it would be today, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. So what do I mean by this?
Well, as the world struggles at the beginning of a new millennium to come to terms with questions of what is the right way for human beings to live and organise our society, the Mass, the Eucharist, which we celebrate each week, holds up before us two fundamental truths. And the first of these is the truth that we are created in the image and likeness of a God who poured himself out for us and died on a cross for us. In other words, if we are to become what we are created to be, if we are to achieve the happiness we all long for, if we are to discover what it means to be fully human, then it will be by giving rather than receiving, pouring ourselves out for others rather than dominating them, serving rather than being served and ultimately dying to self so as to become the people we really are. And until we begin to understand this, there will be no new politics not dominated by greed and self-interest.
And the second truth we celebrate here each week is the truth that, in the Risen Jesus, really present among us under the appearances of bread and wine, we are united with every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. Every celebration of the Eucharist is an invitation to become more like the one who comes to us in Holy Communion, to become other Christs, and as this begins to happen the whole way we see the world will begin to change. It will mean an end to barriers between peoples. It will involve washing the feet of those who, under the old tired, failed way of thinking, were our enemies. It will be the beginning of the end of the ‘What’s in it for me’ approach to economic policy, the unquestioned presumption that the job of every government is to look after the national interest, and the start of new global thinking which embraces the whole of humanity.
None of this, of course will come easily. But there are already signs of it happening, the green shoots of moral and spiritual recovery, if you like. And the key is here, right under our noses. It’s what the Mass and the Feast of Corpus Christi have always been about.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The Eucharist, far from being a cosy, comfortable gathering, challenges at many different levels those who even begin to understand it. Every Mass should have a health warning attached to it in that it calls us embrace ways of thinking and living which are radically at odds with the values of the world we live in. To come to Mass and be open to what happens here is a dangerous and subversive thing to do, and we pray for the grace to see that today..........Lord hear us
Above all, the Eucharist challenges us to reach beyond the limits of traditional human thinking. A world divided into friends and enemies, those who are on our side and those who are against us, the deserving or undeserving poor, makes no sense to those who enter seriously into the mystery of the Eucharist and receive the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion. In Jesus, we are united in love with every human being without exception and we pray for the grace to see that too.........Lord hear us
The Eucharist also challenges our understanding. In today’s Gospel, we heard how Jesus took bread and said ‘This is body.’ He then took wine and said ‘This is my blood,’ words which millions have believed to be true for centuries and which for a thousand years has been celebrated on the Feast of Corpus Christi. But now, many no longer believe this because it does not make sense to us and we cannot explain it. And so we ask God to free us from such intellectual arrogance................Lord hear us
Our current anger with politicians, while understandable, is also dangerous. Through politics, we shape the kind of world we live in. Major decisions are made about how our money is spent, what we are going to invest in, what groups we are going to help, whose country we are going to invade and so on. These are major moral as well as political and economic questions and must not be left to politicians alone. And so we pray for the commitment we need to play our part in the process..............Lord hear us
In his Reith lecture, professor Michael Sandel has said that there are things which money can’t buy as well as things which it can buy but shouldn’t. We must not, he went on, allow economists to tell us what to do. Without realising it or wanting it to happen, he argues, we have become a society ruled by market forces. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to seek the things in life which really matter and not be seduced by the false values of the consumerism that surrounds us.............Lord hear us
And we pray for those who govern our country. Like the rest of us, they are flawed human beings. But they are not monsters. Many of them are good people who went into politics with the best of intentions, even if they have subsequently been seduced and led astray by an expenses system which has corrupted many. But they are human beings who play an important part in our society. And so, as sinners ourselves, unable, therefore, to throw the first stone, we pray for them today...........Lord hear us
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