st matthews blog

THE BAPTISM OF JESUS

2011-01-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

One of the most effective ways we have of keeping God at a distance and not allowing him into the centre of our lives where he might do something radical and new, is to tell ourselves that the people we read about in the Scriptures are different from us and so what happened to them could not possibly happen to us. But this is not true. Just as Abraham was called to leave the place he was in and go to another place that God would show him, so each one of us is called to make that same journey of faith in our own lives. And just as Isaiah or Jeremiah were called to interpret the times they lived through and proclaim God’s truth to a people unwilling to hear it, so we are called to interpret these times and proclaim God’s truth to the people who share them with us. And the oldest question known to humanity, why bad things happen to good people, a problem explored in the Book of Job, is one we all struggle with at various times in our lives.

But what is harder to understand is that this is also true of the things that happened to Jesus. At Christmas, we celebrated the fact that, in Jesus, God becomes one of us and shares our human experience to the full. What happens to him happens to us too, and this includes the experience described by St Matthew in today’s Gospel. Every single one of us has ‘seen’ – in inverted commas – the Spirit of God descend on us, and we have all ‘heard’ – again in inverted commas – a voice from heaven say ‘This is my son or daughter, the beloved; my favour rests on her/him. God, as Peter realised in the Second Reading, has no favourites. He does not do for one what he does not do for another, and if you tell me today that you have never had the kind of experience Jesus had that day in the Jordan, then I can promise you that you have. It’s just that you have forgotten it. And so my prayer today is that, with God’s help, you will remember it again.

My own outstanding experience of this kind happened in the spring of 1957 when I was only eleven years of age. And it might be helpful to know that there is evidence that many, if not most of us, have our most powerful experiences of God when we are young. Teenagers, contrary to what we might think, are extremely open to such experiences, even if they rarely happen in an overtly religious context. Mine happened, in fact, as I walked in the back door of our house in Muirkirk after several hours of playing football on a piece of waste ground across the road. It had got too dark to play and I remember so vividly the bright yellow light as I walked in to find my mother standing at the cooker making chips. And as I walked past her into the living room, she spoke the fourteen most important words of my whole life. ‘Father Conway was here’ – she said -he was the parish priest at the time - ‘to see if you do want to go to Blairs.’ Blairs was the national minor seminary just outside Aberdeen and the reason for the question was that, ever since we had started school, three of us in our class, Michael O’Brien, younger brother of Mary, Canon Matthew’s housekeeper, Andrew Moreland and myself had said we wanted to be priests. And as I walked past my mother, while I had one foot in the kitchen and the other in the living room, I had the single most powerful experience of God in my whole life. It lasted less than a second, but in that short time I knew with absolute certainty that the answer to Kevin Conway’s question was yes. And so began a long and sometimes difficult journey which has brought me here to West Kilbride. That fraction of a second in 1957, my Jordan experience, has shaped my whole life and, no matter what has happened over the years I have always known that I had to be faithful to it.

And this, of course, is the key to the whole thing. As I said earlier, God has touched us all in some way in the course of our lives. The experiences we have had will be very different from each other. No two will be the same, so there is no point in comparing them. But at some point in all our lives we have all been touched by God in a way that moved us deeply. It may have been the day you were married, the day a child was born, the day someone close to you died; but it could equally well have happened in Tesco’s, at the pictures or as you crossed the road. But what matters is that we remember these moments, trust them and live our lives out of them. The danger is that we forget them and live our lives as if they had never happened.

And we can see the importance of remembering such moments in the life of Jesus himself. What happened at the Jordan was something he would have had to hang on to during the darkest moments of his passion, especially at that most human of moments when, hanging on the cross, he felt abandoned by God. Sometimes in our lives we can feel that way too, and when this happens it is so important that we remember the times of consolation and trust them. If God touched us once and that touch was real, then that same God continues to be real even if every bone in our body and every thought we have tells us the opposite.

And we see the same in Mary. Her great experience of being touched by God was the Annunciation when the Angel told her that she was to be the mother of the Messiah. But then, St Luke tells us, the Angel left her. The experience was over and for the next thirty years of nappy changing, cooking, cleaning and drudgery, right to the foot of the cross, Mary had to remain faithful to that brief moment. And how difficult it must have been at times! But she did it. She kept on trusting. She kept believing that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled and by doing so came to the fullness of the kingdom.

And it’s the same for us all. God has touched each of our lives deeply. Maybe you have forgotten. But if you have, ask the Spirit today to take you back, to remind you, and give you the grace you need to live out of that experience now.

BIDDING PRAYERS

It is not only possible, but very common, for people to have quite deep and powerful spiritual experiences of God only to forget them within a few days, sometimes even a few hours. And so we ask the Spirit of God to move deeply among us this weekend, stirring our memories as only God can, so that we can bring back to mind moments, possibly from many years ago, when we have known and felt the presence of God in our lives, so that we can draw strength and encouragement from them again now..............Lord hear us

Not everything that sounds like God, quotes the Bible or uses pious, holy language is from God. Satan himself, in the story of the temptations in the wilderness, quotes the Scriptures at Jesus. Nor is every apparently good thought we have of God and we should be very wary of gods who agree with us all the time. They are mere projections of ourselves. And so we ask God to pour into our lives the gift of discernment by which we begin to recognize in our lives what is of God and what is not............Lord hear us

One sometimes surprising sign of God moving in us is that after we have experienced his presence, we begin to doubt it and wonder if we made it up or if it ever really happened. God has given us the gift of freedom and remains deeply respectful of it. He never forces himself on us and so, no matter how profound the experience may be, he leaves us free to believe or not believe, accept the experience or not accept it. And so we pray for the grace to see how this has been happening to us all our lives............Lord hear us

The story of Cornelius in the Second Reading this weekend marks a very important moment in the history of the early Church. Peter, through a revelation from God, has come to understand that God does not have favourites and that people from every part of the world are acceptable to him. The gospel message is for every human being. There are no more barriers between peoples. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. And so we pray that the world will finally hear this message and understand it...........Lord hear us

The first reading from the unknown prophet of the Exile in Babylon speaks of one who does not cry out or shout aloud or make his voice heard in the street. He does not break the crushed reed nor quench the wavering flame, but faithfully brings true justice. And so we pray for the Church at this time, that it will be both a sign of God’s deep compassionate love for humanity in all its weakness and at the same time a voice speaking up for victims of injustice everywhere..........Lord hear us

This weekend, a great opportunity is on offer to the families of our parish. Through a programme called Living Faith in Family life, which we will hear more about at the end of Mass, parents and children are being invited to reflect on ordinary daily experience of life as the place where we meet God. This is a new course and we are the first parish to experience it. And so we ask God to bless it and stir in us a desire and a willingness to be involved for the sake of the parents and children in our midst.......Lord hear us

THE EPIPHANY

2010-12-31T12:53:00.000-08:00

On 30th September last year, 2010, Pope Benedict published a document entitled, in Latin, Verbum Domini, the Word of the Lord. It’s the latest in a long line of documents in the last sixty to seventy years which call on Catholics throughout the world to put the The Word of God back where it should always have been, at the centre of our lives. But the bible is a complex series of books and there are a variety of different approaches to it. We need to study it and learn to undertand it, not least because the failure to do so, hanging on to often infantile ways of thinking about it, which we reflected on in relation to the Christmas, make it very difficult for people in a modern scientific world to take it seriously. But as well as studying the bible, we need to do something even more important with it. We need to pray it, and one of the ways we can do this is by entering imaginatively into its stories. Imagination is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. We use it when we read a novel or watch a film and without it, without the capacity to imagine new things and new ways of doing things, humanity would still be living in the stone age. These stories, as we also said at Christmas, are like bottles with a message inside them floating through history, just waiting for us to pick them up and enter prayerfully into them. And so I invite you to join me in an imaginitve journey through the story of the Magi.

And as we begin, the first thing which strikes me is to wonder how many people other than those who finally got there had the same initial urge to follow the star Westwards in search of the infant King of the Jews and what happened to them. We know from sometimes painful personal experience that not every thought or inclination leads to action. Many good ideas come to nothing and, in my imagination, this must have happened to many in the place the Magi came from. Like the seed that fell among thorns, they would have been so caught up in the cares of life that what began as a good idea remained no more than that and came to nothing; an invitation to reflect on how often this has happened in our own lives.

But for those who did begin the great journey in search of Jesus, many problems lay ahead. The journey to Bethlehem was a long one and would take them through many different lands. In my imagination many of those who set off would never have been abroad before and so, just a few days into the journey, would have taken cold feet and returned home. Unable to cope with new, unfamiliar experiences, they scurried back to where they were comfortable, seeking refuge in what they had always known and reminding us of the times when we have started journeys or projects only to give up on them when the going got a little bit tough.

But for those who resisted the temptation to turn back, the frontier of a very difficult land to pass through soon loomed ahead, the land of confusion and uncertainty. To leave one place and go to another where Jesus is, involves more than an outward physical journey. Even more difficult than that journey, the journey from one place to another, was the inner journey each person had to make, the journey from one way of thinking to another which inevitably involves a period in the middle when nothing seems certain and everything seems in doubt. And at the centre of this land lies a great crossroads which no one passing through it can avoid. To the left, the signpost tells the traveller, lies certainty, something very attractive to the confused traveller, but in reality this is no certainty at all. It is only apparent certainty in the form of simple answers to complex questions and the name of the town which lies along this road is religious fundamentalism. And many today seek refuge in it. But Jesus is not to be found there. And to the right lies another town which offers some respite to the weary traveller. Its a kind of biblical Benidorm offering all kinds of attractions to distract the traveller and take his mind off the challenges of the journey. And so many who wanted to meet Jesus but didn’t want it enough settle down there and go no further. But for those who are brave enough and committed enough, the road ahead point towards Bethlehem and along this road go the Magi.

But before they reach the place where the child lay, the biggest challenge of all still lies ahead. In search of the infant King of the Jews, they, naturally, expect to find him in a palace. And so they visit Herod. But the one they have come so far to see is not there. They have been seeking him without realising who it is they seek. Unknown to them, the child they are looking for is infinitely more than they could ever have imagined. He is God made man and living among us. He is Son of God and son of Mary. He is something totally new in history with the result that all the expectations and all the pre-conceived ideas the Magi have brought with them from the East – up to now the place where people have gone in search of wisdom -have to be left outside at the entrance to the stable. What lies inside this stable is not power but powerlessness; not riches but poverty: not human wisdom but divine foolishness. The Magi brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh expecting to offer them to the new infant King, only to discover that, far from being the bearers of gifts, they are, in fact, the receivers of the greatest gift history has ever seen: God’s gift of himself. And so, as Matthew tells us, they went home by a different route, their whole lives transformed by the experience of meeting Jesus.

At this point, of course, you might imagine that they would take home with them the story of what had happened to them and who it was the star had led them to. But in my version of the story this is not what happened. There are some things which cannot be shared. We have to discover them and experience them for ourselves. And so when the Magi arrived home, no one even noticed them. By then the memory of the great journey so many had begun had faded. Life had moved on and, just like today, very few people would have known what they had missed out on. ....

So do you know?

BIDDING PRAYERS

On this Day of Prayer for Peace we begin by holding up before God the whole of humanity, torn apart, as it still is, by conflict and division. The journey through history in search of the peace we long for is slow and painful. Bogged down in ancient prejudices and century-old disputes, the world repeats over and over again the mistakes of history and so remains trapped in its past. And so we ask God today to lead us out of this trap into a new way of relating to each other.........Lord hear us

The peace we speak of is a peace the world cannot give. It is a peace only God can give. It is not the result of diplomacy and can never come about through warfare, no matter how many times we delude ourselves into thinking it can. It’s only possible when, through grace, the hearts of men and women throughout the world are changed and we begin to think as God thinks and love as God loves. And so we ask God to bring about this transformation through his Spirit at work in history.........Lord hear us

The Church, like the Magi, is itself involved in a great journey, this time through history. Many times over the centuries, however, it has wandered from the path and become bogged down in one mess after another of its own making. The great sign of this in today’s world is the tragic state of division which exists between the followers of Jesus, and, on this day of Prayer for Peace, we ask God to heal these divisions as a sign to humanity of an even deeper healing among nations............Lord hear us

Our own parish, too, is on a journey. Rooted in the teaching of Jesus and in the tradition of the Catholic Church – especially the documents of the Second Vatican Council – we are moving slowly but surely from religion to faith, from being a people who have heard of God to a people who know God intimately. And so we thank God for the progress we have already made on this great journey and ask him for the courage and faith we need to persevere in it to the end.............Lord hear us

But in the end, it is each one of us who is on this journey. Each one of us is called, like the Magi, to follow the star wherever it takes us. But no two people follow exactly the same path. We journey within the context of the Christian community to which we belong, but, since God has a unique dream for each one of us, we must have the courage to discern our own individual vocation and follow it. And so we pray for the courage and maturity we need to do this, no matter the consequences..........Lord hear us

When St Matthew wrote the story of the Magi – and it is unique to his Gospel – he saw them as a sign, right at the beginning of Jesus’ life, of his mission to all nations. In Jesus there are no longer any divisions between one nation and another. In him all men and women are equal and every person on the face of the earth is our brother or sister. And so we ask God to free us from every trace of racism or xenophobia and fill us with a desire to reach out to every person on the face of the earth.........Lord hear us

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

2010-12-18T03:39:00.000-08:00

It’s easy to understand the dilemma Joseph faces in today’s Gospel. He’s betrothed to Mary, but before they come to live together he discovers she’s expecting. So what’s he to do? Joseph, Matthew tells us, was a man of honour, a technical term in those days for someone who observed every detail of the law. And so Joseph’s first instinct would have been to turn to the OT. And there, in chapter twenty two of the Book of Deuteronomy, he would have found the guidance he was looking for. The relevant section begins by pointing out the obvious; that there are two ways in which Mary could have become pregnant. Either she has consented to have sex with another man, in which case she is guilty of adultery; or she has been forced to have sex against her will, and so is innocent. And to establish which of the two is the case, Joseph, according to the Law, was entitled to call for a trial. Joseph, however, chooses not to go down that road but to divorce Mary informally, in other words, without a trial. In this way, he will spare her publicity, another technical term which meant she would not be ‘exposed to public disgrace’ or ‘made a public spectacle of.’ In the end, of course, Joseph does not go down this road either. This upright man who, up to now, has lived his whole life according to the law, rejects the old religious solution and takes Mary home to be his wife. So why did he do this?

Well, the answer to that question takes us to what we have been reflecting on since Advent began. Essentially, the choice facing Joseph was between trusting what came from outside of himself, the law, or what came from inside himself; what, for weeks, we have been calling a deep interior knowledge which comes, not from external evidence but from the Spirit of God moving in us. And this is clearly happening in the story. The text talks about dreams and angels, but there’s no need for us to take those words literally. What else are they but attempts to describe something much more ordinary and much more profound, namely the deep, gentle but persistent movement of God in each one of us. The religious law which had governed the people’s life for centuries was pointing him in one direction, but Joseph chooses instead to trust the truth we see emerging from deep inside himself. And in this simple but profound moment, a moment intimately linked to the equivalent moment in Mary’s life, which is the Annunciation, husband and wife become one in their openness to God. And in this way God enters our world and becomes part of human history. Joseph trusts the movement of the Spirit. Mary trusts it too. Each of them in their own way says, ‘Let it be done unto me according to your will,’ and as these two acts of human freedom come together, the New Testament begins. And it is a moment which tells us everything we need to know about what it is to be a Christian today.

As the 21st century begins, you see, we, too, are being called by God to give birth to Jesus in the world of our own day. But just as neither religion nor the law were enough to bring Jesus to birth 2000 years ago, so they are not enough today. They were inadequate then and they are inadequate now. For Jesus to be born in the world of the 21st Century, millions of us who call ourselves Christians have to make the journey Joseph made in this week’s Gospel. It is simply not enough to keep rules and perform religious actions. It’s not enough to come to Mass each week and go away untouched by what we have done. Something profoundly new has to happen in us. It is not enough to have heard about God or believe in his existence. What we are called to is a personal relationship with the God who lives and moves in us too, and only if we allow this relationship to develop and grow; only if we learn to listen to the God whose Spirit speaks deep within us – as Joseph and Mary did - will it be possible for Jesus to born in us again today.

But there’s a problem. And it’s this. Deep within the Catholicism many of us have grown up with, there is a deep resistance to the very idea of such a relationship. Brought up to think that being a Catholic is about going to Mass and the sacraments and observing a series of rules, many, because they have no experience of personal faith and cannot imagine what it would be like, actually fear it and think it is taking the whole business of God far too seriously. And so thousands in our parishes live shallow, religious lives, ignorant of the intimacy God offers. But things will not always be like that. God is doing a new thing today and I would like to give you an example of it.

A friend of mine who teaches RE to a fourth year class in St Matthew’s Academy showed them recently the second episode of the programme called the Big Silence which some of you have seen. It follows five people, none of whom were Church-goers, as they make an eight day silent retreat in St Beuno’s, a Jesuit spirituality centre in North Wales where I did the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius myself as a thirty day silent retreat over twenty years ago and where I have directed many retreats since. Dealing with the silence was a huge struggle for all five of them, but by the end of the retreat they had come through that struggle and arrived at a deep spiritual place they had never been to before. Each in his or her own way had met God in the silence and it had changed their lives. And when the programme had finished, my friend asked the class how many of them would like to have that kind of relationship with God. And to his utter amazement, every single person in the class put up their hand.

And yet this should not really surprise us. Many young people today have rejected traditional religion. But that will not be the end of the story. Created to share the life of God the desire for God will surface in them again in new ways and our job is to be the kind of Church which will have something deeper than mere religion to offer them when it does. My friend’s story is a glimpse of the future. The question is; do we want to be part of it or are we too scared of what it might involve?

BIDDING PRAYERS

Joseph, in today’s Gospel, is a model of how to listen to the movement of God deep within himself. Three times in St Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus he decides on one course of action and ends up doing the opposite when asked to do so by God. It is not only Mary who is open to God’s will in her life. Joseph, too, has his Annunciation experience and, like Mary, is willing to go where God leads. And so we pray for the grace we need to be more like them both in the way we respond to God in our lives…...Lord hear us

So long as we take literally things like angels appearing to people in dreams, it is easy to tell ourselves that such things only happen to other people. And so we pray for the courage we need to develop more accurate and more mature ways of reading the Scriptures which enable us to see that the whole of both the Old and New Testaments is actually about ourselves. What God has done in the past he continues to do today and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize this......Lord hear us

Led to believe that being a Catholic was about going to Mass, receiving the Sacraments and keeping the laws of the Church, the idea that we are called to a deep, personal and intimate relationship with God is difficult for many to come to terms with. To some traditional Catholics it sounds ‘protestant’ or ‘evangelical,’ not at all the kind of thing Catholics do. But while there are historical reasons why this has happened, it is a deeply mistaken notion and we pray for the grace to leave it behin........Lord hear us

The Church itself has a long history of resisting the movement of God. Time and again over the centuries it has wandered away from the Gospel and embraced the values of the secular world. And so, in every age, the Spirit has called her to renewal, a call which has always been resisted and continues to be resisted in our own day. And so we pray for the grace we need to read the signs of the times and accept the many challenges of the Gospel at this moment in history without fear or anxiety................Lord hear us

Many today worry about the faith of the young. Born into a deeply secular society very different from the one many of us who are older were born into, the Church as we knew it means nothing to them. But God continues to work in their lives. The very shallowness and emptiness of our consumer-driven society can itself, in time, become the place where a desire for something deeper begins to stir, and we pray that when that happens our parishes will be places ready and able to respond to their needs.......Lord hear us

Being pregnant put Mary in a very vulnerable position. A male-dominated world with double standards in this area has always been very severe on women who find themselves pregnant and alone. And so we pray for single mothers today, especially those who are used as scapegoats for the sexual sins of men. And we pray in a particular way for women who, in the not too distance past, were judged and condemned within our Catholic parishes and who still carry the pain of that experience.........Lord hear us

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

2010-12-11T02:33:00.000-08:00

Between chapter three of Matthew’s Gospel, where we met him last week, and chapter eleven of the same Gospel, where we meet him today, John the Baptist has made a thoroughly modern journey. Last week we saw him emerge from the wilderness of Judaea so sure of himself and his message that wasn’t afraid to confront even the Pharisees and the Sadducees. A brood of vipers was how he described them. People flocked to hear him, news of him spread everywhere, and as he baptized the people in the Jordan John was a man at the peak of his powers. Now, however, just a few chapters and a few months later, it’s a very different John we meet. He’s in prison now. News of what Jesus is doing is filtering back to him and, clearly, he’s disturbed. John, with his garment of camel hair and leather belt round his waist, was every inch the Old Testament prophet. Fire, brimstone and dire warnings about the future were the tools of John’s trade and he fully expected the Messiah to be the same. Things weren’t working out like that, however. Jesus was not living up to John’s expectations, and as he lay there in his dark cell, dark thoughts were surfacing in him. He had gone into the desert convinced that God was leading him there. He had emerged from it convinced he was doing God’s work. His whole life was about ministry. He had sacrificed everything for it and now he was having to confront some truly terrifying questions. What if he were wrong? What if he had been deceiving himself all these years? What if it was Satan and not God he had met in the wilderness? What if his whole life had been a mistake? And so, in desperation, John sends some friends to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or have we to wait for someone else?”

John’s struggle, of course, is the struggle of many in today’s world. Like him, we are living through a time of transition and many things are not turning out as we had expected. For John, it was the movement from the Old to the New Testament. For us, it’s the movement from one way of thinking and one way of being Church to another and it is proving as disturbing for many good people today as it was for John. Our whole way of thinking about God is in turmoil. Old images of who God is, images which, like the OT itself, sustained people’s faith for centuries, are proving totally inadequate for the world we live in. We have lived through a period of change in the Church the likes of which few generations in history have had to deal with, at least in terms of the speed with which it has happened. All kinds of thing we once believed and held dear are questioned now and our faith in the Church itself as an institution to be trusted has undergone serious re-evaluation in the light of things which have emerged in recent years. And so it is hardly surprising that that there are people around today who feel pretty much the way John did in his prison all those centuries ago. What is going on? What, if anything do I believe any more, about God, about Jesus, about being a Catholic? Is the modern world right when it says religion is a thing of the past. Do I really want to be part of it anymore? These are serious question requiring serious answers.

For some, of course, Jesus’ answer in today’s Gospel is not a real answer at all. Jesus, however, has too much respect for John to give him the kind of answer we, deep down, would like God to give. He doesn’t resolve John’s doubts. He simply invites him to look around and observe what is happening. The answer, he is saying, is all around you. It’s in your own experience. You don’t need me to answer these questions for you. You can answer them for yourself. And the reason Jesus has such confidence in John is that he recognizes in him a man of great personal maturity. John, he says, is no reed swaying in the wind, blown about by every passing breeze. Worldly honours mean nothing to him and so he cannot be bought and sold. John is a prophet who makes up his own mind about things and that is what Jesus invites him to do now. Reflect on your experience, he tells him. Engage with these doubts and questions. Don’t be afraid of them and they will lead you to the truth.

At the heart of what Jesus says, of course, is the notion of maturity. It is absolutely vital for men and women of faith today and without it we will struggle to survive the times we are living through. Faced with so many unanswered questions and, even more importantly, unquestioned answers, there are two main places where the fearful immature person can seek refuge. The first is to retreat into old certainties, the most extreme form of this being the religious fundamentalism which all religions suffer from today and which is causing so much trouble in the world. And the second is to avoid the questions, follow the line of least resistance and go along the road, not so much of unbelief – that at least would be a decision – but of shallow, un-reflected living, the road of un-thought-through lapsing.

In between, of course, is the way of faith-filled reflection. Look around you, says Jesus, and you will see. And what I see is a new infant Church being born. Unlike the one which went before, a Church which enjoyed great worldly power for so long, it’s being born into a world which rejects it and has no room for it in its Inn. But born it will be. Nothing can stop the process even when the labour is long and painful. And when the child is born there will still be plenty of modern day Herods anxious to do away with it. But, despite everything, there are people around who understand what is happening. Most of them are not powerful or important in the ordinary sense of the word but they know with that deep interior knowledge that comes from God that this new Church with its emphasis on faith and justice rather than religion and power is our hope for the future; that the birth we are witnessing is Good News for people everywhere. That’s what I see and invite you to see it too.

It may be, of course, that you cannot see it...yet. Maybe, like John, you, too, are confused and uncertain. Well, that’s OK. Keep an open mind and, in time, it will become clear. I promise you.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin this week by holding up before God all who, because things in life have not turned out the way they had hoped for or expected, have lost faith in God. We pray that they will have the courage and maturity they need to engage with the disappointments of life, finding meaning, not in what might have been, but in what has actually happened. God can only be found in what is real, no matter how difficult or painful this may be at times, and we pray for the courage we need to accept this..........Lord hear us

We pray in a special way this week for any priests who, like John the Baptist, have given their whole lives to ministry and now, seeing what is going on around them, are left sad and disillusioned, wondering if they have wasted their lives. We pray that, in the words of the first reading, God will “Strengthen weary hands, steady trembling knees and say to all faint hearts, “Courage! Do not be afraid.” While in Scotland, the Pope urged the bishops to care for priests and we pray that his words will be heard......Lord hear us

Maturity, sadly, is not something that has always been encouraged in the Church. Often in the past the very opposite was seen as virtue in people. Rather than ask questions and so explore the meaning of faith, we were encourage to be quiet and, like children, do what we were told to do and believe what we were told to believe. And so we ask God to help us become a more mature Church which encourages adult faith in all its members and so becomes more and more fit for purpose in the modern world.........Lord hear us

When it comes to the things of God, there will always be more questions than answers. This is because anything we say about God can only be partially true. The full truth will always be beyond us. And so we pray for the wisdom to see that unanswered questions are not as big a problem as unquestioned answers. There are many issues today to which people of faith have no answer and we pray for the wisdom we need to accept this, come to terms with it and live joyfully with its consequences......Lord hear us

In the second reading, St James speaks of the farmer who waits patiently for the autumn rains and spring rains so that his precious harvest can bear rich fruit. And so we pray for the patience, sense of perspective and breadth of vision we need to allow a new way of being the Church to be born in the world today. Like many new births, it can be a long and painful process. Things have to be given time to run their course. There is always a time of waiting. But we pray that, in God’s time, a new Church will be born....Lord hear us

A week on Tuesday, we will, God willing, celebrate our Advent Penance Service. By celebrating the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation in this way, we acknowledge to ourselves and to each other that there is a constant need for conversion both in our personal lives, in the life of the Church and in the world itself. And so we pray for the grace we need to prepare prayerfully for this event, and that, when it comes, it will be a time of deep faith for us, both a individuals and as a parish........Lord hear us

FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING

2010-11-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

The Feast of Christ the King is not one of those that goes back hundreds of years. It was established by Pope Pius XI as recently as 1925 in the aftermath of the First World War in the midst of poverty and deprivation all over Europe the likes of which we cannot imagine today. Like the doctrine of the Assumption in 1950, after the Second World War, it was meant to give hope and encouragement to those who had lived through those terrible years and, in the light of the way things are today, it is interesting to hear what the Pope had to say at that time. Proving once again that there is nothing new under the sun, he wrote in 1925 that ‘the manifold evils’ in the world of his day are due to the fact that, ‘The majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his laws out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics,’ and that as long as this state of affairs continued, ‘there would be no really hopeful prospect of lasting peace among nations,’ words which to a very large extent were echoed by Pope Benedict when he addressed the joint houses of Parliament only a few weeks ago. So much, then, for the idea that the world is in a worse state today than in the past. Human nature is the same in every age and what Pius XI offered the world in 1925 is the same thing we offer it today, Jesus; the Jesus we have been meeting throughout this latest journey through the Church’s year; the Jesus we will meet again next year; the Jesus St Paul speaks of so eloquently in that second reading.

And what he says about Jesus – what we have to say about him to the world today – is that, ‘in Jesus, God has brought us out of the power of darkness and created a place for us in the kingdom of the Son that he loves, and in him we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins’ And how important that message was in 1925. The First World War had been an experience of the most profound darkness. Nothing remotely like it had been seen before in history. Millions had died in the trenches and those who were left were struggling to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened. And to that world Pius XI offered the only hope and encouragement he had to give; the Feast of Christ the King. And who could say that in the age of Iraq, Afghanistan and the ever present threat of economic collapse, we don’t need that same message of hope and encouragement. The whole world needs to hear those same words and, as Christians, it is our task to speak them again to the brand new century in which we live.

And that is why, as I have said to you so often over the last year, that there is no place whatsoever in the lives of those who follow Jesus for the pessimism and negativity about the world which we so often find in Church-going people who claim to believe in the Jesus St Paul speaks of today. Yes, there are lots of problems in the world. There are many things which are not right about it. There are days when the News is so filled with doom and gloom and we can feel discouraged and even depressed about it. But from a place of faith deep inside ourselves, from a place far beyond passing emotion, ever-changing mood or mere feeling, we are called upon to speak to the men and women of our time words of hope and encouragement like those Jesus spoke from the cross to the good thief. No matter what goes on in the world: no matter what happens; no matter how desperate things may appear – and to people who lived through the first World War things were pretty desperate – men and women of faith in every age will always be encouragers of those around them. But to be able to do that, we need to be encouraged ourselves, and in that context I would like to say a few words about the Church History Course which begins a week on Wednesday and continues on a monthly basis from February through to June next year.

Now at first sight, a course on the history of the Church might not seem the best place to start if our aim is to encourage each other. It is, after all, a pretty unedifying story at times and as the leaflet I offered you several weeks ago says, there will no punches pulled and no avoiding of unpleasant truths. The scandals and abuses which have existed alongside all that has been good will be faced up to without fear or embarrassment. The story will be told as it was and I know from experience that, counter-intuitive as it may seem to some, this will fill those who take part with the hope and encouragement we speak of. We ran a longer version of the same course two years ago in Kilmarnock attended by around fifty people, and as they were exposed, in some cases for the first time, to the more sordid aspects of the story, without exception their faith in Jesus was deepened and their commitment to the Church, in all its weakness, strengthened.

And to understand how this happens, all we have to do is reflect on our own experience. As small children we think our parents are wonderful and can do no wrong. I remember very well as a six- year-old telling another boy how my Dad could fight anybody. As time passes, however, we learn, sometimes, very painfully, that our parents are flawed human beings and are not quite as wonderful as we thought. In adolescence it is sometimes hard to see any good in them at all until maturity arrives and we finally see them as they really are: human beings like ourselves with their faults and weaknesses whom we love dearly. And something very like that needs to happen with the Church. We need to face up to the truth about it, move beyond both an infantile relationship when we put it on a pedestal and an adolescent relationship when we could see no good in it at all, to maturity when we see it as it is and love it.

The Feast of Christ the King is about the ultimate triumph of Jesus over even our most successful attempts to mess things up, and there is no better place to see this at work than in the history of this sometimes wonderful and sometimes maddening Church which we all belong to. So come along and learn about it. It will be good.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer this week by holding up before God the world at this moment in its history. As we enter into a new century and a new millennium there is much uncertainty about the future. The problems and challenges of our time are global. There are many tensions among nations and between different parts of the world as we struggle to come to terms with these challenges which will shape the future of humanity. And so we ask God to guide the peoples of the world at this time.............Lord hear us

In parts of the world where economies are in crisis or in long-term decline, millions of young people face a future without any real prospect of meaningful work. Worry and anxiety about pollution and the environment leave many feeling fearful about the future. Some feel hopeless and alienated from society, with all the problems that brings. And so, on this Feast of Christ the King, we ask God to stir in the heart of the young a deep sense of hope about their own and society’s future..........Lord hear us

Even today, millions of our fellow human beings live in the midst of violence and warfare. Some of these conflicts have been going on for many years. Whole generations have never known anything else and can hardly imagine what peace might even feel like. And so we pray that, as Pope Pius XI spoke words of comfort and encouragement to the world of the 1920s, the Church throughout the world today will continue that tradition and bring hope into the lives of those who have none.......Lord hear us

At the root of the hopelessness felt by many in the developed world today lies a way of thinking which deeply influenced the century which has just passed. Many writers and philosophers during that time painted a picture of a world without meaning. There was no God, no life after death, no point in living. This way of thinking was reflected in many novels, films and art and has had a profound effect on all of us without our always realising it. And so we pray that the world will discover again the God who gives meaning to everything.......Lord hear us

And we pray for the Church as it makes its long pilgrim journey through history. It has gone through many stages, faced many crises, confronted many challenges, made many mistakes and got lots of things wrong. But it has also profoundly influenced the world for the better. It has produced some of the greatest and most influential men and women in history and done immense good for humanity. And so we ask God to guide it today as it faces up to the challenges of the modern era...........Lord hear us

We pray, too, this week that God will bless the History Course that is about to start in the parish. There is a huge need for adult education in faith at this time and this course is just one part of this. But we pray that all those who take part in it will come to a more mature and adult faith which will enable them, by studying and understanding the past, to understand also the issues and challenges which face the Church at the present, and so enable us to play our full part in responding to them..........Lord hear us

33rd SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-11-13T03:54:00.000-08:00

As our annual journey through the Church’s year draws to a close, - two weeks today is the First Sunday of Advent – the liturgy invites us, forces us even, to confront a tension which runs through the whole history of Christianity. As followers of Jesus we are deeply committed to the world and all that happens in it. As the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council put it, ‘The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men and women of our time are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their heart. That is why Christians cherish a feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history.’ And yet, if only this were true. If only the followers of Jesus throughout the world were as deeply committed to the human race and its history as the Council suggests. If only we were to be found in the front line of every fight for justice and every protest against injustice and oppression. But, sadly, it is not always like that, and the reason for this tragic failure on the part of Christians in every age lies in today’s second reading.

In it, St Paul addresses a problem in the Church in Thessalonica which has been with us in a variety of forms ever since. He tells the Christian community there that those who refuse to work should not be given any food. This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of social and economic policies emerging these days from the Coalition Government. Anyone who tries to link this passage to the issue of the long-term unemployed, as Mrs Thatcher did when she addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the 1980s, is either grossly ignorant of the Scriptures or guilty of the most cynical kind of dishonesty. Because what was concerning St Paul was not unemployment, but the tendency among some of those early Christians to withdraw from the kind of engagement with the world the Gospels and the Second Vatican Council speak of and retreat into an other-worldly kind of religion which had nothing to with real life. And, of course, it was this kind of religion, which combined piousity with a failure to engage with things like poverty and injustice, which during times like the industrial revolution alienated so many workers from the Churches and led Marx to describe religion as the opium of the people, a drug which dulled the senses of the poor and, with a promise of pie in the sky when they died, prevented them from rising up against the injustices of the day and doing something about them. And to the extent that we still do that; to the extent that we come to Mass, go through the motions and fail to engage in any way at all with, for example, the current cuts and the question of where our spending priorities as nation should lie at a time like this, we continue that long tragic tradition.

But as we engage with the world, we are also called to confront it. To be in the world is not the same as to be of the world. As followers of Jesus, we are called to engage with the issues of our day and bring to them an alternative set of values to those which dominate our current thinking. And the key to understanding this, lies in this week’s Gospel where Jesus addresses the people as they stand admiring the fine stone work and votive offerings of the Temple. All during Jesus’ life, the Temple had been covered in scaffolding undergoing extensive renovation and now that it was revealed again in all its glory, people were flocking to see it. And as they do so, Jesus tells them: ‘All these stones you are staring at now – the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another: everything will be destroyed,’ reminding them, and through them, us, of the need to focus on the things that last rather than on what is passing. We are called to engage with the world and its history, but with our eyes fixed on the values of the kingdom. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be signs of contradiction, challenging the world to move beyond many of the attitudes which have brought us to where we are today and embrace something new. And that is the message the Church presents to us every year at this time as, like people on the highest point of the big wheel on a fairground, we look for a moment into the far distance before quickly returning to earth again.

What it means, of course, to confront the world involves different things at different times in history. But in our own day there is simply no escaping the financial crisis the world is currently facing. At the root of it lies the materialism of our age, the view that only the material exists, that the spiritual is an illusion, and that, as a result the material has within itself the capacity to fulfil our longing for happiness. The result has been consumerism. Living by its rules we have spent more and more money buying things we can’t afford, resulting in a debt crisis which has almost brought the world to its knees, the only solution the economists can offer us being to spend less on helping those in need and spend even more money in the shops.

And in the face of all this, the words of Jesus ring down through the ages: ‘Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ Or ‘Your father knows what you need before you ask. Seek the kingdom of God first and all these things will be given to you.’ So ask yourself today how much you have swallowed the values of the consumer society and bought into its values. Have money or material things become more important to you perhaps than relationships? Do you look to money and material things to make you happy, fantasising about winning the lottery and imagining what you would do with all that money? Do you ever stop and reflect on how quickly your life is passing and ask yourself who are the people and what are things that really matter?

Much of what we see around us every day will, like the Temple in Jerusalem, come tumbling down. Our job, by the way we live, is to show the world what is of lasting value. ‘What’ after all, ‘does it profit a man/woman if they gain the whole world and lose their very self?’

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin this week by praying for the Church throughout the world. Called to imitate and make present in society the God who, in Jesus, was made flesh and lived among us, we pray that it will always be faithful to that calling and show what the Second Vatican Council called its feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history. The world faces many challenges at this time and we ask God to pour into the Churches the wisdom they need to play their part in responding to them......Lord hear us

In the world but not always of the world, we are called both as a Church and as individuals to challenge and stand up to forces and ways of thinking in society which are not of God and so cannot bring long-term happiness to the men and women who share this moment in history. And so we pray for the courage we need to do this. We pray, in particular, for the courage we need to resist in our own lives the excesses of consumerism and show the world, by the way we live, the things in life which really matter.......Lord hear us

If the modern world is to find its way back to God then the Churches must become more effective signs of his presence among us. We must demonstrate to people that we have something relevant and worthwhile to say. We must be seen to be a power for good, standing up for justice and not being afraid to challenge the rich and powerful when necessary. We must speak up for the poor who have no voice and defend them in all circumstances, and we pray for the grace to do this....Lord hear us

And we pray for those who govern our country at this time. Every day, announcements are made which have profound implications for the way we live. Everywhere we turn there are warnings of cuts in services and resources which will affect all our lives. And so we pray that those in government who have the responsibility of making these decisions will never forget that the test of any country’s moral maturity is the way it treats its poorest and most needy citizens.........Lord hear us

Within less than thirty years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. In time the Roman Empire itself fell. Nothing in history lasts forever. Even now, before our very eyes, we are seeing economic power in the world shift from West to East, and at a personal level many of us are only too well aware that life is passing quickly and that we are growing older. And so we ask God today to give us a deep sense of what is permanent and lasting in life.........Lord hear us

Today is Remembrance Sunday. And so we pray for all those from every nation who have died in war over the last hundred years. But we pray most of all that, as we move deeper into the 21st century, the world will see with ever greater clarity the utter futility of all war and, with God’s help, finally move beyond it. We pray, especially, for the wisdom to see through the age old myths which glorify war and pretend that there is something heroic or noble about young men and women dying because of it..............Lord hear us

32nd SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-11-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

This week’s readings, given that we are in the month of the Holy Souls, are, I think, an invitation to reflect for a moment on death and what lies beyond it. Clearly the Sadducees did not believe there was any life beyond death and we know that their question to Jesus about the woman and the seven brothers was no more than an attempt to ridicule the whole notion and make fun of it. The mistake they made, however, was to imagine that life beyond death is like life as we know it now, and it’s this fundamental misunderstanding that Jesus addresses in his reply, pointing out that things in the resurrection are not the same as they are here. And that is something I suggest we need to be very clear about ourselves if we are to express our belief in life after death in a way that even begins to make sense to the modern world. Because it’s obvious from the way we talk sometimes that we make exactly the same mistake as the Sadducees did.

So what do I mean by this? Well, if you are asking me what kind of life those who have gone before us are living now, my answer has to be that I simply don’t know. I may offer some thoughts on the matter, and will do so later, but, in the end, I don’t know. Even as children, many of us learned that ‘Eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love him.’ And yet, despite these words from Scripture, we do exactly what the Sadducees did and speak as if it were merely an extension of what goes on here. And so we talk as though our loved ones who have died are sitting around in heaven drinking cups of tea, reminiscing about old times and waiting for us to join them. But while this way of thinking and the idea that when we die we will see people again in the same way we see them now can be consoling sometimes, it is also, I suggest, one of the main reasons why so many today find the whole idea of life beyond death impossible to accept. They simply don’t believe in these cosy images and fundamentally they are right not to believe them. And this is because the life our departed relatives and friends are now living is quite simply beyond anything we can imagine at this point. And so would it not make more sense if, when death strikes, we were able to just admit this and stand there beside the atheists and agnostics of today in their pain and confusion, neither knowing nor understanding, but believing? In the presence of something so far beyond us, all we can really do is believe. And even that’s not enough sometimes.

But if we could just learn to live with that; if we could just accept the not-knowing, feel the depth of the mystery, and call out to God from that painful place, would our witness not make more sense to the people around us. They, after all, feel the same pain and bewilderment in the face of death as we do and it’s surely by standing shoulder to shoulder with them, sharing their doubts, questions and sometimes their disbelief, that what we have to say about God may one day make some sense to them. I remember once being at the funeral of lady who had loved fruit scones with coffee and the Ayrshire coast. ‘And she’ll be up there now’ said the priest, ‘With her coffee and a scone looking over Ailsa Craig.’ And as I looked at her grandchildren, one of whom had a PhD in Physics, I could have wept.

And there is further common ground we share with the men and women of our time. With or without faith, an experience common to most human beings on the planet today is an immense sense of wonder and awe at the sheer immensity of the cosmos. Hardly a month goes by without some new photograph of the universe or some new discovery which leaves our minds reeling. And it’s by plugging into this kind of experience, rather than by hanging on to out-dated ways of thinking and talking about life after death, that we can help nurture faith in today’s scientific and technological world. Ultimately all we can do is substitute one inadequate image for another, but modern theories in physics about perhaps up to nine dimensions, only two of which we are aware of, and which could involve parallel worlds occupying the same space as we do without our being even aware of them, at least shake our old certainties and force us to re-examine a lot of the ideas we have up to now taken for granted. And although it made as much sense as the one the Sadducees asked in today’s gospel, in other words, none, science has also answered the anxiety of the old lady I knew whose great question about life after death was how would we all fit in. We now know that there are enough stars out there, galaxies even, for us to have one each.

But there is one other image – and like all the others, it is only an image - that I invite you to think about today. And it is the one Jesus himself uses. The children of the resurrection, he says, ‘do not marry, because they are sons and daughters of God.’ So what does this mean? Well, it takes us to the very heart of what it means to say that marriage is a sacrament, an outward sign of something much deeper. And what I understand by that is that the love and intimacy which marriage, at its best, brings to people is no more than a sign, a glimpse of what awaits us all in the future. To love in this way is to glimpse in one person what God sees in every human being. Given the limitations of our present existence, of course, it is no more than a glimpse and even now we often lose sight of it. In the fullness of the kingdom, however, there will be no need for the sacrament of marriage because, set free from these limitations, we shall see the whole world and every person in it as God sees them. And what an experience that will be!

So, without understanding it, let’s look forward to it. And as we think of those who have died, whether recently or many years ago, let’s say together that great prayer of the Church in every age.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them, May they rest in peace. Amen.

‘Eternal rest.’ Now there’s an image to conjure with.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer today by holding up before God all our relatives and friends who have died over the years. Without understanding exactly how it will happen, and without needing to understand it, we ask God to do in them everything he has promised us through Jesus, his Son, who in his own person is the Resurrection and the Life: to share his own divine life with them, to fulfil all their deepest longings and desires and to give them the eternal happiness which, deep within ourselves we all long for......Lord hear us

And we pray, too, for all who live on a daily basis with the pain of bereavement. We pray, in a particular way, for all those for whom that pain is recent and the wound still raw. We pray that, in the midst of this most fundamental of all human experiences, when we feel what men and women have felt in the face of death since the beginning of time, we will meet God and find comfort in the promise of resurrection and eternal life which he has made to us in Jesus.............Lord hear us

Millions of our contemporaries say that they no longer believe in life after death. The whole idea makes no sense to them. And so, in a world where truth is so often defined by what we can understand, they have rejected the whole idea. And yet, when death strikes, people today experience the same feelings and the same questions faced by our ancestors in every age. And so we pray that, by our facing up to these questions in a new way, the modern world will come again to faith…Lord hear us

If we are to have anything helpful to say about death to the men and women of our time, then we must be willing to let go of images which belong to the past and confront in ourselves the not-knowing, the not-understanding and the not believing which are the experience of so many today. Only if we are able to enter deeply into this experience and be with the people of our time in it, will what we say have the ring of authenticity about it and have meaning for them. And so we pray for this grace........Lord hear us

The discoveries being made today about the nature and size of the cosmos are truly mind-blowing. As a result, humanity is starting to realise how little we actually know about these things. At the frontiers of science and technology we are confronted over and over again by the limits of our knowledge. And we pray that this experience will help us become more humble in the face of truth in all its forms. We pray, in particular, that, as the 21st century progresses, science will bring humanity closer to God again.....Lord hear us

In the first reading today from the book of Maccabees, the story of the seven brothers and their great courage in the face of persecution and torture, was written to encourage the people of the second century BC in the face of the threats they were facing at that time. But in every age there have been men and women willing to suffer and even die for what they believed. And so we pray for some of their courage and commitment in the very different circumstances of our own day.......Lord hear us

31st SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-10-30T03:47:00.000-07:00

One of the things I often hear people say is that, although they speak to God, God never seems to say anything in reply. The great German theologian Karl Rahner’s response to this is that we spend our lives talking and God’s reply comes in eternity, but, while there is truth in this, it is only one way of looking it. At another level, the God of that first reading is speaking to us all the time: the God who, as we heard, loves everything that exists, holds it in being and works tirelessly to draw every person to himself. But how does God do this? How do we recognize his voice? How do we know what he is saying? Well, it isn’t always easy? There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who thinks every thought he or she has is from God, as we see today in the kind of religious fundamentalism which causes so much trouble in the world. And yet, while every thought we have – no matter how holy or religious it might appear – is not from God, and while we have to be very careful about what we think God is saying to us in case what we are hearing is our own voice echoing back to us, it’s also true that God is speaking to us all the time. Mind you, if you ever hear actual voices, contact your doctor immediately. The God who communicates with us is not a God out there who speaks the kind of words we hear with our ears. He’s a God who speaks deep within us and whose words are ‘heard’ in a different way altogether. So how do we hear at this deeper level of ourselves? Well, we can at least begin to answer that question by looking again at the Zacchaeus story.

I think we can safely say that what moved Zacchaeus to climb that tree was the same thing that drew so many others to Jesus. Fundamentally it was a sense of ‘dis-ease,’ the sense that something in himself or in his life was not right. Maybe he was no longer happy in his job, maybe it was his age, maybe it was just a vague sense of discontentment, but something in Zacchaeus’ life was not right and he could feel it. It could have been anything, but, whatever was causing the dis-ease, God was speaking to him through it. Zachaeus wanted to see Jesus and only God could have stirred this desire in him. Deep down in all that was going on in his life, God was at work, speaking to his heart and it’s into that same place we must go to hear what God is saying to us.

And the first thing to look for there is any sign of ‘dis-ease’ in ourselves. As with Zacchaeus, it can come in many shapes and forms. Maybe you are showing signs of stress. Maybe you are worried or anxious about your health. Maybe you are tired, needing a holiday, fed up with your job, bored, irritable, unhappy in your marriage, looking for a new challenge, anxious about growing old or feeling angry at someone or something. ‘Dis-ease’ comes in all shapes and forms, but at the root of it is a discontent which, if properly understood, can be a positive force for change in our lives. Cows in a field do not feel this kind of ‘dis-ease.’ They are all the cow they will ever be. As human beings, however, we can never say that we are all we will ever be. We are always capable of more and therein lies the root of our discontent. Our ‘dis-ease,’ more often than not, is a desire for this ‘more,’ and so, far from seeing it as a problem, we should listen carefully to what it is telling us.

But while this is true, it does not in itself tell us what God is saying. To discover that, we must be much more precise about what is going on in ourselves and identify our own personal version of what made Zacchaeus want to see Jesus. For many today it starts with disappointment and disillusionment with the Church or the kind of faith they have grown up with. What in fact is happening often is that God is inviting us to something deeper, questioning and an apparent loss of faith in many being among the first signs of this. In the area of prayer, for example, the statement ‘I don’t seem to able to pray the way I used to,’ is often the surest sign that God is calling a person to new and deeper ways of praying. For others the movement of God manifests itself in things like anger at injustice or, to quote the Beatitudes, ‘a hunger and thirst for what is right.’ a hunger for something better. To want to know Jesus is to feel an attraction to the things of Jesus and to the values of the kingdom, and that is what happened to Zachaeus.

But there is another feeling, too, which can often give us a clue to where God is calling us, and it’s a feeling of resistance in ourselves. Throughout the Gospels, there are examples of situations where it is the unclean spirits who recognize Jesus before anyone else does. They cry out to him to leave them alone, not to disturb them, and it is this same resistance to something which deep in ourselves we know is right that is the first sign of where God is moving in us. And so if we find ourselves getting angry at something or not wanting to hear it, then it may well be a clue to where God is leading. What we do not want to hear may be the very thing God wants to say to us.

But there are external factors, too, which make it difficult to know what God is saying. The voice of God is always gentle. And so, unless we find time in the midst of the modern world to be silent and reflective, the voice of God will often be drowned out by louder and more strident voices. Consumerism, too, is our enemy in this respect. Hearing the voice of God in ourselves involves being in touch with our deeper feelings, whereas consumerism, the advertising that goes with it and the huge amount of rubbish that fills our TV screens every day pander all the time to our more superficial feelings and desires. And that makes things more difficult too. But this is the world we live in and these things are all part of the challenge of living a discerning and faith-filled life in today’s world.

The question is; do we want to do it? Zacchaeus wanted it enough to climb that sycamore tree and it changed his whole life.

BIDDING PRAYERS

In the second reading today, St Paul prays that the people of Thessalonica will be worthy of their call and that God, by his power, will fulfil all their desires for goodness. What is good is of God and so when we long for what is good it is ultimately God we are longing for. And so we pray for the maturity we need to recognize the movement of God in our deepest longings and desires and the insight to recognize what he is saying to us through them in the deepest parts of ourselves..........Lord hear us

In a consumer-driven society, we often have little time or inclination to listen to our deepest desires. We are far too busy feeding our superficial ones in an ultimately futile attempt to keep at bay the deep sense of ‘dis-ease’ which, if we took time to listen to it, would tell us so much about what is wrong with the way we are currently living our lives. And yet the very planet we live on cries out, urging to us to change before it is too late. And so we pray for the grace to hear this cry......Lord hear us

Once again in today’s Gospel, the people complain that Jesus has gone to the house of a sinner, reminding us of last week’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-collector. And so we ask God to open our hearts and minds today to hear, yet again, those words of Jesus from the Zacchaeus story. “The Son of Man has come to seek and save what was lost” so that we can open up our hearts to human weakness in all its shapes and forms wherever and whenever we meet it either in ourselves or others......Lord hear us

The first reading this week tells us that God, little by little, corrects those who offend and reminds them of how they have sinned, so that they can abstain from evil and put their trust in him. And so we pray for the grace to become more and more aware of our faults and of the areas in our lives where God is calling us to conversion and change so that. like Zacchaeus after his deep, personal encounter with Jesus, we can learn to live more full and more just lives.........Lord hear us

The book of Wisdom also spoke of a God who loves everything that exists and holds nothing of what he has made in abhorrence. And so we ask God to stir in us through the power of the same Spirit through whom he brought everything into existence, a deep appreciation of the gifts of creation and a deep respect for everything that lives and moves on the face of the earth. But we pray in particular for a deep sense of the dignity and worth of every single human being…….Lord hear us

This weekend, along with every parish throughout the world, we celebrate Mission Sunday. Our mission is to share with the people around us the good news of God’s love for the world and, by the way we live, show them that this love is a power for change in our lives. But for this to happen, we ourselves must experience that love ourselves, so that, when we speak to others, we speak with authority. And so we ask God to bring us to a place where we can be genuine missionaries for others.....Lord hear us

30th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-10-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

Having been a priest for forty one years, and given that it comes round once every three years, this is the fourteenth time I have had to give a homily on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. I even remember some of the previous ones and so am aware that there are a whole variety of ways of approaching this story. Since this is my first time in West Kilbride, however, I would like to return to what is my favourite way of understanding or interpreting it, which is to see the Pharisee and the tax collector, not as two individuals, but as one person at different stages of spiritual development. Or, to be more accurate, to see them as each one of us at different moments in our journey towards God. This story, in fact, t takes us to the very heart of the journey from religion to faith which has been the consistent theme of everything I have been trying to say to you since I came to the parish a year last Monday.

And the key is in Jesus’ opening sentence, where he says that two men went up to the temple to pray. There is deliberate irony here, because, in reality, only one of them really went up to pray and it was not the Pharisee. He thought he was praying, but the words Jesus puts into his mouth are the most perfect description of religion without faith you could ever hope to come across. Real prayer, the prayer of the man or woman of faith is focused on God, whereas everything this man says is about himself. He does indeed pay tithes on all he gets. He does fast twice a week. Everything he says about himself is true. By the standards of the day he was an upstanding member of the community, the trouble being that, far from leading him to God, these signs of apparent virtue were the very things that were keeping him from God. Somehow, he has to get from where he is now to where the tax collector is. Somehow or other he has to learn that salvation, eternal life, call it what you will, does not come through good works or performing religious actions. It comes, not as the result of anything we do but is an utterly free gift from God. Ultimately, this Pharisee and the Pharisee in each of us has to come to the place occupied by the tax collector, fall on his knees and cry out, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

So how do we make this journey? How does the Pharisee become the tax collector? Well, although it can take a lifetime, the answer is both simple and profound. We become the tax collector, we move from the world of religion to the world of faith, by entering into the depths of our own weakness. Two weeks ago, when we had the story of the leper who came back to give thanks for having been cured, I invited you to reflect on the things in your own life you are grateful for. Well this week, I am inviting you to be grateful for your sins, for the mistakes you have made in your life and for all your weaknesses. Because it is only through these that we can come to know the truth about who we are in relation to God and so be able to make those words of the tax collector our own.

Human weakness, of course, comes in all shapes and forms. Sometimes they are big and glaring, as is the case, for example, the rampant alcoholic or the very public womaniser, and sometimes they are low key and persistent, the kind we spend years struggling with and never seem to get on top of: ordinary, simple things like bad temper, envy of others, laziness and so on. Our mistakes, too, come in a whole variety of shapes and sizes. Some are major, like a marriage entered into when we knew, deep down, that it was wrong, or an affair which seemed to offer happiness only to bring misery and heartbreak to everyone concerned. Sometimes it is just a matter of bad judgement; a poor career choice, money thrown away foolishly or a family situation badly handled. There are things, too, about which we can do nothing; things like growing older and the inevitable physical diminishment that goes with it. And so we could go on. But what all of these things do for the person who has the maturity and depth to reflect on them prayerfully is to teach us the full truth about ourselves and set us free from the most profound of all lies, the illusion that we are gods in our own lives. Only when we finally accept this and recognize the One who is God can we begin to leave behind the world of religion, symbolized by the Pharisee, and enter the world of faith where the tax collector in us is able to cry out, “God, be merciful to me, a weak flawed human being who can do nothing without you.” The person who can finally say this and mean it, far from worrying about his or her sins and mistakes, will thank God for them. And this is because these same sins and mistakes have, in his infinite providence, become the place of encounter with God’s deep, forgiving love.

But if this is true of us as individuals, it is also true of the Church as a whole. Certainly the Pharisee was alive and well in the Church many of us grew up in. Secure in our Catholicism, with its novenas, nine Fridays, miraculous medals and so on, we considered ourselves superior to others and regularly thanked God that we were not like the rest of men either. Some of us even believed that only Catholics went to heaven. But how all that has changed. Falling numbers, churches having to close, young people walking away in their droves, the scandal of sex abuse, are forcing us to face up to the truth about that Church. Outside it was all clean and tidy while inside all kinds of rottenness lay hidden. And this truth, even when it is very painful, is slowly but surely setting us free. We are a less arrogant Church than we used to be, although the process of change is far from complete. Millions, however, are finally seeing through the lie that is religion and embarking for the first time on the great journey of faith.

And it is truly wonderful. The Pharisee in the Church is slowly but surely becoming the tax collector and it is God’s doing. Recognize what is happening both in yourself and in the Church and, from the bottom of your heart, thank him for it.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We pray first of all today for the Church throughout the world. We pray that, as it is forced by the media to confront the reality of its own weakness, a weakness which, in the past, we often chose to close our eyes to, it will come to the profound sense of humility and dependence on God it needs if it is to engage in a credible and meaningful way with the world of the 21st century. And so, far from blaming or demonising those who draw these weaknesses to our attention, we thank God for them............Lord hear us

As the previously hidden or deliberately ignored deeply disturbing weaknesses of the Church come to light, many in recent years have lost faith and walk away. And so we pray for all who have been affected in this way. We pray that we will all have the courage and maturity we need to let go of unrealistic, often infantile expectations and continue to live and grow in a Church which, like every single one of its members, is deeply flawed.........Lord hear us

We all make mistakes in our lives. For some people, however, the consequences of the mistakes they make are far-reaching and affect the whole course of their lives. And so we pray for all in the community around us of whom this is true. We pray that, with God’s help, they will learn to forgive themselves and come to see how God has been with them through all that has happened. And we pray, too, for the compassion we need to stop holding the past mistakes of others against them........Lord hear us

For a whole series of understandable reasons, not least among which have been the shortcomings of those of us who claim to believe in him, the world today has largely lost its sense of God. And so we pray that, in and through the many problems and challenges facing humanity at this time - the products of human sinfulness in all its many shapes and forms – the men and women of our time will come to know again both our need for God and the sheer depth of his love for us……Lord hear us

The first reading this week speaks to us of a God who shows no respect for personages to the detriment of the poor man. And so we pray for all who exercise leadership today in Britain, that they will, through the power of his Spirit, become more like God and learn to hear and listen to the cries of the poor. We pray, in particular, that the poor will not be turned into scapegoats and be made to pay the price for the financial folly which has brought our country’s economy to where it is today……...Lord hear us

Today is Mission Sunday, and so we pray that God will stir in all our hearts a deep desire to share our faith with others. The message that we are loved sinners; that our faults and failings are in no way an obstacle to the experience of God’s love; that, despite our weakness and our many mistakes, God longs to share his life with us, is something the world of our time desperately needs to hear. And so we pray that, as a parish, we will always communicate this to those who come to us.......Lord hear us

28th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-10-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

One of the problems about giving homilies is that you can never be sure that what people hear and what you think you have said are the same thing. I remember one old lady in Kilmarnock. She made the tea in the staffroom at St Joseph’s Academy, and often during conversations with the teachers she would say things like, ‘Father was just saying on Sunday..’ and proceed to tell them something which either had nothing whatsoever to do with what I thought I had said or was the exact opposite. I remember another angry woman who phoned up one evening and went on about how, several weeks previously, I had said that Jesus was a woman. I knew I had never said any such thing, but could not figure out what it was she had heard. Thanks to the wonder of computers, however, we were able to trace it back, to discover that what I had said was that God was not a man and that, when she had heard this, she had thought I was talking about Jesus. I had not said Jesus was a woman, but if he was not a man, what else could he be? And then there are the people who, no matter how often you say something, never hear it. One man came to see me recently who, despite the fact that he had sat through many years of my homilies, was adamant that he had never heard me explain the difference between religion and faith. To some extent, of course, we all hear what we want to hear and there are things we hear many times without really hearing them, until one day something changes and it’s as if we are hearing them for the very first time. And so, although I have done so before, I would like to address a question connected with what I said last week.

And it’s a problem which arises every time I speak about the unconditional nature of God’s love. Someone always asks the question, and sure enough, it happened again last week. “But if God loves us unconditionally; if there is nothing we can do which would make God love us any more or any less; if we cannot earn or gain the kingdom by our own efforts; then, what’s the point? What’s the point in being good? What’s the point in going to Mass? What’s the point in trying, if, in the end God loves everybody the same; and, ultimately, for many people who deep down have always envied those who can lie in their beds on a Sunday morning instead of getting up and going Mass, what’s the point in being a Catholic?” These are important questions, but only those who inhabit the world of religion rather than faith could ask them. And I will try to explain why that is.

Dig down as far as you can to the very roots of religion and what you will find there is fear. Our ancient ancestors lived in constant fear of the unpredictable violent forces which governed the world they lived in and, as we have seen before, religion in its simple and most primitive form was a way of dealing with and alleviating those fears. If they could control the gods and win their favour, then maybe the worst would not happen. Maybe by performing religious actions and offering sacrifices they could get the gods on their side and persuade them to do what they wanted. And deep within our churches that same primitive way of thinking is alive and active. How many people over the years have gone to Mass out of fear of what might happen if they didn’t, especially if, as happened to me, it was drummed into you at school what would happen if we committed a mortal sin and died without going to confession. And how much harm has been done to people who have lived their whole lives fearful of a God who was watching them, keeping a record of every wrong thing they ever did – extending to even their most secret thoughts - and just waiting to trip them up and punish them at every opportunity? Such non-existent gods have caused havoc over the years, limiting people’s capacity to be enjoy their lives and contributing to all kinds of mental health problems like depression and scruples. They even lie at the root of the Reformation. Not only was fear of damnation at the heart of the problem of indulgences, but Martin Luther himself was a man tormented by the fear we speak of. Driven by his fears, he went to confession many times every day and ultimately only found relief from his scruples in the whole notion of justification by faith alone, a struggle which has had long-term consequences for the whole Church.

But for those who have begun to move from the world of religion rooted in fear into the world of faith, a whole new dynamic opens up. In this new world it is not fear which lies at the root of how we live, but gratitude. And here, of course, we have the link with the story of the leper in today’s gospel story. Religion is about doing things for God. Faith is about what God longs to do for us. And as the truth of all that God has done and longs to do in us and for us begins to dawn, deep, overwhelming gratitude is the only possible response. And as it grows in us through the power of the Spirit, our whole reason for doing what we do as Christians is transformed and moved onto a totally different plane. We start coming to Mass, not out of fear of what will happen if we don’t, but to give joyful thanks to God for all that he is doing in us. Christian morality becomes, not a list of ‘thou shalt nots’ which put restrictions on what otherwise we might want to do, but a whole new, rich vision of where human happiness and human fulfilment really lie. The sacrament of penance, which, thanks to the fear we speak of, few people use these days, and which grown men and women still live in fear of, becomes what it was always meant to be, a joyful gratitude-filled encounter with the Jesus who loves humanity in its weakness and longs to lead us beyond the sinful and destructive parts of ourselves which cause so much pain and damage to ourselves and others.

But even in the single year I have been here, I have said these things over and over again. But have you heard them? Only you can answer that question, but my own prayer is that there will be at least one person here this weekend who really hears them for the very first time.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Leprosy in Jesus’ day was a metaphor for sin, and Jesus’ healing of the man in today’s gospel, like all the other healing stories in the gospel, is really about the forgiveness of sin. And so we ask God today to stir in us today a deep sense of the reality of sin in the world and of our need for healing and forgiveness both as individuals and as a society if we are to overcome the selfish, destructive part of ourselves, move beyond narrow self-interest and build a more just future for the whole of humanity......Lord hear us

There is nothing in the whole of life more radical than the Word of God which we hear each week. It challenges us to the very roots of our being, calling us to profoundly new ways of living based on the teaching of Jesus. It invites us to embrace the values of the kingdom rather than those of the consumer-driven society we live in and this is not at all easy. But we pray that, with God’s help, we will come here each week open to the challenge and willing to go wherever the Spirit leads........Lord hear us

The tendency to have selective hearing and hear what we want to hear, blocking out the things we don’t agree with, or simply do not want to hear, is deep in all of us. We use it as a way of keeping Jesus at a safe distance, enabling us to avoid the radical nature of his teaching. We reduce the gospels to something we can understand and accept, something that makes sense on our terms, and so rob it of its power. And so we ask God for the insight and wisdom we need to see how we do this.......Lord hear us

The fear which has lain at the root of religion from primitive times has done immense harm to millions of human beings over the years. It can be the cause of scruples, with all the anxiety they cause in the lives of those who suffer from them. For others, it can be a contributory factor in depression and other mental health problems. And so we pray for all whose lives are blighted by a deep rooted fear of God that they will come to know something of the sheer depth of God’s love for them........Lord hear us

For millions of others, this deep-rooted fear of God has other harmful consequences. Deep inside many religious people, it whispers the lie that to enjoy the things which give us pleasure in life is somehow not quite right, leaving us feeling guilty about things there is nothing to feel guilty about. As a result, many outside the church believe that getting involved with God would mean the end of all fun and enjoyment. And so we pray that, by living joyful lives, we will show the world that this is not true............Lord hear us

Few people in the Church today celebrate the sacrament we call Confession. For millions whose early childhood experience in this area was one of fear and dread, the thought of going to Confession is not unlike the way we feel about a visit to the dentist. And yet it does not have to be like this. Confession at its best is an a joyful encounter with the Jesus who healed the leper in today’s Gospel and we pray for the coming of the day when we will all re-discover this and feel again something of the gratitude he felt.....Lord hear us

27th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR C

2010-10-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

When we had the parable of the Prodigal Son three weeks ago, one parishioner told me she hated that story. It was, she said, so unfair. And many people do instinctively feel sorry for the brother who played safe, stayed at home and kept all the rules, perhaps because we see something of ourselves in him. And then there’s that other story of the workers who came at the eleventh hour and were paid the same amount as those who had worked hard in the vineyard all day long. That, too, seems unfair to many, although the parishioner who hated the parable of the Prodigal son was prepared to give this one more of a hearing. The ones who had worked all day had, she acknowledged, made an agreement, and having been a trade unionist all her life, she was prepared to come and go a bit on that one. And then we come to today’s story. It doesn’t seem unfair in the way the other two do, but it doesn’t seem entirely consistent with them. Any master would expect his servant, even after a hard day’s work, to get his supper ready before he had his own. But what has happened to the lavish generosity of the first two stories? And what about the Jesus who washed his disciples feet and told them that the greatest among them must become the servant of all. Well, this is what I would like to reflect on today.

The reason, I believe, why we struggle with some of the parables of Jesus is because of the things we are taught from a very early age. ‘If you don’t eat your peas there will no trifle.’ ‘If you don’t start behaving yourself there will be no football this weekend’ ‘If you don’t go up there right now and tidy your room there’s no way you’re having your friends here tomorrow tonight’ And so it goes on. Very quickly in our lives we learn that all manner of things are conditional. If we please others and do what they want, they will like us more than if we annoy them or upset them, and very soon this message becomes part of the hard-wiring in our brains. It fundamentally shapes the way we respond to each other, setting us up for all kinds of complications in our relationships, not least of which is the way we learn to use emotional blackmail to manipulate others. We soon learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch. More and more as we move out into the world we discover that it is a ‘dog eat dog situation’ out there. One good turn deserves another. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Such and such a person owes me one. Agnes gave me a birthday present last year so I better get her one this year. We got a Christmas card from the Brown’s today so we better send them one back. It’s the way the world works, the problem being that it’s not the way God works.

To enter the kingdom of God, you see, is like entering another dimension, something I know about after ten years as a prison chaplain. In our country, you see, there are people who don’t live in the same world as we do. They belong to an underclass and although they occupy the same physical space as we do, live their lives in a another dimension altogether. It looks to us as if they break our rules, but the truth is that they live in a world with different rules, where things don’t look the way they do in our world and where the values we take for granted often have no meaning. At another level, scientists speak about the possible existence of up to eleven different dimensions, possibly also occupying the same space as we do, and speculate about whether what we think of as the basic laws of physics which govern everything we know about the physical universe would apply in these parallel worlds. And the kingdom is like that. In it, everything that makes our world go round is turned on its head and the basic laws by which we live most of our lives do not apply. In our world things are earned. In the kingdom of God everything is freely given. That is the whole point of the story Jesus tells today. The kingdom of God cannot be earned and that is why, no matter how hard the servant has worked, the master owes him nothing. The very concept of owing or being under an obligation to do something makes no sense in this new dimension. Fairness, the idea that we should get what we deserve is redundant. Love does not understand fairness and far outstrips it in generosity. It is just not like that. We cannot control or manipulate God in any way whatsoever, which, of course, is what religion as opposed to faith has always tried to do. We can perform all the religious actions we like, but nothing we do or don’t do can make God love us any more or any less.

But it’s so hard for us to understand this. It is so different from what we are used. The idea that we should love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, or that we should turn the other cheek makes no sense to millions. And even when they can see the attractiveness of it, many dismiss it as unrealistic. One politician friend of mine with whom I have discussed these things many times over the years has felt the need to remind me on a number of occasions that we have to live in the real world.

But, of course, in saying this, he begs the question, which is which of the worlds we live in is the real one. Is it the world where virtually all love is conditional and has to be earned or is it the world of the Prodigal son and the man who paid all his workers the same. Faith tells us that it is the latter and that, while the world as we know it now will pass away, the world described by Jesus both in these stories and in the one we heard today will not pass away but will last forever. This is the vision of the kingdom of God the prophet Habakkuk speaks of in today’s first reading. ‘Eager for its own fulfilment’ he says, ‘it does not deceive. ‘If it comes slowly,’ he continues ‘but wait, for come it will without fail.’

It may seem unrealistic. It may seem impossible. It may be hard to believe. But as men and women of faith we are called, not only move mulberry trees, but to turn whole worlds upside down.

BIDDING PRAYERS

It is not possible to enter the kingdom of God unless we turn upside down and inside out many of the things the world has taught us from childhood. The kingdom involves new ways of thinking, new ways of loving, new ways of treating others, new way of seeing the world and new, faith-filled rather than religious ways of relating to God. Its values are very different from those of the secular world and challenge us as human beings to the very depth of our being. And so we pray for the grace to understand this........Lord hear us

In the first reading, the prophet Habakkuk struggles to hang on to the vision which God holds up before him. He is surrounded, he tells us, by tyranny and injustice. Outrage and violence is all he sees and wherever he looks, contention and discord flourish. But in the midst of all this he hangs on to his vision for the future. The vision, he says, does not deceive. If it comes slowly, wait, for come it will without fail. And so we pray for some of his trust in God’s vision for the world which we call the kingdom........Lord hear us

The kingdom of God is not just something for the future. It’s not about ‘pie in the sky when we die.’ The kingdom, Jesus tells us, is among us. It is already growing in our midst wherever the hungry are fed; wherever enemies forgive one another; wherever people in our consumer-driven society sense that something is not right and begin to long for something deeper; wherever religion begins to give way to faith; and so we pray for the wisdom to see this is happening in the world today.........Lord hear us

Many people in the world today can see the need for radical change in the way we live. Politicians speak about it and, in their speeches during election campaigns, promise that, if we vote for them, they will deliver it. But in the cold light of day most revert to old ways of thinking and old ways of doing things. Many lose sight of the original vision which inspired them and cynicism is a constant danger. And so pray for those who govern us, that they will never lose faith in our capacity for something better........Lord hear us

In the second reading, Paul urges Timothy to fan into a flame the gift God gave him when he, Paul, laid hands on him. The gift he had received then was not a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, and he must never be ashamed of his faith. But we, too, had hands laid on us at Confirmation and received the same gift as Timothy did. After the Pope’s visit, Archbishop Nicholls of Westminster has called on us, too, to be less afraid to witness to our faith in public and we pray for the courage to respond to that call.....Lord hear us

In the end, only God loves us with unconditional love. This is because God is love. But through the power of the spirit living in us, it is possible for us to grow in love and for our love, slowly but surely throughout our lives, to become more and more like God’s. And so we pray for this grace for ourselves. And we pray, too, for those people in our lives who, when we have not perhaps been very loveable at a human level, have continued to love us and shown us something of what God’s love is like........Lord hear us

26th Sunday of the Year C

2010-09-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

After his beatification last week in Birmingham by Pope Benedict, I would like to reflect this week on the life of Cardinal John Henry Newman. I wanted to do this anyway, and so when I turned to this week’s readings, I was hoping there would be something in them which would provide me with a starting point for our reflection. Well, I was not disappointed. There it was, right at the start of the second reading. “As a man dedicated to God” Paul writes to Timothy, “...fight the good fight of the faith and win for yourself the eternal life to which you were called when you made your profession and spoke up for the truth in front of many witnesses.” These words could have been written about Newman himself and so I would like to begin by reminding you of some simple facts about his life.

He was born in London in 1801 and at the age of fifteen, after a profound religious conversion experience, he entered Trinity College, Oxford. Fifteen might seem very young to have such an experience, but the evidence suggests that our most powerful experiences of God do come when we are young. My own, for example, was at the age of eleven. And so, in passing, I invite you to remember any important experiences of God you yourself may have had as a child. Six years after his, however, in 1822, Newman, having got his degree, was elected a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and in 1826, having been ordained an Anglican priest two years earlier, became a tutor there. As well as tutoring at the University, he worked, first as a curate and then as vicar of St Mary’s in Oxford, and when, after a dispute he resigned as a tutor in 1832, he continued his ministry at St Mary’s. His Sunday afternoon sermons were famous and students packed in to hear them. And in an age when our capacity to listen to anything serious for more than ten minutes has virtually disappeared, you might be interested to know that during those Anglican days Newmans’s sermons lasted about fifty minutes, although in later life, after he became a Catholic, he cut them down to thirty. My own, in case you are wondering, last between seven and eight.

And it was during this time in St Mary’s that Newman’s conversion to Catholicism began to happen. He was a leading figure in what was known as the Oxford Movement, and despite the fact that earlier in his life he had been very anti-catholic, his study of history and the Fathers of the early Church gradually led him to the conclusion that the one, true Church which he was searching for, existed, not in Anglicanism, but in Catholicism. And so in 1845 he was received into the Church and a year later was ordained a Catholic priest. His conversion caused great scandal at the time. His Anglican friends shunned him and yet he was never fully accepted by Catholics who were deeply suspicious of him. This led to years of painful isolation and it was only towards the end of his life that this particular suffering came to an end when Pope Leo XIII, in 1879, made him a Cardinal. He died in 1890 and we saw what happened last week in Birmingham. But what relevance does this man’s story have for us ? Well, I offer you just three of many reasons why he remains important today.

And the first is the importance of conscience, an idea very closely associated with Newman. He had a deep sense of the fact that God has a unique dream for each of us, that there was something God wanted him to do that nobody else could do, and he was prepared to do it. This meant being to true to himself, and he was prepared to go wherever that led him, even when it led him where, at another level of himself, he would rather not have gone. Becoming a Catholic brought great sadness into his life. It ended his academic career in Oxford and many of his friends, including one of his own sisters, never spoke to him again. But he did it because it was the right thing to do and in this he challenges each one of us to look at ourselves. Are we true to ourselves? Are we seeking to do that unique thing God wants us to do and which no one else can do, or do we take the easy road, pleasing others and allowing all kind of forces outside of ourselves, like the media, to determine what we do and what we think?

And the second thing is Newman’s commitment to truth itself. Truth for him, as it was for Pope Benedict last week, is not something relative. It is not simply what we think it is or want it to be. Truth is something outside of ourselves, something objective which we have to seek until we find it. And for that to be possible, we have to be willing to let go of anything and everything which is not the full truth. “To be human” he famously said “is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.” And so again he challenges us, inviting us to examine ourselves to see how willing we are to change, to embrace new ideas and new ways of thinking, to stop clinging to the things we have always thought, to move beyond our prejudices and open up our minds to the fullness of truth which comes from God.

And the third thing, closely linked to the first two, is the importance Newman put on education. In nineteenth century England, Catholics were not allowed to go to University. It was against the law. And so, after he became a Catholic, one of the things Newman did was found a Catholic University in Dublin which at that time was still part of Britain. He himself was one of the great academics of his day and when he joined a Church which many in England saw as a Church for Irish navvies, he was determined to do everything he could to raise the level of education in it. And in this he challenges us to look at how willing we are to engage with what is now known as life-long learning. How willing are we to make the effort, by reading or by attending appropriate courses, to learn more about the things of God so that we come to deeper personal faith and are better able to share that faith with others?

Blessed John Henry Newman challenges us at many levels. To be who we are and to be committed to the truth in all its fullness is not easy. But it’s what it means to be human.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Blessed John Henry Newman’s deep conviction that God has a unique dream for individual and that there was something God wanted him to do which no other person could do, was the basis of the spiritual journey he made throughout his life. As a result of this conviction, he had the courage to be who he was and follow his own conscience wherever it took him regardless of whether others approved or disapproved. And so, inspired by his example, we pray for the courage to do the same in our own lives.......Lord hear us

Cardinal Newman’s commitment to searching for the truth led him through many stages. For him, truth was more than what he himself happened to think it was at any given moment, and this conviction forced him to change the way he thought many times. But he was always willing to go where truth led him. And so we pray for something of that same willingness in ourselves so that we can go beyond our prejudices and not remain forever trapped in the limitations of our own narrow thinking........Lord hear us

This commitment to the truth led John Henry Newman to see the importance of life-long education. During his lifetime, most Catholics in Britain were poor and uneducated and he saw clearly the need to do something about this. In our own time, we have advantages people then could not have imagined, but we pray for the grace never to lose sight of the importance of education so that, regardless of age or intellectual ability, we are always open to the possibility of learning new things..........Lord hear us

Although Newman was one of the great writers and intellectuals of his day, after he became a Catholic he spent his life working as a priest in a very poor area of Birmingham. So great was his commitment to the poor during those years that, when he died, more than thirty thousand people lined the local streets for his funeral. And so, remembering the story of the poor man outside the rich man’s gate, we pray that Catholics in Britain today will always stand firmly on the side of the poorest in our society.....Lord hear us

The story Jesus tells today has, of course, world-wide implications. In terms of this week’s readings, we ourselves are the rich man dressed in purple and fine linen and feasting magnificently every day. We are the ones whom the prophet Amos speaks of: the people lying on ivory beds, sprawling on divans and dining on lambs from the flock and stall-fattened veal while others go hungry. And so we ask God to stir in us today a deep sense of this sinful and unjust situation which we are all part of......Lord hear us

In this week’s second reading, St Paul reminds the young Timothy of the day when he made his profession of faith and spoke up for the truth in the presence of many witnesses. He urges him to be faithful to this commitment and to fight the good fight of the faith in Cyprus where Paul has left him in charge of the community there. And so we pray for that same grace for ourselves: to be faithful to our own baptism and confirmation and to be witnesses to the Gospel, not in Cyprus, but here in West Kilbride.....Lord hear us

24th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-09-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

I decided this week to have another look at a book a friend gave me over twenty years ago. It was first published in 1975, and in it the author, who when he wrote it, worked in Beirut, explores how the parables of Jesus would have sounded to the people who first heard them two thousand years ago. And he does this by taking Jesus’ stories into isolated peasant communities in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to see how the people there, whose culture and attitudes had changed little since New Testament times, reacted to them. I was particularly interested, of course, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and want to share with you how the book helped me see more clearly where the moment of conversion for the younger son lies.

The obvious place, of course, is in the pigsty. It was there, after all that the young man, according to Luke, ‘came to his senses.’ And this is certainly an important moment in the drama. Having asked his father to divide up his property while he was still alive, he had done what was unthinkable to the people of those days. He had then compounded this lack of respect for the traditions of his family by selling off his share of the land quickly, within a few days, presumably at a reduced price, before leaving. But what would have really shocked the people who first heard the story was the fact that, by squandering the money, he allowed the family inheritance to fall into the hands of gentiles. This was the last straw plus one. Any Jew in Jesus’ day who even sold a piece of land to a gentile would have instigated a ceremony called the ‘Kezazah’ by which a pot was publicly smashed, symbolizing that someone had, in effect, ceased to exist. It was the ultimate disgrace...Except that it got even worse.

If you had been a story-teller in Jesus’ day trying to describe the lowest point a Jew could sink to, you could not have bettered this story. It would be working in a pigsty owned by a gentile. Jews not only did not eat pigs, they would not even touch them, let alone eat their food. And yet this is what the prodigal son finishes up doing. The polite way to get rid of a worker in Middle Eastern society in Jesus’ day – something everyone would need to do during a time of famine – was to ask them to do something they could not possibly agree to. Except that the younger son, so desperate was his position, did it. He was prepared to do what no self-respecting Jew would ever do, touch pigs and eat pigs’ food. If there were ever a personal gutter lower than which it was not possible to sink, this was it, and there, Luke tells us, the younger son came to his senses. But despite everything, this was still not the moment of conversion for him, as the speech he prepares for his father clearly indicates. “Father” he decides to say, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called you son. Treat me as one of your paid servants,” words, you might think, of one who has learnt his lesson. Except that it’s not quite what it appears.

In Jesus day, you see, there were three types of people worked on an estate. There were slaves who were part of the estate, lower class slaves who were not, and paid servants. The paid servant did not belong to the estate – he was a casual labourer – but the crucial thing about him was that, unlike the slaves, he was free. Some paid servants were quite skilled and so were considered the equals of those they worked for. They could earn money and when the people in those remote communities of the Middle East heard Jesus’ parable for the first time they saw quite clearly what the younger son was up to. He wanted to work his way out of the mess he was in and eventually pay his father back. Like his elder brother who had ‘slaved for his father all these years’ he had not yet understood the nature of his father’s love. Each in his own way represents the way of religion rather than faith. The religious person, like the Pharisees two weeks ago, thinks he can save himself by performing good works and religious actions. The person of faith is one who has met the God of today’s story and it’s when the younger son does this – not in the pigsty – that the real moment of conversion comes. It’s only when his father interrupts his speech calls for the best robe, puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet that he makes that greatest of all spiritual journeys. He leaves the limited, narrow world of religion, where his brother, with all his rule keeping, still lives, and enters the mind-blowing world of faith.

But there’s one other key thing in the story: the fattened calf. What the younger son had done had shocked the whole village. The ‘Kezazah’ involved everyone. There was no way back for the prodigal son in this community, which was why the father killed a calf. If it had just been the family and a few friends the goat the elder son speaks would have been big enough. But the killing of a calf means that the whole village is invited to the celebration. They are all called to forgive the son the way his father does and this is the real point of the story. The father is God. The villagers are ourselves and quite simply we are called to love the way the father does. Just as the father drew the whole village into the circle of his love, so God calls us into the circle of his love. The prodigal son comes in all shapes and forms. He is the world. He is found in every family and every town. He is, if you like, the personification of human weakness in all its shapes and forms. He is, in the end, each one of us and until we learn to love and forgive the way we have been loved and forgiven we have understood nothing about God

I suggested last week that the Gospel, when lived, is the most powerful revolutionary force in history. Like Paul’s invitation to Philemon to take Onesimus back as a brother rather than a slave, the teaching of Jesus has locked away within itself the power to change the world. And even if everything else Jesus ever said had somehow been lost to history, in this single story the world would have everything it needs to know about God.

So take time to ponder it deeply this weekend.

BIDDING PRAYERS

The parable of the Prodigal Son can be seen as a story about the whole of humanity. Like the people in the first reading this week, humanity in every age is quick to leave the path marked out for it by God and worship false gods. The calf of molten metal which we read about in the first reading takes different shapes and forms at different moments in history and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize the false gods which lie at the heart of our modern consumer-driven society…Lord hear us

In that same first reading, Moses pleaded with God and God relented. He did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. This story reflects a very early, even primitive, understanding of who God is and yet already the writer has begun to have some sense of God’s love for his people. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will move beyond the limited and inadequate understandings of God which currently dominate our world and learn who God really is…....Lord hear us

Just as the father in the story told by Jesus draws the people of the village into his love and invites them to be part of it, so God draws us into his love and invites us to love the world the way he loves it. And so we pray for this grace. We pray especially that God will enable us to move beyond our natural human tendency to judge others and hold their sins and mistakes against them. We ask him to teach us instead to forgive others and reach out to them in love no matter what they may have done............Lord hear us

The Prodigal Son – or in some cases the Prodigal Daughter – is alive, if not well, in many families. Many of us will know this from personal experience. And so we pray for families, especially here in West Kilbride, where there has been estrangement. We pray that, with God’s help, we may be able to reach out across the barriers of pain and resentment and be reconciled with those from whom we have become separated but whom, deep down, we continue to love as we always have done...........Lord hear us

The Prodigal Son represents, in many ways, young people in every age. The process by which we cease to be children and move through adolescence into adulthood can be long, painful and difficult. At no other time in our lives is the old saying that we always hurt the ones we love more true. At times the gap between love and hate can be very narrow as we struggle with the strong emotions involved. And so we pray for all involved in this struggle, both parents and young people……...Lord hear us

In the second reading today, St Paul speaks of how he himself is the greatest of sinners. Writing to Timothy, a much younger man than himself, he recalls his earlier life: how he was a blasphemer and how he did everything he could to destroy the Church. And so we pray that, during Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain this week, the Church in our country will be more inclined to acknowledge openly its own past sins, especially in the area of sexual abuse, than to condemn the sins of others........ Lord hear us

23rd Sunday of the Year C.

2010-09-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks, both in the Sunday readings and in the weekday readings – which, of course, not all of us hear - the liturgy has been dealing with why the world finds the teaching of Jesus so difficult. It began a fortnight ago when we heard him tell us that we should enter by the narrow gate, adding, rather alarmingly, that many will try to enter and will not succeed. And had we used Matthew’s version of the same incident, he would have gone even further, telling us that the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious and many take it, whereas it’s a narrow gate and a hard road which leads to life and only a few find it. And as if that were not enough, we hear Jesus say in today’s Gospel that if a person comes to him without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, he or she is not fit to be his disciple. By anyone’s standards these are difficult sayings. They are what we would call today counter-intuitive in the sense that they are the very opposite of what we would expect. We are told that only God can offer us the lasting happiness we all long for. But talk of entering by a narrow gate, or travelling along a hard road or, as we heard today, taking up our cross, does not seem a particularly promising way of getting there. No wonder the author of the book of Wisdom muses this morning on how difficult it is to understand the mind of God or make sense of his ways.

And for the last week and a half, St Paul has been speaking about this very thing as those able to attend weekday Mass have been making their way through the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul had arrived in Corinth from Athens in 50AD just after one of the most painful experiences of his entire life. Athens was the most famous seats of learning in the ancient world, and at the Areopagus there – where the learned men of the city met – Paul had tried to explain the gospel in the language of philosophy. And they had laughed at him, something which, for Paul, was far worse than all the stones thrown at him in many of the places he visited. And so, he reminds the people of Corinth in his letter, written from Ephesus in 56AD, that when he had come among them six years earlier it had not been with any show of oratory or philosophy. Still hurting from his experience in Athens, he had come among them in fear and trembling relying completely on the power of the Spirit. Ever since then, he writes, he has been teaching, not in the way philosophy is taught but in the way the Spirit teaches. Anyone, he says, who thinks of himself as wise must learn to be a fool before he can be really wise, because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. And this, in the end, is why, after two thousand years, the world has still not taken on board the teaching of Jesus.

I’ll never forget the day, nearly fifty years ago, when, as a teenager, I was allowed to drive a tractor. It was my first experience at the wheel of a vehicle which was actually moving and I was absolutely thrilled by it. We were potato picking at the time, which meant that the tractor had a trailer attached, and I always remember the mess I got into trying to reverse it. I don’t know if you have ever tried it, but what I learned the hard way was that, in that situation, right is left and left is right. If you want the trailer to go to the right you turn the steering wheel to the left and vice-versa. And what I invite you to understand today is that the Kingdom of God is like that. Everything is the other way round from what we would expect. Up is down and down is up. In is out and out is in. If you want to save your life you must lose it. In the world, the powerful lord it over the weak. In the kingdom, the powerful become servants of all. It the world everything has to be earned and paid for. In the kingdom - as the Pharisees could not begin to understand in last week’s Gospel - nothing is earned or paid for. Instead, it is freely given to all who are willing to accept it And instead of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth people love their enemies and do good to those who hate them. To enter the kingdom is like reversing a tractor with a trailer and there could be no better example of this than in today’s second reading from the letter to Philemon.

The background to this extremely short letter is this. Philemon, a rich man in whose house a small Christian community meets, has a slave called Onesimus who has run away and is with Paul. The penalty for doing what Onesimus has done is death, but Paul writes to Philemon, either from Ephesus or Rome – it is not entirely clear which - and asks Philemon to take Onesimus back, not, as we heard, as a slave, but as a dear brother. And the reason is simple. Christianity has turned the values of the world on their head. The law says Onesimus should die. The gospel says something else which made no sense in worldly terms and which, if it had been widely applied would have shaken the very foundations of the ancient world whose whole economic system was built on slavery. And in this we see the full power of Christianity. It has within itself the power to change everything. It is without doubt the most powerful revolutionary force in history, and it is because at some level we understand this that we have sanitized it and by reducing it to a series of intellectual beliefs and external religious actions have stripped it of its power to change the world.

And so we are all the man in the Gospel today who started to build a tower and could not finish it. Called at baptism to be signs of the kingdom in the world, we – and by that I mean the whole Church down through the ages - are the ones who have begun to build and, frightened by what carrying on with the building might involve, have left the job unfinished. And it will remain unfinished until we learn to speak the language of the kingdom. No wonder GK Chesterton said that the trouble with Christianity is that it has never been tried.

BIDDING PRAYERS

The world today faces many problems to which politicians, economists, diplomats, Aid Agencies and many others struggle to find solutions. But no matter what they do, little seems to change. The poor continue to be poor and the rich grow richer. Conflicts go unresolved. We show no real sign of confronting the problems of the environment. And so we pray that this world of ours will come to see that the beginning of a solution to our greatest problems lies in the teaching of Jesus.............Lord hear us

This week, one more attempt has been made to resolves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most difficult and intractable of all the historic conflicts around the world. People on both sides are filled with an anger and bitterness which flows outwards and not only engulfs the surrounding area, but poisons international relationships everywhere. And so we pray that the people of the Middle East will move beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and, through a miracle of grace, learn to love their enemies.........Lord hear us

It is unreasonable of us to expect people in the Middle East to put the past behind them and reach out to those who have done them harm if we are not willing to do the same in our own lives. As Christians, we are called to be living signs of the kingdom and show the world that the teaching of Jesus is more than a good idea and can actually be put into practice. And so we ask God to help us reach out to those in our own lives from whom we may be estranged in any way, especially within our families.....Lord hear us

Our society today is deeply materialistic and slowly but surely we have swallowed the completely fallacious notion that material things on their own have the power to make us happy. Material things are profoundly good, gifts from a God who pours goodness into the world, but on their own they can never satisfy us. We are more than matter. We are also Spirit. We do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God and we pray that the world will come to see this........Lord hear us

Slavery may have been officially abolished two hundred years ago, but for millions of our fellow human beings slavery is still very much a reality in the world today. Millions in the developing world are virtual slaves to their employers. They are paid a pittance, have no rights and are at the mercy of people who, on the basis of slave labour, grow rich by selling perhaps even the very clothes some of us may be wearing here at Mass today. This, too, is abuse and we ask God to stir our consciences about it.......Lord hear us

One of the fastest growing industries of our day is human trafficking. All over the world human beings, mostly women and children, are being bought and sold to satisfy the sexual desires of others. And this is happening, not only in far away places, but here in Scotland right under our noses. Those caught up in it, often from poorer parts of the world, are living in conditions far worse than those experienced by many a slave in biblical times and we ask God to stir our national conscience about this too..........Lord hear us

22nd SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-08-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

Jesus’ relationship with the Pharisees is so fundamental to the Gospel story that the parable he tells today can only be properly understood in the context of everything else he says to and about them. Who are the guests in this story who go straight to the top table, after all, but the very same people who, in real life, he attacks so vehemently in other parts of the Gospel for wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels, for taking the places of honour at banquets, for expecting to be greeted obsequiously in the market-squares and for having people call them rabbi. And the link between this story and that other parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector could not be clearer.

Today’s reading, as you may have noticed, begins with verse 1 of Luke chapter fourteen and then jumps to verse 7. In verses 2 – 6, however – which we did not hear today – Luke tells us how, as they sat round the table in the house of the leading Pharisee, a man suffering from dropsy came into the room. It is highly likely, of course, that his appearance at the table was a set-up. Why else would such a man have been in the house of such a leading figure in the community? Dropsy was seen then as a venereal disease and the whole idea was to put Jesus on the spot and see how he reacted. This poor man is the real life equivalent of the tax collector and by effectively telling his hosts that people like him – the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind – will enter the kingdom before they do, he is echoing the final words of the other story: “this man – the tax-collector – went home at rights with God. The other – the Pharisee – did not.” So what was it about these men – and they were all men – which upset Jesus so much and stirred such deep anger in him? He called them, after all, whited sepulchres: clean and tidy on the outside and full of dead men’s bones and every kind of corruption on the inside. Well, that is the question I invite you to reflect on this weekend.

And there can only really be one reason why Jesus was so angry. And it is that there was something about the Pharisees, something about the way they thought, something about their attitude to God and religion which was not only profoundly incompatible with Jesus’ own teaching, but which, if left unchecked and unchallenged, had within itself the capacity to do great damage and stop people entering the kingdom of God itself. This was not something trivial. It wasn’t just a difference of opinion or emphasis. It went to the very heart of everything Jesus stood for and he had no option but confront it. It was like a spiritual virus which had to be identified and dealt with. Otherwise it would spread and cause havoc wherever it went, as it has done in every age. Its name is pride, and by that I don’t mean trivial things like being boastful or big-headed. What we are dealing with here is something much more profound. The first reading told us that ‘there is no cure for the proud man’s malady, since an evil growth has taken root in him.’ It’s is a kind of cancer of the soul which eats away at the life of God in us and I will try to describe it to you now.

The reason the Pharisees expected to take the places of honour and banquets and have people greet them obsequiously in the market-place was that they thought they were better than other people. Now if this had been no more than the kind of class snobbery based on wealth or social position which we see all around us still, Jesus would not have like it. But if that had been all it was, he would never have gone on about it the way he did. No, what was so wrong about the Pharisees’ way of thinking was that the reason they thought they were better than others was because, unlike those who they called ‘sinners’, they performed pious religious actions and observed all the commandments of the law. They thought that by doing all this – and here we have the nub of the matter - they could save themselves and enter the kingdom of God by their own efforts. And not only that: they took it for granted that, because they had done this, when they did enter the kingdom they would automatically make their way to the places of honour and occupy the top places. And in this we have the very essence of the pride which the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus calls ‘an evil growth.’ So what is so terribly wrong about it? Why is it such an evil growth and why did Jesus get so upset whenever he came across it? Well, the answer to that question takes us to the very heart of who we are as human beings.

What I am going to say now is something which our modern developed world, with all its science and technology, finds very hard to grasp. People in previous less developed ages understood it better. And it is that we are not gods. We got a little glimpse of it recently when the volcano erupted in Iceland and we suddenly saw for a moment how little control we really have of the world around us. But generally speaking, except maybe when sickness strikes suddenly or some tragedy occurs in our lives, we have little sense these days that, far from being gods, we are mere creatures who, when the crunch comes have very little control of what goes on in our lives. We are creatures, however, of a God who loves us with a love beyond our wildest dreams and longs to share his life with us. And what the Pharisees two thousand years ago and many Church-going religious people, like ourselves, struggle to understand is that this is pure gift. There is nothing we can do to earn it. It is freely given to all who seek it and long for it. Not the virtuous or the Church-goers: not the pious and the holy; but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind in every age and in every conceivable shape and form.

This understanding is so central to who God is, and the way the Pharisees thought so contrary to it, that Jesus had in a sense no option but confront it and challenge it every time he encountered it. And yet it is still around, everywhere we look. Our Churches are riddled with it. People are still trying to keep God happy so that they will ‘get to heaven.’

The question is: Are you?

BIDDING PRAYERS

The difference between the Pharisee and the tax-collector was that the tax-collector knew his need for God and the Pharisee did not. This was because one could see his own faults and the other was blind to his. And so we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize how it is when we are weak that we are strong; how it is our sins and mistakes in life which so often teach us the truth about ourselves and become the place where we meet the God who loves us more than we can imagine........Lord hear us

The Pharisees are alive and well today in churches all over the world. The idea that we can somehow save our souls by performing religious actions and keeping a series of rules is hard to shake off. The tendency to sit in judgement on the world and find it wanting is always with us. The idea that because we go to church and carry our religious actions we are somehow superior to those who don’t never entirely goes away. And so we pray for the honesty we need to spot any sign of these things in ourselves.........Lord hear us

The evil growth that the book of Ecclesiastucus says takes root in the proud man has also taken root in our Western consumer-driven society. Over the last hundred years, we have seen wonderful advances in science and technology, most of which have been thoroughly good. But the down side has been that we have been conned into thinking that we are gods and that technology and money themselves have the power to make us happy. And so we pray for the grace to see how foolish this idea is.......Lord hear us

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that when we give a lunch or a dinner we should not ask our friends, brothers, relations or rich neighbours. Instead, we should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Because these cannot repay us in any way, they are a sign of what the kingdom of God is like. Everything there is freely given. Nothing is earned or paid for. And so we pray that, as a parish, we will learn to reach out more and more to those in West Kilbride who are in need without seeking anything in return..........Lord hear us

On Wednesday, the new Religious Education programme for the children of the parish took its first step forward. The next stage is the In-Service weekend on the 10th and 11th of September. But for the programme to be as effective as it can be it is vital that the whole parish take ownership of it and see it as something we are all involved in. The primary responsibility for teaching the children about God lies with their parents, but we pray that the rest of us will learn to play our part too and so grow together in faith...........Lord hear us

In just a few weeks now, Pope Benedict will begin his visit to Britain in Edinburgh and Glasgow. One of the titles of the Pope is ‘Servus Servorum Dei’ the ‘Servant of the Servants of God,’ and we pray that his visit will be a powerful sign of this for the whole country. We pray that everything he says and does, and everything we ourselves do and say in response to him, will turn these days in September into a time of grace for every person in Britain, whatever their beliefs..............Lord hear us

17th Sunday of the Year C

2010-07-23T13:55:00.001-07:00

So what was that all about in today’s first reading? Did Abraham really have that conversation in which, like a merchant in an oriental bazaar, he haggles with God and, through a mixture of flattery and self-denigration, knocks the price of Sodom and Gomorrah’s survival down from fifty just men to only ten? Well, that’s a question which reminds me of an interview Terry Wogan did many years ago on his early morning programme on Radio 2. It was on Christmas Eve, and he was in Bethlehem, in the church of the Nativity. I have never been there, but those of you who have will be able to picture the scene as the two men stood at what pilgrims are told is the very spot where Jesus was born. And as they chatted, Wogan asked his guide if we could be sure that this really was the place where it had all happened. At which point the poor man simply burst out laughing. ‘Only a Westerner,’ he said, ‘could ask that question. It’s what you Westerners always want to know. You all think so literally. But for the oriental mind, such a question is of no importance whatsoever. We in the East’ he went on, ‘could not care less if this is the exact spot or not. What matters to us is another question entirely, which is: what does it all mean?’

And in saying this of course, the man was identifying one of the biggest problems we have with the bible. The bible was written, not by Westerners, but by people from the East, and to make sense of it we have to learn to move beyond the question ‘did this happen?’ ‘did Abraham really haggle with God the way the passage says he did?’ and move on to the much deeper question of what the passage is about. It’s a different mentality emerging from a culture very different from our own, and until we come to terms with that fact and adapt to it, we will always struggle with Scripture both in the New and in the Old Testament. So what does it mean?

Well, in a world dominated by religion rather than faith, where people lived in fear of their gods, grovelled before them, and would never have dreamt of addressing them the way Abraham does, today’s story, is a prophetic foretaste of what Jesus was to say to his disciples centuries later: ‘I do not call you servants any more, but friends.’ It reminds us that the relationship we are called to have with God is one of intimacy and friendship, that he is not a harsh God lording it over us and instilling fear in us, but a God whom Jesus in today’s gospel passage teaches us to address as Abba, the word we know small children used in those days when speaking to their dads. And yet how many of us really believe that? How many of us experience the intimacy and friendship God longs to have with us? And even if we wanted it, how would we go about finding it? Well, those are the things I would like to reflect on now and to help us do that I invite you to think what your answer would be if someone asked you if you knew God in much the same way as they would ask you if you knew a friend of theirs call Bob Smith. There are, of course, a number of possible answers to this question and I invite to consider a few of them.

The first answer is this. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of Bob, but I’ve never actually met him’ This is the answer millions in today’s world could give when it comes to God and I invite you to ask yourself if, at any level at all, it could be your answer too. We have all heard if God. Otherwise we would not be here. But have we ever actually met him?’

And the second possible answer is this: ‘Yes, I’ve met Bob once or twice, he goes to the same church as I do, but I don’t really know him and we’ve never had a proper conversation.’ There are all kinds of people on the fringes of our lives whom we vaguely know and with whom we sometimes exchange greetings. We may even pay them a visit at Christmas. But in reality, they are virtual strangers to us. So could this be the way you relate to God?

And a third possible answer I invite you to think about and see if you see any sign of yourself in it is this: ‘Yes, I know Bob well. Actually we grew up together, but in recent years we have gone our separate ways and we don’t see each other very often now. He was at our wedding and even came to our first child’s baptism. I often think of getting in touch with him again, but you know what it is like. Life is hectic and somehow I never seem to get round to it.’ This kind of thing happens with so many people in our lives and the same question applies. Could it describe in any way your relationship with God? Another version of this third answer, of course, is this: ‘Yes, Bob and I used to be friends, but we had a row years ago and haven’t spoken since. I still feel angry at him and as far as I am concerned nowadays he might as well not exist’

And so to my final answer, which is this: ‘Bob Smith. Of course I know him. How could I not know him? I’m married to him. We first met when I was only a child and as the years passed our friendship deepened and grew. We drifted apart for a while in our teens and I went out with one or two other people, but in the end I fell in love with Bob and we have been happily married since. The relationship has not always been easy – we’ve had our moments - but Bob’s love has never wavered and I could not imagine life without him now.’ So could this be you, and if it is not, would you like it to be? Because, this, you see, is the kind of deep intimacy and life-long friendship God longs to have with each of us?

But is it what you want? Do you find the idea attractive? Is this the kind of relationship you would like to have with God? Because if it is, all you have to do is ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. It’s called mature, personal prayer. All you have to do is turn up and God will do the rest.

BIDDING PRAYERS

One of the greatest obstacles to the Second Vatican Council’s dream of a Church with the bible at the centre of its life is the difficulty we have understanding the passages we read each week. They come from a different period in history and a different cultural background, and the danger is that, because we can’t always understand them, we dismiss them as not worth reading. But the bible, properly understood, is the Word of God and we ask that same God to lead us to deeper understandings of its contents.................Lord hear us

The bible is filled with evidence that God is calling us to a relationship of intimacy and friendship with himself. The prophets constantly speak of it. The gospels are filled with it. The whole history of Christian spirituality confirms it. And yet we continue to resist, preferring gods who frighten us, gods who judge us and find us wanting, to the God who longs to share his own life with us. And so we pray for the grace to move beyond the idols we have created and come to the intimacy the bible speaks of..........Lord hear us

Many in today’s world speak about God, argue about God, write books about God, appear on television programmes about God and even give sermons about God, without actually knowing God. They have heard of God but have never actually met him. But God is not an intellectual idea to be discussed or argued over. God is a living being who loves us with an everlasting love and longs to make himself known to us. And so we pray that the world of our time will finally come to realise this.............Lord hear us

It is possible to spend our whole lives attending church and never meet God. We can spend our lives inhabiting the shallow world of religion and never know that the infinitely deeper world of faith even exists. We can have ears that never hear and eyes that never see. We can hear the Word of God and remain untouched by it. We can receive the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion but never become more like him. And so we pray that this will not happen to anyone here today........Lord hear us

In today’s gospel, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. And so we ask him to do the same for us. Prayer is not something which remains the same over the whole of a person’s life. It develops as we ourselves develop and what suited us at one time will not suit us at another. One of the surest signs of God at work in us, in fact, is that we find we cannot pray the way we used to. Often it is a sign that he is calling us to something new, and we pray for the grace to recognize any sign of this in ourselves..............Lord hear us

In creating us and giving us the great gift of freedom, God has taken an enormous risk. His deepest desire is to enter into a relationship of friendship and intimacy with each one of us. But he cannot force us into this relationship. Love has to be freely chosen. If it is forced it ceases to be love. All God can do is plant deep within us the capacity for such a love, stir a desire for it in us through the power of the Spirit living in us and wait for us to respond. And so we pray for the grace to do so......Lord hear us

16th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR . C.

2010-07-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hearing Confessions is something priests, have been doing less of in recent years, although St Bride’s must be one of the few churches in the country which does not even have a confessional box. Over the last forty one years, however, I have heard a fair number of confessions, and without giving away any secrets or breaking any confidences, would like to tell you the thing I have heard most during that time. And it’s been from women who have confessed to being angry. Over and over again I have heard it, and as the years have passed have learned to ask a very simple question: “And do you have reason to be angry?”To which, time and time again the answer was a heart-felt ‘yes.’

I remember one old woman in particular who came to confession every week for years and never once spoke about anything she herself had done wrong. Instead, she talked about her husband, a crabbit and deeply selfish old man, who for years had given her a hard time. ‘Ye ken whit he did this week, Father’ she would say, before giving me a blow by blow account of everything that had happened since the previous Saturday. And I just listened, because there was such deep anger and resentment in her and telling me about it each week seemed to help. She was an extreme example, but I have listened to so many women of a certain generation who were sick and tired of being someone’s wife, someone’s mother or someone’s daughter. Women who, deep inside themselves, had had enough of cooking other folk’s meals, washing other folk’s clothes, tidying other folk’s rooms, picking up other folk’s rubbish, attending to other folk’s emotional needs, and rarely, if ever, getting anything back in return. Understandably, they felt angry and confession had become one of the few places where they could express it

So why do I tell you this today? Well, because today’s readings present us with two women who had themselves every reason to feel this way. In the first reading from the Book of Genesis, Abraham reminds me of my friend Alistair who was here a couple of weeks ago for spiritual direction. Over lunch I was telling him that I had six priests coming to watch the World Cup Final and have something to eat, to which he replied, ‘Our Sheila will make you something.” “But, you haven’t asked her” I said to him. “No, it will be alright” he said. And it was. Sheila made a lovely lasagne for us and brought it down all the way from Dumbarton. But what we will never know is how she really felt about it. I did ask her, but maybe only the next priest she goes to for confession will hear how she really felt. And it’s the same with Sarah. Abraham, in typical oriental fashion, rushes out, welcomes the three travellers and offers them food. But what does big hearted Arthur do then? He hastens to the tent to find Sarah and tells her to hurry and knead three bushels of flour and make loaves. The bible is silent on what happened next, but I leave you to imagine what Sarah was muttering under her breath as Abraham disappeared again to discuss the latest football results with his three guests. And we see something similar in the gospel, where Martha is mad at being left to do all the work in the kitchen while her sister Mary sits at Jesus feet doing nothing.

So, as they say on the radio sometimes, ‘What’s your point caller?’ Well, my point is that, no matter how generous and virtuous our actions may appear on the outside, to the extent that they are done out of a sense of obligation or duty or out of a sense of what we ought to feel rather than what we actually feel, and to that extent are not truly free acts in the full sense of the word, then we have a problem. And this lack of inner freedom is one of the great characteristics of religion without faith, which, if we can move for a moment from the personal to the international level, we can see in the recent history of two countries with which I personally have close links. Spain, my second home, and Ireland which I have never visited but from which three quarters of my ancestors came, have, historically, been thought of as two of the most Catholic countries in the world. And yet events have shown that in neither case was everything what it appeared. In the 1930s, Catholic Spain, for that is what it was called, erupted into an orgy of anti-clericalism and hatred for the Church which was truly shocking. All over the country, churches were burned and thousands of priests and nuns were brutally murdered, in many cases their bodies horribly mutilated. And in some cases, this was done by people who, until the week before, had dutifully turned up at Mass every Sunday and paid lip-service to the rules of the Church. And much more recently in Ireland, we have seen a tidal wave of anti-church and anti-clerical protest from a society which until not so long ago had seemed so pious and religious and so proud of its Catholicism. But again, all was not as it seemed.

And returning again to the personal level, we have seen it here in recent years as people who attended church with great regularity, often out of a deep-rooted fear of what might happen if they didn’t, have begun to rebel and gone in a very short time from seemingly practising Catholics to some of the Church’s most angry and most severe critics, an anger which, like the anger of people in Ireland or Spain had been building up for years. How many previously pious and Church-going people have I met in my life whose inner reservoir of resentment against a God whom they have seen as imposing restrictions on them, stopping them enjoying themselves and forcing them to do things they didn’t want to do, has resulted in an explosion of anger when someone close to them has died or something they had prayed for has not happened. The whole phenomenon of atheism and rejection of traditional religion in our day, in fact, can be seen as an angry reaction to centuries during which the whole idea of God was used by those in power as a way of controlling people’s lives and in many ways oppressing them

Martha, you see, is only the tip of the iceberg. Where there is religion rather than faith: where people are forced rather than enabled: where there is obligation rather than choice: where there is fear rather freedom, there will always be anger and resentment.

So how free are you?

BIDDING PRAYERS

Only God is truly free. Human freedom is an imperfect reflection of the freedom found in God and we can only come to experience genuine freedom when we receive God into our lives as a welcome guest and begin to share in his freedom through a deep attentiveness to the movement of his Spirit living in us. And so we pray that our coming here each week to be fed by the Word and the Eucharist will always be out of free choice rather than some sense of duty or obligation inherited from the past.........Lord hear us

The danger of anger and resentment is that we become trapped in it and so are unable to move on. Like Tam O’Shanter’s wife, we nurse it and keep it warm, until it colours our view of everything.It blinds us to any good that comes our way and severely limits our capacity to enjoy ourselves. It is like a dark cloud hanging over our whole lives and takes the edge off even the happiest occasions. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see any way in which we ourselves are caught up in this evil.......Lord hear us

The Second Vatican Council dreamt of the day when the Word of God would again take its place at the centre of our lives. And so greater importance was placed on what is known as the Liturgy of the Word during Mass. But it was always part of the Council’s dream that, as individuals and as families, we would learn again to read the bible at home and, like Mary in this week’s gospel, sit at Jesus’ feet and be fed and nourished by God’s Word.. And so we pray that this will happen here in St Bride’.......Lord hear us

Part of the reason the Churches are suffering in today’s world is that we are paying the price for the past sins of religion without faith. For years, people have resented the power the Churches have exercised over their lives, the riches they had acquired, the hypocrisy they seemed to be guilty of and above all the harsh and legalistic god they had foisted on society. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will come now to know the real God and experience the joy such knowledge brings.......Lord hear us

Every day in life a whole army of people perform services without which we could not live the way we do. And so we ask God to stir in us today a deep sense of gratitude for those who cook our meals, wash our clothes, empty our bins, deliver the food we buy in the shops, and in all kinds of ways make it possible for us to get through each day. We pray that we will not fall into the trap of taking other people for granted, but will always be appreciative of what they do and, where possible, thank them.......Lord hear us

In August, we will be launching the new programme of religious education for the children of the parish. And so we continue to ask God to pour out his blessing on this whole project. We pray, in particular, that what we teach the children and the image of God we offer them will be deeply healthy and as free as it possibly can be from the kind of distortions many of us have picked up over the years. We pray that as a parish we will be willing to learn new and better things and pass them on to the children.........Lord hear us

15thSunday of the Year C

2010-07-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

Of all the groups we meet in the Gospels, from the Scribes and Pharisees to the Sadducees and Sanhedrin, there’s no group that comes out of the story as well as the Samaritans do. When Jesus, in John’s Gospel, met the Samaritan woman at the well and she went to tell the people of her village about him, many of them believed in him and wanted him to stay with them. When Jesus cured the ten lepers and only one came back to give thanks, the one who came back was a Samaritan. And as a direct result of today’s parable the Samaritans have given their name to one of the great helping agencies in the world today. So who were these Samaritans? There are about five hundred of them of them still left today in the Middle East, split between the Palestinian town of Nablus and the Israeli town of Holon. But who are they and what is their story? Well, I will try to answer those questions today in the hope that, doing so, will help us understand why, when he told that parable, Jesus put a Samaritan at the centre of it.

The story begins a thousand years before the birth of Jesus, during the reign of King David. That was Israel’s Golden Age, and under David and his son Solomon the people were united. After the death of Solomon, however, the Kingdom divided into two, Israel in the North and Judaea in the South, the latter centred on Jerusalem and the former in Samaria, on Mount Gerizim. This is what the woman at the well is referring to when she says to Jesus. ‘Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, though you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ But in 721 BC. disaster hit the Northern Kingdom. They were conquered by the Assyrians who took many of the most influential people off into slavery and brought in foreign workers to look after the land on behalf of the Assyrian king. The local people were still the majority – and so their religion survived – but crucially for our story, they inter-married with the immigrant population and so, as far as the people in the South were concerned, lost their pure Jewish blood. The People in Jerusalem despised the Samaritans for this and taunted them about it, while the Samaritans countered by claiming that they had an older copy of the Law than those in the South, still used in their worship today, and so were the real successors of Moses. And so a dispute developed which was still going on in Jesus’ day more than six hundred years later.

And it was made worse after the Jews in the South, having themselves been conquered and carried into exile in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 589, returned from exile in in 538 and started rebuilding Jerusalem. In an impressive act of generosity, the Samaritans offered to help with this work. But the offer was refused. The Samaritans never forgave the Jews for this slight and as a result, the split between the two sides grew even wider. There was constant bickering and periodic violence and when the Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim in 330 BC, it was eventually destroyed by the Jews around the year 129 BC. And so, in Jesus day, a Jew would not even pass through Samaritan territory for fear of being contaminated. Significantly, however, Jesus did, showing that he had no truck with this kind of hatred and prejudice. And it was while doing this that he met the woman at the well whose story we read in chapter four of John’s Gospel.

But for the average Jew of the time, such a thing was unthinkable. The Samaritans were publicly cursed in the synagogues. They could not appear as witnesses in a Jewish court. They could not be converted to Judaism and were even, the Jews thought, excluded from the after life. So, in the light of all that, why, when he wanted to give what is in effect a picture of what lies at the very heart of his teaching, did Jesus choose a Samaritan as the hero of a story which, along with the parable of the prodigal son, has become the best known text from the whole of the New Testament? Well, there is a sense in which it is not up to me to answer that question. The parables of Jesus are like mirrors in which we are invited to see a reflection of ourselves. And so, in that sense, it is up to each one of us as individuals to look into the picture Jesus paints and see something of our own lives reflected there. But let me make some suggestions.

And the first is the utter absurdity of religion without, not just faith, but love. When the Samaritan woman talks about which of the two mountains God should be worshipped on, Jesus tells her that the day is coming when people will worship neither on one mountain or the other but in Spirit and truth. And to worship in Spirit and truth is to move beyond the world of religion, occupied in the story by the priest and the Levite, who did not want to be rendered ritually unclean by touching the man who had fallen into the hands of brigands, and do what the man in the story did. Performing religious actions like going to church and saying prayers without a love that is practical and real is of no value whatsoever.

And the second thing is to look again at the people we despise and look down on. Here, we really do have to speak for ourselves, but if I were to make one suggestion it would be the way we in Britain tend to view foreigners. We are not all racists or Xenophobes, but as an island nation we are probably more guilty of these things than most. At the heart of the dispute between Jews and Samaritans lay the question of racial purity and the superiority of one people over another. It’s an abomination, the results of which we saw under Hitler in the middle of the last century, and I invite you to see even the slightest trace if it in yourself today whether the victims of it are Jews, Moslems or even the English.

And the third thing I invite you to look at is your own family circle. The tragedy of the Jewish/Samaritan story is that the two sides were actually brothers and sisters of each other. History is littered with such tragedies and if there is even the trace of it in your family, see it for what it is and do something about it.

It was no accident that Jesus made the Samaritan the hero of this story.

BIDDING PRAYERS

In the first reading this week, we hear how the Word of God is not beyond the sea so that someone will have to cross over and bring it back to us. It is not in the heavens so that someone will have to climb up and bring it down us. It is very close to us. It is in our hearts and in our mouths. It is part of our daily lives. It is in every person we meet, especially in those who, like the man who fell among brigands, are in need of our help. And so we pray that our faith will bear fruit in a love that is real and effective....Lord hear us

The priest and the Levite were good religious people who observed every detail of the Law. But when they came across the man who had fallen among brigands, they passed by on the other side. To have touched him would have made them ritually unclean and unable to take part in worship. Religious observance had taken precedence over love, the letter of the law over the spirit of the law. And so we pray for the grace to see any sign of this in the way we function together as a parish..........Lord hear us

Modern insights into DNA show in a way we never understood before how closely connected we are with people all over the world. The things which separate us from each other – race, colour, nationality, religion – are nothing compared to the things which unite us as human beings. And so we pray that the world will come to see this more and more in the course of this century and, with God’s help, recognize the sheer absurdity and foolishness of the prejudices which divide us.........Lord hear us

Abraham is the father in faith of millions of Jews, Christians and Moslems throughout history. We believe in the same God and share many of the stories which form the basis of the Scriptures. And yet history is filled the sad and often tragic story of violence and conflict between these three great faiths. In particular, we have fought and squabbled over the land we call ‘holy’ and the city, Jerusalem, which lies at the heart of it. And so we ask God to lead us out of this never-ending tragedy........Lord hear us

The conflict between Jews and Samaritans which, given that he was a Jew, was part of Jesus’ own personal history was, in essence, a family dispute. And so we pray for families everywhere which are torn apart by arguments and disputes which have grown out of all proportion and got completely out of control. We ask God to pour his Spirit into all those caught up in such situations and give them the courage they need to stretch out a hand of friendship and accept it when it is offered by others..........Lord hear us

The Samaritans, of course, have given their name to an organization which provides a listening ear twenty four hours a day to anyone who is in need. Many of those who phone the Samaritans are desperate and alone with no one to talk to and in some cases close to suicide. And so we pray for all those mostly anonymous men and women who are willing to sit by a phone ready to listen without judgement to so many stories of human anguish, that God may bless them and guide them in what they say......Lord hear us

14th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR C

2010-07-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

A helpful piece of advice for those who give homilies is to say something you need to hear yourself, and then at least one person in the church will benefit from it. That’s why, when a priest comes to see me for spiritual direction and is maybe not quite sure what to talk about, I sometimes ask him what he was saying to the people the previous Sunday. Often this proves to be the clue to what is going on in his own life and provides us with a place to begin our conversation. And so I would like to say something today that I have had to remind myself of many times over the years, in the hope that, today, it might help both of us. The thing which triggered off the thought is that gospel, but the issue itself goes back a long way. You could say it goes back sixty five years, but for the purposes of today’s reflection I will go back no further than 1985 when I arrived in St Matthew’s, Kilmarnock.

I went there filled with enthusiasm. But as things turned out, the first couple of years were to prove the most difficult of my life. It was just after the diocese had decided to do RENEW, and while the decision to be part of it had been made before I arrived, there were was a lot of opposition which, in the minds of some people, got all mixed up with the fact that they were struggling to come to terms with a change of parish priest. Caught in the middle of this – at least that is how I saw it at the time – I began to experience a sense of rejection the likes of which I had never known before, an experience which forced me to look seriously at what soon became clear was my own deep need for approval. I remember sometimes walking out of the sacristy at the start of Mass afraid to lift my eyes in case the gaps in the congregation were bigger than they had been the previous week. It really was a very painful time, and the pressure I felt inside myself to do and say whatever would keep people happy was very strong. Looking back, however, I thank God that this did not happen. Instead, through counselling and spiritual direction, I was able to confront what was going on and in the process learned something of immense importance about what God was asking of me as a priest.

And I shared some of that with you, in fact, the first weekend I was here, reminding you that I am not here to please you, tell you what you want to hear or be the priest you would like me to be. It’s not that I want to fall out with you, far from it, but in the end my job as your parish priest is to proclaim the message of the gospel as best I can. What you do about that is up to you. If you like it, fine. But if you don’t, then that’s not my problem. As Jesus says in today’s passage, ‘Whenever you enter a town and they do not make you welcome, go out into its streets and say. “We wipe off the very dust of your town that clings to our feet and leave it with you.” In recent years, many people have walked away from the Church and stopped coming, and this has sometimes left priests of a certain generation feeling guilty and disheartened, as if they themselves had failed in some way. And, of course, there was a time when priests saw it as their job to get people to Mass. Older people in Kilmarnock still talk about one particular priest who was famous years ago for going round knocking doors with his stick on a Sunday morning to get people out of their beds and up to Mass, not unlike a mother trying to get her children up for school in the morning. But those days have gone. We have all grown up since then and my own attitude as people have left in recent years has been based on and inspired by Jesus’ reaction in chapter six of John’s gospel when people find what he says intolerable and begin to walk away. At which point, rather than run after them and persuade them to stay, watering down and apologising for upsetting them, he turns to his disciples and says; ‘What about you? Do you want to go too?

So do I not care? Well, of course I do. I care deeply and passionately about these things. As I also told you at the beginning, I was no sooner appointed to this parish than I began to feel a real sense of love for the people in it. My deepest desire for you all is that, together, we should come to know God in ever deeper ways. I long to make that journey from religion to faith in the company of every single one of you. I know what St Paul means when he says in today’s second reading that what matters is that each one of us becomes an altogether new creature and that is what I want us all to be. I said last week that to move from religion to faith is like trading in an old fifteen inch black and white TV for a new fifty two inch, high definition, 3D model and I want us all to make that transition. In the first reading, the prophet compares God to a woman nursing a child at her breast and promises that he will comfort us as she comforts her baby. And that is the God I want us all to experience.

But we have to choose it. No-one can force this God on us, least of all, God himself. We spoke last week about how, when Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free, and that is always the way it will be with God. Each of us is responsible for our own choices and if, like so many others in recent years, you want to walk away, then there is nothing I can do about it. But if you choose to stay; if you want to make that journey from religion to faith; if you are experiencing in yourself a desire to go deeper; then there is nothing in the world I want to do more than support you in any way I can. I spend my life doing this with people. It is what I do. And in recent months, quite a number of you have said things like ‘I really must come and have a chat with you.’ So far, however, only a handful of you have come.

But I am sitting waiting.

BIDDING PRAYERS

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus sends out seventy two disciples through the towns and villages he himself is to visit. “The harvest is rich” he tells them, “but the labourers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.” And so we do that today. We ask God to raise up in our world men and women of deep, personal, adult faith, who are willing and able to proclaim the message of the Gospel to the people of our time in a way which makes sense to them and which they can understand.....Lord hear us

The seventy two, Jesus says, will be like lambs among wolves, an image which made perfect sense to persecuted Christians in the early centuries. And so they were to carry neither purse, nor haversack nor sandals. Instead, they were to rely entirely on God, recognizing that, left to their own devices, they would not survive for five minutes in the hostile world they were going into. And so pray that all who exercise ministry in the Church will see that this is still true today.......Lord hear us

When the seventy two go into a house, Jesus tells them, their first word has to be “Peace to this house.” Sharing our faith with others begins with profound respect for all whom we meet. There is no place in it for aggressiveness of any kind. It must respect the beliefs and traditions of others and recognize all that is good in them. There must be no arrogance or condescension. God is in every person’s life and so our starting position must be one of humility. And so we ask God to stir these qualities in the Church today.......Lord hear us

Jesus tells the seventy two disciples that, if they enter a town and it does not welcome them, then they have to shake the dust from their feet and move on. People are free to do what they want and the disciples must recognize this. People come to faith at different times and in different ways and long after the disciples have gone, God will still be there working deep within the lives of those people. And so we pray for the grace to understand this, do what we can, and leave the rest to God...........Lord hear us

There was a time when whole communities believed the same thing without question. Faith was passed from one generation to the next and those who did not conform to this pattern were seen as odd by those around them. But all that has changed. In a world filled with scepticism and a thousand version of the truth, faith will only survive today if it is rooted in personal experience and freely chosen. And so we pray that each person in this parish will come to such a faith...............Lord hear us

In recent years, many have walked away from the Church. But there have been many reasons for this. In some cases it has not been because people have lost their faith, but because they were dissatisfied with the faith they had, were looking for something deeper, and were unable to find it within traditional Church structures. Some, in fact, have felt profoundly let down by the Church. And so we pray for the grace to be the kind of parish where such men and women feel welcome and at home............Lord hear us

13TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-06-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have read a book by David Lodge, published in 1980, called How Far Can You Go. Written as a humorous reflection on what it was like to be a young Catholic born in the 1950s and living through the sixties, it looks at how, during that period, traditional Catholic ways of thinking went through a time of immense upheaval and, through the experiences of the characters in the book, examines the effect these changes had on those who lived through them. And this idea was very much with me on Thursday evening as I sat watching the Summer Show at St Matthew’s Academy. Seeing the happiness on the faces of those young people was a real experience of God for me and as I listened to their screams of delight at the finale, I was so aware that the question How Far Can You Go – one every good Catholic boy or girl was familiar with in the 1950s – would mean absolutely nothing to them today. So what kind of world lay behind David Lodge’s question, which, just in case anyone is still wondering, was about sex, and what are we to make of the enormous changes that have happened in the intervening years? Well, there is a passage in the book which describes the Catholicism of my youth perfectly and I would like to quote it to you.

Many things, the author says, have changed, but the biggest change has been the fading away of a particularly Catholic way of seeing the world which – and here I quote directly from the text - “situated individual souls on a kind of spiritual Snakes and Ladders board and motivated them with equal doses of hope and fear and promised them, if they persevered in the game, an eternal reward. The board was marked out very clearly and governed by intricate rules. Heaven, hell, Purgatory, Limbo. Mortal, venial and original sin. Angels, devils, saints, and Our Lady Queen of Heaven. Grace, penance, relics, indulgences and all the rest of it.” the author’s point being that very few people believe in this vision any more and very few under fifty would even have heard of many of its elements. So what are we to make of this? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that those children in St Matthew’s on Thursday would not even know what the question ‘How Far Can You Go’ was about? Well, on balance, I believe it’s a good thing and in defence of that position would like to take you back to what St Paul was saying in the second reading.

As a former Pharisee who had spent too much of his life enslaved to the rigid system which was the Jewish Law, Paul believed passionately in freedom. And so when he says in today’s passage from the letter to the Galatians that now that Christ has freed us he meant us to remain free, he is speaking from the heart. The Law had been Paul’s equivalent of the Snakes and Ladders board the novel speaks of and after his encounter with the Risen Jesus on the road to Damascus he wanted nothing more to do with it. Meeting Jesus had set Paul free and for the rest of his life his one desire was that others should come to that same freedom. As he said today: ‘When Christ freed us he meant us to remain free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery, by which he meant preferring the security of rule-keeping to the freedom of living according to the Spirit with the uncertainty, and therefore need to trust God rather than the keeping of rules, which genuine freedom involves. And that is why I believe that the ignorance in those young people of the rules and regulations which some of us lived by in the fifties and sixties is, on balance, a step in the right direction. But we still have a long way to go before we reach our destination, the mature, genuine freedom that Paul speaks of. And he says that himself in the passage. ‘But be careful,’ he says, ‘or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence.’ And, of course, that is exactly what has happened. We live in a world which has confused liberty with self-indulgence and the result is the ‘if it feels good do it’ society we live in with all the injustice, self-centredness and unfairness that goes with it. And so the question facing us is this: What is freedom without self-indulgence like, the freedom Paul speaks of and the freedom we are all called to?

Well, the classic way of putting it is that genuine freedom is not freedom from but freedom for. An example of freedom from would be what happened when the repressive Snakes and Ladders approach gave way to the permissiveness of the sixties. It was like letting a crowd of school children loose in a sweetie shop and what has happened in the Church and in society since then has not only been perfectly understandable but utterly inevitable. But now we are being called beyond that to something much more profound. When we live by law, we do the minimum to get by, like going to Mass on a Sunday or putting a pound or two in a SCIAF box. But when we enter the world St Paul is speaking about and discover the meaning of freedom for we discover a whole new dimension. Religion exists at the margins of our life. Faith which is freely chosen becomes our whole life. Discover it and it’s like moving from an old 15” black and white TV to a new 52” high definition 3D model.

And in the first reading this week we have a wonderful example of this. Challenged by Elijah to leave everything and follow him, Elisha slaughters his oxen and cooks them with a fire made from his plough. He is now free to go where God leads and as a result his story will be read by people for as long as human beings exist. In the Gospel, however, we meet two men who would like to follow Jesus but lack that freedom for. Like St Augustine who wanted to be pure, but not yet, they would like to follow Jesus, but not yet. They have one foot in the narrow world of religion and another in the rich world of faith and they lack the freedom to make the next step. And somewhere in there, I think, lies each one of us.

And yet it’s so important that we confront this challenge. Not just for our own sake. Not even primarily for our own sake. But for the sake of those young people I spoke about and thousands of others like them.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Many of us here belong to a generation which has lived through times of great change in the Church. Central to this has been the second Vatican Council which Pope John Paul II called the single most important movement of the Spirit in modern times. In calling it, his predecessor, Pope John XXIII spoke of opening up the doors and windows of the Church to let light and fresh air in and even now, more than forty years after the event, we pray for a real openness to this long and sometimes painful process....Lord hear us

Inevitably, the process of renewal in the Church has had its casualties. For some, the changes were too much to take and they walked away. For others the same changes did not go far enough and so they, too, walked away. And so we ask God to be with them all today and heal them of any anger or disappointment they still feel. And for ourselves, we ask God to give us the wisdom we need to understand the times through which we have lived and see the providence of God at work deep within them.....Lord hear us

Radical changes have taken place in the course of the second half of the 20th century, not just in the Church, but within society at large. The old certainties about what is right and what is wrong, about what is true and what is not true, have given way to uncertainty and confusion about so many things. The generations born into this world have often been left to find their way through the moral maze of life without any signposts or landmarks. And so we ask God to give them the guidance they need........Lord hear us

To leave law behind and experience the freedom St Paul speaks of in this week’s second reading is by no means an easy option. To abandon the security that goes with living according to law and begin to live by conscience and personal decision can feel risky. It means trusting God with our decisions without ever knowing for certain that they are the right ones. It will sometimes mean doing what is right rather than what the law says. But we ask for the courage and maturity we need to travel this road..........Lord hear us

In that second reading, St Paul tells us that, if we are led by the Spirit, no law can touch us. The whole of the law, he says, is summarised in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself. This is why, in another place, he tells us that, if we love, we have kept all the commandments, an idea reflected in St Augustine’s famous remark: ‘Love and then do what you will.’ All these sayings belong, of course, to the world of faith rather than religion and we ask God to teach our whole parish what they mean.........Lord hear us

On Wednesday, we had the latest meeting about the religious education of children in the parish. The meeting was extremely well attended and the commitment of the parents and those who will support them in the months and years ahead was clear for all to see. And so we thank God for his presence at the meeting – which was almost tangible – and ask him to continue to guide us in the future, so that, having put our hand to this particular plough, we will be faithful to it and not turn back.........Lord hear us

12TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

2010-06-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

More than once over recent months we have had occasion to reflect on what Jesus’ invitation to take up our cross and follow him has meant to people at different moments in history. We have seen how, throughout the first three centuries of the Church’s life, it had a very literal meaning for the people who lived through that period. Martyrdom was seen as the pinnacle of the Christian life and in the persecutions that broke out from time to time during those early centuries many really did take up their cross and died violent deaths in the arenas of Rome.

With the conversion of Constantine, of course, all that changed. Martyrdom as it had been known for three hundred years was now a thing of the past and so people had to reinterpret the words of Jesus which we heard today in a way which made sense in a world where Christianity, instead of being a persecuted minority was now part of the imperial court. And the end result of that process was, as we have seen, the invention of the monastery, where, in a new way of taking up their cross and following Jesus, men and women began to withdraw from the world to live lives of prayer and austerity.

But as the centuries passed, there soon developed another way of understanding Jesus’ words which had a huge influence on the spirituality of generations of people right up to our own day. For most of history, the vast bulk of ordinary men and women have, as millions still do today in the developing world, lived lives of unremitting hardship, poverty and drudgery. And in the face of this, the idea of taking up our cross came to be seen by generations of believers as synonymous with accepting their lot in life without complaining and looking forward to the day when the drudgery would end and the happiness they longed for but, could never have in this life, would finally be theirs. And to a certain extent his idea worked. Many got comfort from it, reflected in many of the old nineteenth century hymns we knew as children. A classic example is the hymn ‘Sweet Heart of Jesus’ with the lines ‘there in thine ear all trustfully we tell our tale of misery.’ and ‘within thy shelter blest soon may we reach the shore,’ a hymn which, like others written at the time, only makes sense against the background of the poverty our ancestors were encouraged to think of as the cross they had to carry behind Jesus.

But while this interpretation worked in the short-term, it had a very serious flaw built into it. It sounded very much like pie in the sky when you die and was used for centuries by those in power to keep the masses down. It was the reason why Karl Marx famously called religion the opium of the people, encouraging them to accept their lot instead of doing something about the poverty and the exploitation they were being subjected to by those who ruled them. And that, in the end, is why we don’t sing those old hymns so much now. We may love the tunes. I know I do. They may stir all kinds of memories in us. But the theology behind them is deeply flawed and totally out of touch with the times we are living through. The truth we have to realise is that, despite our current economic problems, we enjoy a standard of living and a level of affluence no one in the whole history of humanity has ever known and it’s against this background that we have to re-interpret for our own time those two thousand year old words of Jesus. So in this consumer-driven, materialistic society, what does it mean to take up our cross and follow him? Well, essentially, I think, it means going back to the beginning and doing now what the martyrs did two thousand years ago. What they did was have the courage to stand up for what they believed in the midst of a hostile world which totally failed to understand what they were about and that, I suggest, is what we are called to do today.

When I describe our world as materialistic I don’t just mean that we have lots of material things. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having material things apart from the fact that they are so un-evenly distributed throughout the world. The real evil of materialism as a philosophy is that it denies the very existence of the spiritual and tells us that the only thing that exists is the material world. For Christians, of course, the material world matters. Faith in God is not about pie in the sky when you die and religion is not just the opium of the people preventing Church-goers from addressing the real issues which face the world, one of the great insights of the Second Vatican Council being its deep commitment to the world and everything that goes on in it. But a world which denies the very existence of the spiritual and seeks happiness in the purely material is a society doomed to deep and lasting disappointment. And we can see that all around us. Here in the West we have more material things than we know what to do with and yet there is deep unhappiness in our society which lies at the root of both our culture of drug abuse and the alarmingly high suicide rates we are currently experiencing, especially among the young. And yet, instead of recognizing the spiritual poverty that lies behind these things, we try to solve the problem by acquiring even more material things, a response which, in its turn, leads to the massive credit and debt problem which even now could bring down about our ears the very prosperity we all take for granted.

And it’s against this background that we, as Christians, are called to do what the early martyrs did and show the world that there is an alternative to the paganism that surrounds us. Surrounded by material things on a scale unknown to previous generations, we have to show the world that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. In a society fed on a daily diet of superficiality by the media, we are called to go deeper and live lives of prayer and reflection in the midst of the world. And in a world which has swallowed the lie that acquiring more and more material things will bring happiness, we have to show the people around us how to use material things without worshipping them.

It may not seem much compared to what the early martyrs did. But try it and I promise you: someone, somewhere will crucify you.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer today by holding up before God the world at this moment in its history. As a new century and a new millennium get under way, the men and women of our time are facing a whole series of important choices about the way we live which will have a profound influence on the way our society develops in the years ahead. And so we ask God to give us the wisdom we need to make good choices based on a solid grasp of the truth of who we are in relation to himself...........Lord hear us

Faced with so many historic choices about the kind of society we want to be, one of the great dangers we face is the superficial nature of so much that fills our lives. Our capacity to concentrate on serious issues is diminishing in the face a daily diet of rubbish on TV and a News coverage which focuses less and less on the big issues facing the world and more and more on the lives of footballers and pop stars. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see the danger in this and do something about it........Lord hear us

At the heart of the issues facing our world is the question Jesus asks in today’s Gospel: ‘But you, who do you say that I am?’ The answer we give is fundamental to everything that goes on in the world today. If Jesus is not who we say he is, then the quicker we forget him the better. But if he is who the Christian faith claims he is, he is the most important person in history and his teaching is the key to everything that happens in the world. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this...........Lord hear us

In the second reading this weekend, St Paul tells us that there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. We are all one in Christ, an idea which goes to the heart of the challenge facing our modern world. We can either continue along the path of separate nations with all the conflicts that have gone with this way of thinking, or we can forge a new world built on the common humanity St Paul speaks of. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to make this choice...........Lord hear us

There is a very real sense in which religion has been over the centuries the opium of the people. It has sometimes been used as a form of control by those in power. The Church itself often colluded in this idea by encouraging the poor to accept their lot and justifying the position of the rich and powerful as somehow the way God intended things to be. But those days are over now. Christians today are deeply committed to changing unjust social structures and we pray for the grace to be part of that...Lord hear us

On Wednesday of this coming week, we have a very important meeting about the religious education of children of this parish. The primary responsibility for teaching them about God lies fairly and squarely with their parents, a responsibility they took on at baptism. But it is the job of the parish to support the parents and be the kind of faith-filled community where what begins in the home can grow to maturity in the world. And so we pray that God will bless this week’s meeting.........Lord hear us

2010-06-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Just before I left to give last week’s retreat in Oxford, we had a meeting of the PPC designed to help us reflect together on the seven months which had elapsed since I came here at the end of September. Personally, I found the discussion very helpful, and in the course of it two particular things were said which encouraged me. The first was that people find what I say challenging. I was delighted to hear this, because it’s meant to be. I warned you when I came that I am not here to please you or speak pious platitudes. My job as a priest is to proclaim the full message of the Gospel which, properly understood, challenges us to the very depths of our being.

And the second thing was that the fundamental theme people were hearing was the difference between religion and faith. That without doubt is the issue which defines my ministry, although it wasn’t always that way. The key moment came in 1982 when I was in Sanquhar. I had already been a priest for thirteen years at the time, but during that period God taught me so many things which have shaped everything I have done since. I had the sense at that time that he was putting into my hand books which would teach me something he wanted me to know and it was while reading one of these, a book entitled ‘Redemptive Intimacy’ by a man called Dick Westley, that a light came on inside me which shines still. The book has a chapter which lists the symptoms of the evil the author calls ‘religion without faith’. They are simple enough, but what was different that day was the clarity and depth of the insight God gave me about them as a result of which my understanding of what it means to be a priest changed forever. And what God showed me was the utter absurdity of a religion which taught people to fear God and spend their whole lives performing religious actions in an attempt to please him and keep him happy so that he wouldn’t send them to hell when they died.

Sometimes this fear was the result of sins committed in the course of people’s lives, even when, in many cases, these had been confessed over and over again. But as often as not it was simply because of a vague feeling of guilt and fear in the face of a critical, judgemental God whom they had been taught to believe was watching them, keeping a record of everything they did and just waiting to pounce on them. In the course of forty one years as a priest I have seen it so often and, having been taught the same thing very early in my own life, I am not completely free of it either. But whenever it happens it’s a tragedy and a travesty of everything God is. I mean, how could anyone fear the God who, in today’s liturgy, speaks words of instant forgiveness to David who had not only committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, but having tried to cover it up, then committed the ultimate act of betrayal for a soldier by ordering his troops to pull back in the midst of battle and leave Uriah to die at the hands of the enemy? And in the Gospel he not only forgives the woman with the bad name in the town but holds her up as an example to those who accuse and condemn her. So if this is what God is like, why have so many millions of people down through the ages been afraid of him? Well, I think I have an answer to that question, and it takes us again to the heart of religion without faith.

When we move in this world, you see, we are actually worshipping a God who does not exist except in our own heads. He’s not the God who created us in his image and likeness but a god whom we have created in our image and likeness. This god thinks like us, judges like us and treats people the way we treat them. He is, in effect, a projection of ourselves and that, in the end, is why we fear him so much. The real God is the one who, because he understands all, forgives all. The god of religion is one who, like us, constantly sits in judgement on others and finds them wanting. And the place where God taught me this most clearly was Kilmarnock prison during the ten years I was chaplain there. I have never been anywhere where God was as tangible as he was in that place. The prison was full of people who had done all kinds of things, but as you moved around it you could feel the presence of the God who understood, who knew the story of each prisoner’s life intimately, who would have understood why the woman in the story lived the life she did, who felt the pain at the heart of her life and the lives of so many of those prisoners and whose one desire was to love them into life. And from such a God we have nothing to fear.

And central to the way this God forgives is a willingness to allow people to change and move on. I love the story of the man who went to speak to God about a sin he kept committing over and over again. And when the meeting was over and the man was on his way home, the same old thing happened. And so he went back to God and said, ‘I’ve done it again.’ To which God replied, ‘Done what again?’ But how unlike God we and the god we have created in our own image and likeness is. It is the God of religion, not the real God, who keeps a record of all we have ever done. In his world, as in ours, no offence is ever forgotten. Like a video or a DVD on pause, the moment of failure is frozen and the person’s life is not allowed to develop or move on. In my ten years in Kilmarnock prison, for example, I can safely say I never met a murderer. I met many people who had committed murders, some of them truly horrific, but there was always much more to those men than that one moment in their lives. They had families, people they loved and often astonished me by their goodness.

All of this is what the real God sees when he looks at each one of us. Never be afraid of him. Ask him to help you see the world as he sees it and it will become a much brighter and happier place for you.

BIDDING PRAYERS

One of the worst symptoms of religion without faith is the doing of psychological harm to people in God’s name. And so we pray today for all who have suffered in this way. We pray for those whose religious up-bringing has left them with deep-rooted feelings of guilt. We pray for those whose sexual development has been affected by unhealthy ways of thinking about the human body. And we ask God to lead the world beyond all narrow-minded ways of thinking which masquerade as faith.........Lord hear us

To forgive others can be very difficult, but there are also times when we do not even want to. We nurse our resentment and take a dark kind of pleasure in it. We feel self-righteous and use our sense of grievance to justify our own ungodly attitudes and feelings, blaming others rather than face up to our own faults. And so we pray for the insight we need to recognize the ways in which we do this and the grace to move beyond them and reach out to those whom we find difficult to forgive............Lord hear us

To see the ultimate effects of our inability or unwillingness to forgive, all we have to do is look around the world. Everywhere we see people caught up in ancient feuds which have gone on for centuries, killing and slaughtering each other as their ancestors have always done. The Middle East in particular, the place where Jesus lived and where the great events of the Bible took place, have hardly seen peace in two thousand years. And so we ask God to pour the gift of healing into that part of the world.........Lord hear us

There are few things in life more sad than a family torn apart by arguments and disagreements over things that happened in the past. Some of us will know this in our own families and may even be the cause of it. And even if we are fortunate enough not to have experienced such things close at hand, we will know of other families who have. And so we pray for all who are caught up in this kind of tragedy that God will pour into them the desire to forgive and the grace they need to do so.....Lord hear us

There are no such things as foreigners, prisoners, immigrants, Hindus or any other group to which we try to attach a label. In the end, there are only individual people with individual lives. The tendency to lump them together, however, and make general statements about them which cannot possibly be true of everyone is very deep in us and forms the basis of our many prejudices. And so we ask God to help us see every human being on the face of the earth as the unique individuals they are................Lord hear us

We live in a society which can be extremely severe in its judgement and very unforgiving in its attitude to human weakness. Day after day, the Tabloid Press dig up stories of human frailty and proceed to crucify people in the pages of what pass for newspapers. And they do it because it makes money, making us who buy the newspapers collaborators in this evil. And so we pray for all who have suffered in this way, especially those who will be suffering from it this weekend in the gutter press.........Lord hear us

TRINTY SUNDAY

2010-05-29T05:56:00.001-07:00

I remember one year, when I was struggling to know what to say on Trinity Sunday, turning in desperation to a book which summarised what theologians have said about the Trinity over the centuries. And what I found there left me, I remember, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. And so I would like to do what I did then and quote you a sentence from the opening paragraph.

“A commonplace of contemporary Trinitarian theology is the priority it grants to the narrative and symbolic discourse of Christian worship and proclamation over the leaner, conceptual discourse of theological theory itself. Theology continues to employ conceptual forms of thought in probing the meaning of Trinity, but deepened appreciation of the more spontaneous discourse of lived Christian praxis suggests a more conscious subordination of Trinitarian theory to what might be called the ‘semantic aim’ of Christian proclamation and worship.”

And believe me, there’s plenty more where that came from, centuries more; tome after tome of big words and complicated sentences causing countless library shelves to groan under their weight. And yet, even if we read them all, we would be no closer to understanding the mystery of the Trinity. As St Thomas Aquinas, whose own writings run to many volumes, famously said:, ‘Everything I have ever written turned to straw compared with what I learned in one moment of contemplation.’ And St Ignatius of Loyola says something very similar about an experience he had one day beside the River Cardoner in Manresa, not far from Barcelona. Recalling it years later in Rome, he wrote that if he added together everything he had learned about God in the whole course of his life it was not as much as he learned at that one moment. So what do they mean?

Well, the first things they are saying – an idea you should be familiar with by now – is that nothing we say about God is ever completely true. Human language is just not capable of describing God. We have neither the vocabulary nor the concepts to do so. We can say that God is love. We can say that God is Father. But the words ‘Love’ and ‘Father’ can only be applied to God by analogy and will always be only partly true, and partly untrue, something which has immense implications for what it means to be people of faith in the world today. And the key is in the Eucharistic Prayer we use each Sunday.

In it, we ask God to “keep us alert in faith to the signs of the times, eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel and open to the needs of all humanity so that, by sharing in the struggles of the men and women of our time, we may faithfully bring them the good news of salvation and advance together with them on the way to the Kingdom.” But one of the main signs of the times we are living through – and therefore the place where we will meet God - is the phenomenon some call loss of faith but which is, in fact, something much more profound than that? Millions in the modern world have rejected the idea of God as we have understood it up to now. It no longer makes any sense to them and there are good reasons why. The seeds were planted in the days of Galileo when we discovered that we were not the centre of the universe. Later, when Darwin announced that, instead of being the pinnacle of God’s creation, we were actually descended from apes, that dented our sense of who we are even more. And what has exacerbated all this and brought it to a head has been the incredible development of science and technology over the last hundred years. The rate and depth of change has been phenomenal and the failure of Religion to respond adequately to this new world, resisting it rather than embracing it, has left us looking like dinosaurs to millions, relics of bye-gone pre-scientific age dominated by superstition and magic. So what do we do about it? How do we respond to this great sign of the times?

Well, we can weep and wail, looking around for someone or something to blame. Those who do this tend to retreat further and further into ways of thinking which are long past their sell-by date, hanging on, like children with a comfort blanket, to ideas and practices which no longer respond to the world we live in. And there is lots of this around, as instead of doing what the liturgy says and being alert to the signs of the times, eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel, we seek refuge in a past which no longer exists. Often the reason we do this is that we are afraid to look too closely at the questions being raised by those who no longer believe in God; in case what they say is true; in case there is no God; in case he is no more than a projection of our own need for a father figure; It’s as if our own grasp on faith is so tenuous that we are afraid to even look at it in case it turns to dust.

But there’s another way, the only really genuine response for those who are called to be a priestly people in the midst of the world. And it is to enter, like Jesus, deeply into the situation the men and women of our time are living through. It is to face up to and feel their questions in our own bodies. It is to experience their doubts. It is to experience in ourselves the atheism of our age, neither falling into its trap nor retreating into the false security of explanations which were only ever partly true. To believe in God today is to live with the constant possibility that he may not exist. To pray is to enter into clouds of unknowing and, as I do every day in life, take the risk that the God we pray to is no more than our own voice echoing in the darkness. That’s the nature of the age we live in and we can only be bearers of the Good News to such a world if we are willing to walk in its shoes, feel its doubts and enter into its struggles.

God cannot be understood. God can only be worshipped. Our vocation is to be signs of that for the people of our time and, in the midst of all the confusion and uncertainty, continue, on behalf of all around us to pray those ancient words: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

BIDDING PRAYERS

For many, the age through which we are living is a threatening one, stirring fears and anxieties about the widespread loss of faith in God which we see around us. And yet, for men and women of faith, there is nothing to fear. The key is to understand what is happening. When we do this, the situation is transformed. Instead of being frightening, it becomes a challenge, a great opportunity, and invitation to deeper faith. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see it in this way…….Lord hear us

During a time of confusion and rapid change, the likes of which we are living through at this moment in history, there will always be casualties. Many good people, influenced by but unable to understand the roots and causes of modern atheistic ways of thinking, have lost their faith in the very existence of God or had it seriously undermined. And so we pray for them today, that this often painful experience will become the place where they meet God again in new and much deeper way........Lord hear us

Many today complain that they cannot pray the way they used to, and, discouraged by this experience, give up trying. And yet the experience of not being able to pray as we used to is very often a sign that the way we used to pray is no longer appropriate and that God is calling us to different ways of praying. Prayer is a great journey which takes us through many stages and we ask for the grace to keep travelling until we finally meet the one true God face to face and see him for who he really is.........Lord hear us

Tradition, one of the pillars of Catholicism, has been described as the living faith of the dead; traditionalism, on the other hand, as the dead faith of the living. And so we pray for all who are trapped in the past, floundering around in a world which no longer exists except in their own minds, that they will have the courage they need to engage with a modern Church in a modern world and so become a truly priestly people for the sake of the men and women who share this moment in history with us.........Lord hear us.

We pray in a particular way for the children and young people of our parish. For many of them, the world of faith seems alien and of little or no relevance to their lives. We pray, however, that the efforts we are making to develop a programme of religious education suited to their needs will, in time, help them grow into men and women of faith able to take their rightful place in the Church as it works out how to be faithful to Jesus’ command to make disciples of all the nations in the world of the 21th Century.........Lord hear us

In today’s Gospel, Jesus promises that the Spirit will lead us into the complete truth. Created in the image and likeness of God and blessed with intelligence, we can explore and unravel many of the great mysteries of creation, a process which is accelerating rapidly in our own time. But there are truths hidden from even the greatest minds. These, like the mystery we celebrate this weekend, can only be known through faith. And we ask God to pour that faith into the world at this moment in its history.....Lord hear us

PENTECOST SUNDAY

2010-05-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

There are several reasons why it never crosses my mind to go anywhere other than Spain on holiday every year. For one thing, I have good friends there whom I look forward to seeing every summer. But the main reason I can’t imagine myself ever going anywhere else is the language. I love speaking Spanish. I could, of course, go to Central or South America. Spanish, after all, is spoken there too. But they are a long way off, and, in any case, I have a problem in principle with the idea of holidaying in a third world country.

So what is it I enjoy so much about the language? Well, it’s hard to describe, but in the midst of all the things I love about being in Spain, the weather, the history, the culture, the food, the wine and so on, the greatest pleasure of all comes from sitting around a table full of Spaniards for hours on end talking; about politics, football, God, religion, the family and a thousand other things. People in Spain spend hours doing this and I just love being part of it. It’s the sheer pleasure of being able to understand what people of another culture are saying and be part of their conversation. I love understanding the structures of the sentences; knowing why they use the subjunctive here and not there, why they use this word and not that one. Often in these situations my mind turns to Bishop McGhee who sent me to Spain as a student in 1963 and I quietly thank God for him. Without him I might have spent my whole life here in Scotland and missed out on so much.

And I tell you this today because of the link I see between everything a second language has meant for me and the Feast of Pentecost. I realise, of course, that not everyone has had the opportunity I had to live abroad for a few years and learn another language, but I would go so far as to say that to have never been exposed to any serious contact with a second language – something, sadly, that is more common today given the decline in the teaching of foreign languages in our schools – is to run the risk of being trapped in one particular very limited way of seeing the world. And who could argue against the proposition that we in Britain suffer more than most from this given that so many people in the world learn English and make it ‘unnecessary’ for us to learn their languages when we venture abroad. This ‘why don’t the foreigners speak English’ mentality is surely one of the main causes of the arrogance, xenophobia and downright ignorance we so often display towards people from other countries and one antidote to this is to learn a language.

Learning a language teaches us that there’s more than one way of seeing the world. And this is the beginning of wisdom. I think of my friend Enrique’s mother-in-law, Jovita. She’s ninety three now and will go to her grave convinced that people who speak any language other than Spanish are mad. She simply cannot get her mind round the idea that this object in my hand could be anything else but ‘un libro.’ The idea that someone else could call it ‘a book’ totally mystifies her. And while this is a fairly harmless example, trivial even, it is, I suggest, a sign of something much deeper and more far-reaching, which is the inability we all have to one degree or another to think, as people say today ‘outside the box.’ We are all trapped in the limitations of our own thinking, our own way of seeing things, and one of the functions of the Spirit of Pentecost in our lives – symbolized in the story, of course, by the speaking of many languages – is to enable us to break out of the little boxes we live in and open ourselves up to bigger and previously unknown truths.

No one language, you see, can describe the fullness and complexity of the reality all around us. No single way of thinking can contain in itself all there is to know about anything. Book and libro are simply sounds which a parrot could imitate. What they are describing, however, is something no parrot could ever understand. We think that because we have a word to describe it that we know what a tree is. But people who spend their lives studying trees are still learning about them. Inside each of us there is a small amount of truth and an indescribably large amount of ignorance. There is so much still to be learned and even the truths we think we have grasped are never complete. To explore the fullness of truth we have to begin to question and doubt the very words we think describe reality. But they are only our version of it. And above all, we must be willing to leave behind our prejudices and opinions which we have turned into absolute truth.

And if this is true of the world around us, how much more true must it be about God. No word or human idea can pin God down or fully describe who God is. Forgive me if I quote again the 14th Century German mystic Meister Eckhart, but when he famously said that whatever we say God is God isn’t, he was telling us something of immense importance. And it’s only when we understand this, understand the limits of all our thinking and all our language that the Feast of Pentecost can really make sense. Because what the Spirit of God longs to do in us is lead us beyond our narrow and incomplete ways of thinking into the mystery of who we are. The Spirit broadens and stretches our minds to their limit and then, through the gift of faith, takes us beyond even those limits into places we never imagined existed. And it’s my own deep conviction about this which lies behind the things I say to you each week.

I know, of course, that some of you struggle with them. Challenging is the kindest word I have heard to describe what I say. But understand this: I don’t say what I do to be difficult or upset you. I say it because some of the flame which burned in the heart of Peter on the day of Pentecost burns in my heart too. There are so many things I want to share with you about God, about the Scriptures, about spirituality, about the Church, about that wonderfully journey from religion to faith. But if that is what you want, if you want to make that journey too, then be in no doubt. We are going to have to learn to speak a whole new language.

BIDDING PRAYERS

If we are to learn to speak the language of the Spirit, then we need the grace of humility. We need to be willing to recognize the limits of our own understanding and the depths of our own ignorance. We need a deep sense of truth as something far greater than ourselves and we need a willingness to go where truth leads, leaving behind, where necessary, even our most cherished ways of thinking. And so we ask God to stir in us this Pentecost a real willingness to learn and broaden our understanding...Lord hear us

To let go of our most cherished ways of thinking, not to mention our deep-rooted prejudices, requires courage as well as humility. We need to be ready to pass through a land of confusion and uncertainty if we are to come to new and deeper truths about ourselves and God. The danger is that we cling to what we know even when it is untrue and only men and women of real courage can move beyond this. And so we pray for this grace for ourselves and everyone in this parish............Lord hear us

On the Day of Pentecost, people from every nation on earth heard the gospel proclaimed in their own language. Now we are called by God to proclaim that same message to the men and women of the 21st century in a language they too can understand. And yet so often we speak a language filled with pious, holy, religious words which make no sense to anyone. And so we ask God to show us how to speak to the world of our time in a language which makes sense to people and helps them come to know God....Lord hear us

The world today is a very small village in which peoples from many different countries and cultures are having to learn to live with and understand each other. This is causing racial tension in many places and stirring in many of us a xenophobia we may not even have known was there. And so we ask God to guide the world at this time and help us see the tremendous possibilities for good that all this coming together of the world’s peoples holds for the future of humanity.........Lord hear us

The existence of different languages and ways of thinking can make communication between peoples more difficult. But here in Britain we have a particular problem. As an island people in a world where, because of our imperial past, English is spoken as a second language by so many, we have always shown an unusual reluctance to learn other peoples’ languages. As a result, we are more trapped than many others in narrow, jingoistic ways of thinking. And so we ask God today to lead us beyond these.........Lord hear us

On Wednesday we have our meeting where people who have stopped coming to church over the years are invited to join us for a cup of tea and a chat. Then, on Thursday, we have a meeting of the Parish Pastoral Council which every person in the parish is invited to attend. And so we pray that God will move deeply among us during the coming days and that we will experience in ourselves something of the joy, hope and enthusiasm which filled the Church on the day of Pentecost................Lord hear us

6th SUNDAY OF EASTER

2010-05-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

At the heart of today’s liturgy is an important question about how we see the world. The story begins with the death in Jerusalem in 37AD of Stephen, the first martyr. This was followed by a clampdown on the Christian community there and as a result of this a number of individuals fled Jerusalem and sought refuge in Antioch, part of what we now call Turkey. In Antioch they began to preach the Gospel, but initially this was restricted to the Jews in the city. One day, however, a really amazing thing happened. Some of the more bold and imaginative among them, whose names, sadly, have not come down to us, made a truly historic decision, the consequences of which were to prove far-reaching. Instead of just preaching to the Jews, they began to preach to the Greeks too. And, to their delight and astonishment, these welcomed the Gospel with open arms. And so began a process of reaching out beyond Judaism to the pagan world, which 250 years later reached Scotland and has led directly to our being here today.

The next thing that happened in Antioch, however, was that the Christians there, wondering what to do next and who might be the man to guide them, decided to send Barnabas to Tarsus to look for Paul. He brought him back to Antioch and, as the NT tells us, they spent a whole year together there. Then, at the end of that year, in 45AD, they set off on the first of three great missionary journeys made by Paul around the Mediterranean world. It lasted three years and in 48AD, they returned to Antioch filled with stories of how, in the words of Acts, God had opened the door of faith to the pagans. And there was great joy in Antioch over it.
But as we heard this morning, not everyone was happy with this. Some men, including members of the Pharisees’ party who had been converted to Christianity, came down from Judaea and began insisting that the pagan converts had to conform to the Jewish tradition and be circumcised before they could become part of the new Church. Only in this way, they claimed, could they be saved. This led to a disagreement, and, after a long argument, it was decided, as we heard, that Paul and Barnabas should go up to Jerusalem to discuss the problem with the apostles and elders. For some reason which I don’t quite understand, the passage which describes what happened in Jerusalem has been omitted from today’s reading, but suffice it to say that it was a long and difficult meeting.

On what we would call nowadays the liberal or progressive side were Paul and Barnabas. Their case was based on the fact that they had seen with their own eyes how God had given the pagans the gift of the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way they themselves had received it. To insist now that these should be circumcised and take on the traditions and practices of Judaism would, they argued, be a deeply backward step. It would be to deny the new thing God was doing in the lives of these people and impose on them burdens which were unnecessary. Christianity wasn’t a sect of Judaism or an extension it. It was something new, something fresh, something fundamentally different. Judaism was national. Christianity was international. It was for everyone and no-one was excluded.

For the conservative side of the argument, however, this was very difficult to accept. They were Jews and their parents and grandparents before them had been Jews. God was their God, they were his people, and the idea that the pagans could be saved without becoming Jews and going through the same process that they had gone through was too much for them. God was doing something new and they were unable to accept it. God was opening the door of faith to the pagan nations and they were not able to rejoice in it. At that meeting in Jerusalem in 48AD, however, the Church as a whole, faced with this conflict and guided by the Holy Spirit, chose the way of freedom over law and accepted that faith in Jesus made the rules and regulations of the Old Testament redundant. It was a truly great day for the Church – reflected in the second reading’s vision of a new Jerusalem devoid of a temple which symbolized the old ways and with gates facing outwards in every direction, north, south, east and west – and I invite you, even now, 2000 years later, to be thankful for it.

But, of course, today’s liturgy is about more than just remembering what happened all those centuries ago. The conflict between the open-mindedness of people like Paul and Barnabas and the ‘but we’ve always done it this way’ approach of their opponents is an eternal one and it is worth reflecting for a few moments on where we ourselves might have stood on the matter had we been present that day in Jerusalem. The Jewish converts of Paul’s day, despite everything Jesus had said and done, continued to consider themselves superior to foreigners and looked down their noses at them. But do we do the same? How do we feel about people different from ourselves? What is our attitude to immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers? When we go abroad on holiday, do we respect the people we meet there? Do we try to speak their language and eat their food or do we expect them to speak English and serve fish and chips every day? And if a group of foreigners suddenly arrived on our doorstep and wanted to come to Mass each week, do you think we would welcome them and adapt what we do to accommodate them or would we expect them to fall in with what we have always done?

And what about our attitude to change in the Church or in the way we think about God and the things of God? The Scriptures speak over and over again about a God who is always doing a new thing. Because we are on a journey of faith, it follows that we have never arrived at our destination, and so, like our nomadic ancestors in faith in the Old Testament, we have to be always moving on, breaking camp every morning, and going where God leads. But how willing are we to do this? In Jerusalem that day in 48AD, would we have been with Paul, the innovator, or would we have been with the ‘But we’ve always done it this way’ party. Spend some time this weekend thinking about these questions and answering them for yourself.

It was about embracing the future with courage or clinging to the past in fear. So what side would you have been on?

BIDDING PRAYERS

The meeting which took place in Jerusalem in 48AD is sometimes called the Council of Jerusalem, the most recent Council being the Second Vatican Council held in the 1960s. This Council, too, was about reaching out to the world. Pope John XXIII spoke at the time about opening the windows of the Church, after years of being tightly shut, to let in light and fresh air. The Council wanted to embrace the modern world with God’s love and we pray that the Church will remain faithful to that movement now.........Lord hear us

The letter sent to Antioch after the meeting in Jerusalem spoke, as we heard this morning, about not placing burdens on people apart from what was essential. And so we pray for the Church today that it will have the wisdom it needs to apply that same principle in our own time. We pray especially that we will always know how to distinguish what is merely human regulation, and so open to change, from what is from God and so remains true regardless of current thinking or the latest fashion.......Lord hear us

The Book of the Apocalypse offered us today a beautifully poetic vision of the Church, the New Jerusalem. It glittered like a jewel of crystal-clear diamond and had twelve gates facing north, south, east and west, a symbol of the fact that Christianity, unlike everything that had gone before it, is a world-wide faith which recognizes no barriers between peoples. And so we ask God to lead us beyond narrow nationalism, xenophobia and racism and stir in us an internationalism based on the teaching of Jesus........Lord hear us

Part of the vision of the New Jerusalem in the first reading was the fact that there was no temple in the city. The temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, had been, for the people of the Old Testament, the sign of God’s presence among them. But in the New Jerusalem, the Church, there is no temple. The Risen Jesus himself is the temple and he is not confined to any one place. He is everywhere, in everything that happens, and in every person we meet. And so we pray for the wisdom to recognize him........Lord hear us

The Gospel passage today speaks about how the Holy Spirit will teach us everything we need to know and remind us of everything Jesus has said to us. Left to themselves, those early Christians could never have carried out Jesus’ command to teach all nations. They would not even have known where to begin. But with God all things are possible. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize how the Spirit has always been at work in the Church and still is today despite our human weakness........Lord hear us

On Thursday, the people of Britain elected a new parliament and in the coming days we will find out who is going to form a government. And so we pray for all those who have been elected, especially our own MP, Katy Clark. We pray that the Holy Spirit will stir in the hearts of all who exercise political power in Britain today a desire to act in the interests of the poor and needy both at home and abroad and a willingness to reach beyond national boundaries to work with people from every part of the world..............Lord hear us

5th SUNDAY OF EASTER

2010-05-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons why fewer people attend churches these days, but one of the, without doubt, is our modern reluctance to join organizations. Political Parties suffer from it, Trade Unions suffer from it, as do smaller local groups like the Scouts, the Guides and many others. I bet there isn’t an organization in the whole of North Ayrshire which isn’t struggling with it in one way or another. And the Churches suffer from it too. It’s not uncommon nowadays to hear people say that they have no problem with belief in God, that they consider themselves ‘spiritual’, but that they struggle with the Church. So much so, that many who say they still have faith in God have given up attending Church, claiming they no longer have any need for it. To which all I can say is that I, too, struggle with what is known as the Institutional Church. Like them, I have no problems with God either, but the Church I am part of has always been the major source of pain in my life, as it constantly frustrates, disappoints and, not infrequently, appals me. So do we need Churches? Do we need organizations and structures? Could we manage just as well without them? Well, that is the question I would like to reflect on today. And my starting point is that first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

In it, we find Paul and Barnabas at the end of the first of Paul’s three great missionary journeys. They had set out to spread the Good News of the Resurrection, but one of the things they very quickly discovered was that if the small groups of converts Paul made were to remain faithful to what they had heard and were to persevere in the faith, some kind of basic organization had to be set up. And so we heard how, in each of these communities they appointed elders, men of good character who would act as leaders and hold the group together. Within a few years, in fact, the early Church had developed quite complicated structures. Experts still argue about what exactly these were, but by the time of Pauls’ death there were already the beginnings of what we now know as bishops, priests, deacons, elders and so on. Quite simply, it had to happen. The new embryonic Church, just like any embryo, grew and developed its own equivalent of arms and legs without which it could not have survived. Like it or not, human society needs structure and organization, and if you want to see what happens when there are none or when they fall apart, just have a look at places like Afghanistan today.

With these structures, however, go dangers, and the whole history of the Church demonstrates this. With structures goes power and power corrupts. The structures set up by Paul were designed to provide those young Churches of 2000 years ago with the support they needed to survive and function effectively as communities of faith in the world. The basis of their life together was to be the Gospel, the idea being that, by living according to the teaching of Jesus, these communities would become living examples of the new heaven and new earth the second reading spoke of. “I give you a new commandment” says Jesus in the Gospel, “Love one another….. By this” he says, “Everyone will know that you are my disciples.” And this is what the Church was always meant to be. This is what we are meant to be as a parish community. Like the people in Paul’s day, we are called to be a community of faith, a people committed to living by the values of the Gospel in such a way that we become living witnesses to it. The second reading told us that the world of the past is gone and that God is making the whole of creation new. By the way we live we are called to model that new creation for the people around us and be living signs of it in the world.

Sadly, however, it has not always been like that. Structures designed to enable this to happen have time and time again been used to produce the exact opposite effect from what was originally intended. Called to wash each other’s feet, called to be communities where the greatest become the least and where those in authority serve, the Church has far too often adopted instead the values and ways of the secular world. The result has been the abuse of power at every level in the form of corrupt Popes, Bishops lording it over people, living in palaces, expecting to have their hands kissed and dressing up in purple and fine linen like the nobility of their day. Titles like Cardinal and Monsignor and the absurd dressing up that goes with them, which had nothing to do with the Gospel and everything to do with human ambition and the desire for recognition and advancement, are a constant reminder to us of how far the Church has so often drifted away from the person and teaching of Jesus. And even these examples are fairly superficial compared to the deep rooted corruption which quickly finds its way into the Church when the people within it are moved by spirits other than the Spirit of God, perhaps the two most destructive been power and greed. If there is one thing everyone is agreed on around the issue of sex-abuse in the Church it is that at its root lies the abuse of power. And if we are to believe those who study these things and write about them, the next great scandal in the Church will be about money and greed. And if you want the equivalent of a tip on a horse, remember the name Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of a group known as the Legionaries of Christ.

And so the answer to our original question, Do we need structures? Do we need the Church?, has to be “yes, but.” To be a Christian is to live in community with others and, as Paul and Barnabas quickly discovered, it is not possible to do that without some kind of structure and organization. But these structures must be constantly monitored and renewed in the face of the dangers which are inherent in them. They are human structures and yet, at the same time, they are called to be something infinitely greater, signs of God himself, and given the human capacity to corrupt what is in itself good, this is only possible when those who make up the community are men and women of deep prayer and spirituality, committed to the Gospel and focused on the person of Jesus.

So pray that we will be such people and that together we may become such a parish.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Called to be living signs of the kingdom; vibrant communities of faith committed to the values of the Gospel; a people who show the world what it means to love as we have been loved by God; a Church where leadership and authority are about service and not power, we continue, as we have always done, to fall short. And so we ask God to stir in us today a deep understanding of what it means to be the Church and a profound desire to become all what we are called to be.......Lord hear us

We pray, in particular, for all who exercise authority in the Church. We pray especially for Pope Benedict and all those who hold senior positions in Rome. Such positions of power can be spiritually very dangerous. Power corrupts and no one who exercises power is immune from its evil influence. And so we ask God to give those who have power in Rome the grace they need to remain faithful to the example of Jesus who came into the world, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life for others.........Lord hear us

The Second Vatican Council called on the whole Church to develop the role of lay men and women in the Church and this has not been easy for many priests. It has meant a change in the way they see their own role in the Church, and many have not only resisted it, but have also struggled to understand the thinking behind it And so we pray for priests who, stuck in a way of thinking which is out of date, still want to hang on to the status and power which was once synonymous with the priesthood..........Lord hear us

Equally, however, the vast majority of lay people have, up to now, been reluctant to grow up and take their full place in the life of the local Church. Called by baptism to share in the priesthood of Jesus himself and to be his witnesses in the world, they have preferred to remain passive, even infantile, in the way they have exercised their membership of the Christian community. And so we ask God to raise up many men and women of mature adult faith in the Church today..............Lord hear us

The temptation to seek power and control over others is deep within us and is not the exclusive prerogative of the clergy within the Church. Lay people, too, can be corrupted in the same way. Even the simplest jobs which people exercise within a parish can, if we are not careful, become little power bases as we hang on to them, object when new people come along and treat them as our personal fiefdoms. And so we pray that this parish will always be free of such abuses........... Lord hear us

On Thursday of this week we will elect a new Government. And so we pray for all those who are standing for election both nationally and here in our own constituency. We pray that all who are elected will enter Parliament in a few weeks time filled with a desire to serve the people of Britain rather than line their own pockets or simply further their careers. And we pray that whoever forms the new Government will serve the whole people and always make the needs of the poor their highest priority...........Lord hear us.

4th SUNDAY OF EASTER

2010-04-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

For many priests, this World Day of Prayer for Vocations will the most difficult we have ever faced. For months now the papers have been filled with shocking stories from around the world of clerical sexual abuse. In the minds of many the words priest and paedophile have become synonymous. In Ireland, traditionally the most ‘Catholic’ of ‘Catholic’ countries, many priests are afraid to appear in public wearing a clerical collar. There have been cases of men spat at and verbally abused in the street, one priest, visiting a house in his parish, having the door shut in his face with the words ‘There are no children here’ ringing in his ears. And here in Scotland, although it’s not as bad as that, the whole sorry mess is a cloud hanging over us all.

Just two weeks ago, in the Tablet, Timothy Radcliffe, former head of the Dominican Order, wrote an article entitled ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ in which he explored the reasons for and against his staying in the Church or leaving it. And while, like him, I am definitely staying and intend to be a priest for the rest of my life, the real question I have had to face in recent months is why I am doing so. Why am I still a priest in a Church which behaves the way it does and which so often appals me? These are important questions to which I have given a great deal of thought recently and which I would like to reflect on with you today. Because, until I have given some kind of answer to them, how can I possibly invite you to pray for vocations to the priesthood? And if it helps some of you answer similar questions in your own life, then all the better.

The reasons why any of us do the things we do are, of course, complex. There are usually several layers of reasons and in my own case, when I looked closely at why, despite everything that is going on, I am still a priest, I have been able to identify four such layers. They don’t all have equal value. Some carry more weight than others. But I begin with by far the most superficial of them which is quite simply this: I will be sixty five in June, and if I left the priesthood, what else would I do? Where would I live? How would I support myself? What would I use for money? These are not in themselves good reasons for staying but I have to acknowledge that they are there. I have even asked myself if winning the lottery would make a difference and have come to the conclusion that, while I would not give up being a priest, I just might retire and, if you like, ‘let them get on with it.’ But to be honest, I don’t really think I would.

And the second reason for staying, not a very good one either, is that I am so deeply influenced by the way I was taught as a child in St Thomas’ Primary School in Muirkirk, a way of thinking which is now part of the hard-wiring in my brain, that I simply cannot imagine turning my back on it all. The truth which I am reluctant to admit is that, despite everything I have said to people over the years about God’s unconditional love, there is a very old and quite primitive part of me that still struggles to believe it and so would be afraid to go. I am actually appalled that this way of thinking is still there in me, but am consoled by the fact that it is not, in the end, why I am still a priest.

We come closer to that with my third reason, which is that, despite all its weaknesses – and there have been plenty of them over the centuries - I know with what St Ignatius would call a deep interior knowledge that God is at work deep within history through the Church. Our God is a God who, in Jesus, has embraced the human condition in all its messiness and has not been afraid to get his hands dirty. And to be a man or woman of faith is to do the same. It’s to engage with the full reality of whatever happens, no matter how ugly it may be, and find God there. All kinds of stuff will happen and always has. We belong to a sinful church which has, over the centuries, faced crisis after crisis, many of them far greater than anything we know today, and survived them. And not only has it survived them, but guided by the God who at Easter turned death into life, those very same crises have become the place where change and growth have taken place. And I have not the slightest doubt that that will happen again now. Indeed it is already happening for those who have eyes to see. Like everyone else I get angry at what goes on in the Church. There will be other revelations about corruption in the Church before the current crisis is over. There are times when I am so disgusted that I feel like walking away. But I won’t, because it is through this church that I came to know God and it is through it, no matter what happens, that I will continue to know him.

But the real reason I am still a priest is that being one has been the most wonderful experience imaginable. Far away from Rome, the Pope, the Vatican and all that stuff which, in the end, doesn’t really matter, daily contact with the lives of ordinary people has been the most amazing experience of God for me. As a priest of the Catholic Church for just over forty years it has been my privilege to be trusted by so many people and to be given access to their most secret emotions and thoughts. Whether it be a times of joy or sadness, the birth of a child or the death of a spouse, it has been my great privilege to accompany people and speak with them about what really matters in their lives in a way few others are allowed to do. They have shared their doubts and struggles with me and we have laughed and cried together. We have searched for God in all that has happened and in doing so, two great truths have emerged for me. The first is the sheer goodness of God and the second is the way that goodness is reflected in every person I have met. Quite simply, I wouldn’t change it for anything

And that’s why, despite all the scandals and all the bad publicity, I can still ask you to pray for vocations today.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin this week by praying for priests everywhere. The scandal of child sexual abuse by fellow-priests in countries all over the world hangs like a dark cloud over every priest today. In the eyes of many, especially in the media, all priests are paedophiles, and this, for some, is a very difficult burden to bear. And so we ask God to give them the depth of spirituality they need to understand that this painful experience is part of a period of penance for sin that the whole Church is called to at this time...........Lord hear us

Many priests today feel disillusioned and disappointed as they look at what is going on in the Church. For some this is because the Church they knew in their youth has disappeared and they struggle to come to terms with the changes that have taken place. For others, the sadness they feel is because the hope for the future which came out of the Second Vatican Council seems to be dying. And so we ask God to give them all the grace they need to keep trusting the God who, in time, turns all things to good............Lord hear us

Over the years, huge numbers of men have, for a whole variety of reasons, chosen to leave the active priesthood. Some, in the process, have also left the Church, hurt and angry at the way they have been treated. Many, on the other hand, continue to play their part in the life of the Church, often as married men with a wife and family. And so we pray for them all today, that God will continue to bless them and where necessary heal those who have been hurt by their experience.............Lord hear us

Despite everything that has gone on, there are still men, young and old, coming forward and expressing an interest in becoming priests. And so we pray for them and ask God to stir the same desire in others. We pray, too, for those who work with them and teach them when they finally enter the seminary. We ask God to give vocations directors and members of seminary staffs the wisdom and discernment they need when deciding who is and who is not suitable for priestly ministry today........Lord hear us

The book of the Apocalypse, today, speaks of a huge number of people, impossible to count, who have been through the great persecution and have washed their robes clean in the blood of the Lamb. These are the martyrs of the early Church, but they also represent the millions of men and women who, through times of difficulty and crisis down through the centuries, have remained faithful to the Gospel. And so we pray that, when the history of our time comes to be written, we will be counted among them...........Lord hear us

As explained in this week’s bulletin, there will be a meeting here in the hall on Wednesday 26th May to which are invited people, especially young adults, who once came to Mass here but have, for a whole variety of reasons stopped doing so. The aim is simply to engage in conversation with them listen to them and hear something of their own experience. And so we ask God to move among us in the time between now and then and to give those of us here the courage to make the meeting known.......Lord hear us

3rd SUNDAY OF EASTER

2010-04-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

In last week’s homily, which was based on the story of Thomas, we reflected on the positive value of doubt, the importance of asking questions and the danger of too much certainty when it comes to matters of faith. In its extreme form, I suggested, certainty breeds fanaticism, intolerance and fundamentalism, three of the great scourges of our day, and in its more common form it breeds rigidity and inflexibility in the way we think which makes it much more difficult for us to embrace change or open ourselves up to new insights. I remember so well how, as he was preparing to set off for Rome for the Second Vatican Council, Archbishop Dwyer of Birmingham met with the priests of his diocese and solemnly assured them that, contrary to rumours going around at the time, there was not the slightest chance that the Mass would be changed into English. I think, too, of the great French theologian, Henri de Lubac, who, in his nineties, was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II as a belated recognition of a whole generation of brilliant men who, by their research in the fields of Scripture, liturgy and the history of the Church had laid the foundations of the Council, but who for most of their lives had been sidelined and even condemned by Rome. One wag, commenting at the time on the reluctance of people in Scotland to accept the Council, said that the problem was that Vatican II was answering questions people in Scotland weren’t asking.

And yet my own experience is that people in Scotland today are, at last, asking all kinds of questions. There was a very powerful and positive response to what I said last week. One contributor to the website said that he had waited fifty years to hear it, and this did not in the least surprise me. I have heard so many other people say the same kind of thing over the years, and one of the reasons, I believe, why so many people have stopped going to Church is that, as their doubts and questions have surfaced, they have not been dealt with in a positive and constructive way. Often they have remained unspoken and so have festered away inside. Instead of being exposed to the light where they can become the place where faith deepens and grows, they have remained hidden, until suddenly one day, someone who had quietly turned up at Mass every week for years, stops coming and is not seen again. And for all I know there could be some of you here very close to taking that same step. And it’s all so sad and so unnecessary.

Contrary to what people think, you see, virtually everything about the Church is open to question and has already changed many times over the centuries. One of the biggest misunderstandings I have encountered in people during my years as a priest is the completely mistaken idea that, from the time of Jesus right up to the 1960s, things had remained the same until Pope John called the Vatican Council which then changed everything. Change is never ending in the Church and one of the things I hope we will do after the summer is offer a course in Church History which will help us understand this better. There are things which, even if he is unlikely to do so, the Pope could change tomorrow at the stroke of a pen: like the Church’s marriage laws of the rule about priestly celibacy. And even in matters of dogma, like the Trinity, Transubstantiation or the Virgin Birth, the Church never claims to have explained these fully or said the last word on them. There is always room for new insights, and so, by definition, there are always questions to be asked. And hidden in this week’s Gospel we have an example of this.

As the passage begins, Peter says that he is going fishing. To which the others reply, ‘We’ll come with you.’ Even in this little incident it is obvious that Peter had leadership qualities and it seems not unreasonable to suggest that it was this which led Jesus to appoint him as leader of the group. But although he is their leader, it is not Peter who, as the story goes on, recognizes Jesus on the shore. The one who does that is John, the youngest member of the group. And in this we can see a reflection of a creative tension which has gone on in the Church since the very beginning, the tension between what we might call the institutional Church – the Pope, the Bishops, the clergy and so on – and the more prophetic or charismatic elements in the Church, represented by John, a mere boy. It has always been the job of the leaders to lead, but, especially in times of crisis over the centuries, those who have recognized Jesus first have not always been the leaders – I love that sentence in Mark’s Gospel where it says that Jesus appeared last of all to the eleven – but very often those with no power or status in the Church. Some became saints, but in their lifetime they were often on the margins of the Church. And, of course, as with all the Resurrection stories, many were women, which brings us to one of the burning issues of our day.

At the beginning of his reign, at a time when he had great hopes for unity with the Orthodox and Anglican Churches by the year 2000, Pope John Paul II spoke about a time when the Pope would play a very different role from the one he has played in recent history. The Pope as we know him is product of the nineteenth century and has not always acted the way he does today. John Paul, rather paradoxically, given his own very dominant style, envisaged the day when the papacy would be less autocratic and more obviously serve the world and the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time said that he himself could imagine such a Pope as leader of a united Church. But, of course, it did not happen at that time.

But could it be happening now? The scandal of sexual abuse has put the papacy under the most severe scrutiny and it would not be an exaggeration to say that it will never be the same again. Many have argued that this whole scandal would never have happened had the institutional authority not been so dominant and the prophetic tradition more influential: and in particular, if women had been more involved. And so could the whole tragic story of child abuse come, in time, to be seen as the catalyst for the latest in a long line of changes for the better in the Church.

I, for one, certainly hope so.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin today by praying for Pope Benedict and for all who hold positions of leadership or authority in the Church at this difficult moment in its history. Every crisis is an opportunity for development and growth and we ask God to pour into those who lead us at this time the grace and wisdom they need to grasp the moment and respond in an open and faith-filled way the movement of God in everything that is happening, trusting always in the God who, in time, turns all things to good.........Lord hear us

And we ask God to give us that same courage and wisdom here in this parish. We ask, in particular for the courage we need to face up to and deal with the doubts and questions which surface from deep within us, a process which has been accelerated in many by the current scandal surrounding child sexual abuse. If these are dealt with in positive and healthy ways, they can be the beginning of deeper and more adult faith and we ask God to show us how to do this both as individuals and as a community........Lord hear us

The Church lives and breathes in history. We exist in history, are influenced by history and have helped shape history for the last two thousand years. In the mystery of the Incarnation, God, in Jesus, became part of our history and is forever more tied in with all that happens in the world, for good or for ill. And so we pray that the Church history course which, God willing, we will run in the parish next year will help us understand this and so see the events of our own time in perspective...........Lord hear us

There has always been a more or less healthy and creative tension in the Church between those who exercise leadership and authority and those exercise a more free and unpredictable prophetic ministry. It has always been the role of the prophet to challenge authority and call it to account when it wandered – as it has often done – from the way marked out by Jesus in the Gospel, and we ask God to continue to raise up many men and women who will continue this prophetic ministry in our own day.........Lord hear us

At the very heart of the prophetic ministry in the Church is the answer Peter and the other apostles give to the High Priest in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. ‘Obedience to God’ they tell him. ‘comes before obedience to men.’ As people of faith, we are called, as the martyrs of the early Church did, to live by and speak up for the values of the Gospel even when the world thinks we are mad and we pray for the courage to do that in the context of the times we are living through.........Lord hear us

In recent years, many women have walked away from a Church where, as they see it, they are neither valued nor welcome. And even among those who remain there is often a deep sense of anger or frustration at the way they are treated. And yet it was women who cared for Jesus out of their own resources. It was women who stayed at the foot of the cross. It was a woman who was first to meet the risen Jesus. And so we ask God to show the Church how to value women today and use their many gifts.....Lord hear us

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

2010-04-10T05:25:00.001-07:00

One of the things I always do on holiday is read Spanish history. And it was through this that I came across a man called Javier Tusell. Tusell had played a part in the government which spanned the period between the death of General Franco in 1975 and the transition to democracy in 1978, during which time one of the things he did was to negotiate the return to Spain of Picasso’s famous anti-war painting, Guernica. In 1981, however, influenced by something the French writer, Albert Camus, had written, he gave up active politics and devoted the rest of his life to being an academic historian and a political commentator. Camus’ advice to anyone interested in politics had been to find a party of people who weren’t sure they were right all the time, and join it, and it was basically because there was no such party on offer in Spain at the time that Tusell withdrew from the political stage. With an election just a few weeks away here, of course, we might wish there were such a party currently on offer in Britain, but that is not the point I want to make this morning. Rather, in the light of the Gospel passage we have just heard I would like to reflect with you on the importance of doubt and the danger of too much certainty when it comes to faith.

The idea that certainty in matters of faith could be dangerous may sound strange to some. After all, isn’t a firm conviction about what is true part of what faith is? Well, in a certain sense that is true. The trouble with faith that has too much certainty, however, is that it cannot mature. Lacking the flexibility and room for manoeuvre which go with uncertainty, it is incapable of growth, and when this happens the consequences are far-reaching. In its most extreme form, certainty gives birth to fundamentalism, intolerance and the kind of religious fanaticism which ends up ramming belief down other people’s throats. In its less extreme form, far more common among people like ourselves, is the kind of rigidity of thought which, lacking flexibility, finds it very difficult to take on board anything that is new or different and so gets stuck in a rut of partial, half-baked truths which, in our inability to cope with mystery or truths beyond our understanding, we turn into certainties. They may be false certainties, but we cling to them. Like a child’s comfort blanket, they reassure us and make us feel better and God help anyone who tries to take them from us.
But as the fourteenth century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, famously put it, ‘Whatever we say God is God isn’t. Anything at all that we say about God or the things of God will always be only partly true and therefore partly false. Even to say that God ‘exists’ is problematic in the sense that the word ‘exist’ cannot be used of God in the same way that it is used of everything else that exists. And so to be a man or woman of faith is a mixture of knowing and simultaneously not knowing which is why doubting, and asking questions are so fundamental to a life of faith. Without them we soon reduce God to something we can understand, something that makes sense to us and before we know where we are we are worshipping a false god, an idol created in our own image and likeness.

Take, for example, the Resurrection. Many today find it impossible to believe in. The idea that a man could die and then come back to life seems ridiculous to them and they dismiss it out of hand. Except that they are right. Such people are closer to the truth than we think, because Jesus did not come back from the dead. That’s not what resurrection is about. Jesus did not come back. He went forward, through death, into a new way of living which the Gospels struggle to describe. He ate real food, but he passed through closed doors. He was the same Jesus but people did not recognize him. How this can be, of course, I don’t know. But I do know this: to dismiss it because we don’t understand it is a very special form of arrogance married to certainty which grows out of ignorance and is one of the great signs our time. To reduce truth to what we can understand, as so many do in the world today, is the height of foolishness, and to illustrate this I would like to quote from an article which appeared in the Tablet some time ago. There will be some bits of it you don’t understand, but if you are with me so far you will know that that’s my whole point.

The author was, and may still be, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. His name is Keith Ward and in the article he explores the implications of quantum physics for the doctrine of the Resurrection, with special emphasis on the resurrection of the body. It contains sentences like: ‘Freeman Dyson, in an influential paper on the far-future universe, has proposed that human thoughts and feelings might ultimately be downloaded into magnetic fields composed of clouds of photons and gravitons long after galaxies and stars have ceased to exist’ Or ‘The astonishing thing is that perfectly reputable physicists take seriously the possibility, from a strictly scientific point of view, that that we might come to exist in very different forms, even in different forms of space-time, in another universe long after the death of our physical bodies.’ His final sentence, in fact, says this: ‘Prompted by modern science, we might say that it looks as if the resurrection shows what reality, often veiled by the appearances of this space and time, is really like. It looks as though, if there is a God, the Resurrection is virtually inevitable.’

After his encounter with Thomas in today’s Gospel, Jesus utters those famous words: ‘Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’ Maybe as we move ever deeper into the 21st century we could put it like this: ‘Happy are those who doubt and ask questions without ceasing to believe’ or ‘Happy are those who, because they know that they know nothing, keep their mouths shut.’ Or ‘Happy are those who don’t dismiss out of hand what other people have believed for centuries until they learn more about it.’ Or ‘Happy are those who have the humility and sense to realise that what we think of as very advanced scientific knowledge has hardly begun to scrape the surface of all that exists.’

We all have much to learn. But we have a lot to unlearn too. All I can say is that I am up for it. Are you?

BIDDING PRAYERS

The Resurrection is not about Jesus coming back from the dead. The person in the Gospels who did that was Lazarus, who then had to die again. The Resurrection of Jesus is about something more profound. It is about a new way of living which God longs to share with us through Jesus. It begins now and comes to its fullness beyond death. And so we pray that in an age which finds this increasingly impossible to believe we will have the courage and faith we need to witness to it in the world.......Lord hear us

Faith in the Resurrection always involves a leap of faith. It is not that there is no evidence for it, but, in the end, we have to choose to believe it. It is a truth which takes us far beyond the limits of human knowledge and opens us up to realities we can only know through divine revelation. And so we pray for the courage we need to make this leap of faith, especially in a world which foolishly dismisses anything it cannot understand and reduces truth to what it thinks it is or wants it to be.......Lord hear us

Given the limitations of all human knowledge and the individual limitations of our own personal knowledge, only a fool, and an ignorant one at that, would be certain of too many things. And so we pray for the humility we need to live with uncertainty, not be afraid to doubt or ask questions and be open to the movement of the Spirit in us inviting us to let go of what we previously thought to be true so that we can move on and embrace new and deeper ways of thinking about God.........Lord hear us

False certainty, especially about religious truths, has caused much trouble in the world over the centuries. It leads to fanaticism, religious intolerance and persecution of those who do not think as we do. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize signs of this in ourselves so that the world can finally break free from it and become a more tolerant and godly place. We pray in particular that God will lead the people of Scotland beyond the religious bigotry which bedevils us still.......Lord hear us

We live in an age which rejects religious truth but tends to believe every word that comes from the mouth of science. And so we pray for the sense of balance humanity needs to recognize that, while science is a God-given source of truth for us, much of it is no more than theory, theory which has to be constantly changed and up-dated in the light of new discoveries, given that, compared to all that there is to know in and about the cosmos, science is only in its infancy.......Lord hear us

One of the great needs in our parishes at this moment in history is for adult education in faith. There is so much that we need to learn and so much that we need to unlearn. Faced with the responsibility of sharing the Good News of the gospel with others, we need to make sure that what we share with them is the truth and not some half-baked version of it which will do more harm than good. And so we pray that our whole parish will be open to such learning and embrace it with joy and enthusiasm......Lord hear us

EASTER SUNDAY

2010-04-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things about the Holy Week Liturgy is that, before we even begin, we know how the story ends. Even as we try to stay with Jesus through the agony in the garden on Holy Thursday or follow him on the road to Calvary on Good Friday, we are already thinking about the Resurrection and making sure everything is ready for Easter. But it wasn’t like that two thousand years ago. For the original disciples what happened during the final hours of Jesus’ life was a complete disaster. Everything they had believed in and hoped for was falling apart. They had come to see Jesus as the one the ancient prophets had spoken of and, to their utter dismay, he had been crucified like a common criminal.

And on Easter Sunday morning it was no different. At the moment of Resurrection there was no angelic choir waiting outside the tomb to greet Jesus with the Alleluia chorus from Handel’s Messiah, no adoring crowds to witness the moment of triumph. The whole of Easter day in the gospels is a story of disillusioned and frightened people failing to recognize Jesus and refusing to believe he had risen. And it’s only if we can get in touch with that Easter, the real Easter, the doubt-filled and fear-ridden Easter of history, rather than the romantic Hollywood version of it we see in films, that we can begin to understand what the Resurrection means in our own lives now. Quite simply, the experience of many in the world today is much closer to that of those early disciples two thousand years ago than it is to the Handel’s Messiah version, and it’s this that I invite you to reflect on this morning.

For so many of our contemporaries, you see, the world is a terrible place. All around us too, as was happening during the original Holy Week, things seem to be falling apart. I meet people who no longer watch the News on TV, so depressing do they find it all. Everything that is bad and unhealthy seems to be on the increase, from teenage pregnancies to drug taking right through to the current financial crisis. And within the Church things seem no better. All over the developed world congregations are falling and, to make it worse, there are hardly any young people to be seen in our churches. And then, of course, there is the scandal of sex abuse which is causing and will continue to cause many to struggle with issues of faith until such times as the Church as a whole has the courage to face up to its deep-rooted causes. These are difficult times, and as such they are an opportunity for us to enter in some way into the experience of those who lived through the events of what we now call Holy Week but which felt far from holy at the time. They knew nothing then about the Resurrection just as for many today talk of Resurrection and the presence of the Risen Jesus among us is just words. I constantly meet church-going people who tell me that they cannot see any evidence of God in the world around them. And yet I can say to you today with absolute certainty that God is at work deep within everything that happens. Jesus is risen, alive and present among us, even if, like the people on the first Easter Day, we struggle to recognize him. So where is he? Well, that’s a bit like asking where the air we breathe is. He, like it, is everywhere. But, based on Resurrection stories from all four gospels, I would like to suggest three ways in which we might begin to recognize him.

And the first concerns Mary Magdalen. In a passage we will hear at Mass on Tuesday morning, St John has her stooping down and looking into the tomb, weeping, totally unaware that Jesus us standing behind her. A friend of mine who lives in Jerusalem often laughs at pilgrims visiting the church of the Holy Sepulchre on the grounds that it is the only place in the world of which the bible says, ‘He is not here.’ And if we spend our time bending down looking into tombs and weeping over the past we will never see Jesus. Jesus is not to be found in the past, in old hurts, in resentment nursed over years, in what once was or used to be. If we are to recognize the Risen Jesus in our lives, then we, like Mary, must leave the past behind, turn round and stop looking into tombs.

And the second scene is the upper room on the evening of the first Easter Day. There, the eleven were gathered together in a locked room, filled with fear. And of all the tombs we can crawl into, none is more debilitating and crippling than fear. And so Jesus calms their fear, opens their minds to understand the Scriptures and tells them that they will be witnesses to the resurrection to the ends of the earth. Within days, the Spirit of Pentecost will transform these weak, fearful men who at the first sign of trouble had abandoned Jesus and run away, into men of deep personal faith. And until that happens to us and our minds, too, are opened up to understand, not just the Scriptures, but many other things too, our fears will continue to cripple us and prevent us becoming the witnesses to the presence of Jesus in the world that we are called to be.

And the third scene I invite you to contemplate this morning is the road to Emmaus. Those disillusioned and disappointed disciples whose hopes had been crushed still exist in the Church today. Those first disciples, like so many in our own time, could not see God in what was happening to them. And yet the Risen Jesus was with them as they walked along. And the truth we must come to realise is that that same Risen Jesus has been with us every step of our journey too. All of us – and again I say this without fear of error - have had moments of grace and insight over the years, moments when the veil covering our eyes has been removed for a time and we have seen realities normally hidden from us. The trouble is that we forget them and live as if they had never happened.

And so I invite you this Easter to take time to think back over your personal journey to Emmaus. Ask the Risen Jesus to show you times you have experienced his presence along the way. Look forward in hope, not backwards in fear. Choose life in all its shapes and forms and sooner or later you will recognize him at the breaking of bread.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer this Easter by praying for the world at this moment in its history. We are living through a time when millions are filled with fear and anxiety about the future. The great epidemics of our age are stress, depression and anxiety resulting, in many cases, from the pressures of living in a consumer-driven society. And so we pray that the Good News of Easter will fill us with hope and that, by showing the people of our time that there are better ways of living, we will share that hope them.......Lord hear us

The hope we speak of is no naive optimism. Bad things have always happened, happen still and will continue to happen in the future. To be a hope-filled people we will often have to dig deep, as Jesus himself had to dig deep during the agony on the garden or as he hung dying upon the cross. We will sometimes have to trust when there is no obvious reason for doing so. But our trust is in the God who turns death into life and we pray for the grace to believe in his love no matter what happens........Lord hear us

As long as Mary Magdalen stood looking into the tomb she was never going to see the Risen Jesus. For that to happen, she had to turn away from what was empty and lifeless and look in a new direction. The past had nothing to offer. And so we pray for the grace we need to put the past behind us: to let go of old hurts or resentments; to embrace new ways of thinking; to accept and embrace the inevitable changes and developments of history and so recognize the Risen Jesus in our lives now..........Lord hear us

As the two disciples left Jerusalem and began their journey home to Emmaus, they were filled with a deep sense of disappointment. Their hope had been that Jesus would be the one the prophets had spoken of and now their hopes and dreams were shattered. And yet, without them realising it, Jesus was with them. And so we pray for the insight we need to recognize the ways in which Jesus has been with us every step of our life-journey, especially at times of pain and disappointment..........Lord hear us

On the first Easter Day, the disciples were huddled together in the upper room, paralysed by fear. Faith will always mean asking question, not understanding and, in some cases, spending many years struggling with doubt. But what prevents us becoming the people God calls us to be is not doubt but fear. Doubt can be our friend. Fear is always our enemy. It is fear that prevents us becoming the people God calls us to be and we pray for the grace we need to overcome our fears here in this parish.........Lord hear us

Millions today have lost faith in life after death. They cannot understand it and so it cannot be true. To lose faith in life after death, however, has profound effects of the way we live. If there is no life after death then our only hope of happiness lies in material things. And yet these constantly disappoint and fail to deliver the happiness we seek. And so we pray that the men and women of our time, seeking happiness in all kinds of strange places, will come to understand again that happiness ultimately lies in God alone..............Lord hear us

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

2010-03-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

At the end of last week’s story of the prodigal son, we left the elder brother outside, refusing to go in and be part of the celebration to mark the return of his younger brother. And it’s not hard to know why. What the father was doing was completely beyond, not only the elder son’s comprehension, but the comprehension of the entire village. According to Jewish law, what the younger son had done was literally unforgiveable. Legally he had ceased to exist and technically the father now had only one son. So much so, that if the younger son ever returned, the local people would have seen it as their duty to kill him as soon as he set foot in the village on the grounds that he was already dead, which was why the father rushed out to meet him before anyone else could get to him. This was the world of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the world of religion rather than faith, a world which Jesus challenges to the very depth of its being by his call to forgive, not seven times but seventy seven times..

And now this week we have the story of Jesus and the woman caught committing adultery, with those words of Jesus ringing down through the centuries, ‘Let he or she who has not sinned throw the first stone.’ What Jesus is saying, both last week and again this week, could not be clearer. If we want to enter the kingdom of God there must be no judgement and no condemnation of anyone. Our willingness to forgive must know no limits. For anyone who seeks to follow Jesus and live by his teaching, no-one, no matter what they have done, can be beyond forgiveness. There are no exceptions. And he means none.

So how is this possible? How can we be expected to forgive everyone? Surely, to use the examples people always bring up, Jesus is not talking about people like Hitler or Stalin. Surely he cannot expect us to forgive terrorists and those who blow up innocent people in places all over the world. Well, the simple answer to that is that he does. What he doesn’t expect, however, is that we do it on our own. The forgiveness we are speaking of here is only possible through the power of the Spirit working deep within us. But without a willingness to forgive in this way: without a desire to forgive as God forgives, or, as my friend St Ignatius would say, a desire to desire - or if that isn’t there - a desire to desire to desire – then the truth today’s liturgy is inviting us to see is that we cannot enter the kingdom of God. But having said that, it is important that we reflect a little more on what this all-embracing forgiveness is like, and to illustrate this I would like to consider a case that has been in the News so much recently and about which there has been considerable disagreement, the case of Jon Venables.

And the first thing to say about both Jon Venables – and we can all agree on this - is that what he did was truly horrific. And the gospel command to forgive does not diminish this or water it down in any way. There has, however, been a good deal of debate about the extent to which a ten year-old can be held either morally or criminally responsible for his actions. As has been pointed out over and over again these boys were themselves children when they killed James Bulger and only in the last few days the children’s commissioner for England and Wales has stirred even more controversy by saying that they should never have been tried in an adult criminal court. I even heard someone say on Television the other night that had they committed this crime in Finland, they would have been sent back to school within weeks and given the chance to get on with their lives. But there is nothing in the gospel for or against that particular approach just as there is nothing in the gospel to suggest that children should not receive appropriate punishment when they do something wrong. I have never experienced the presence of a forgiving God more powerfully than I did every week in Kilmarnock prison during the years I was chaplain there, but I have also met a handful of men there who, in my judgement, should never be let out given the danger they would be to others. But on the subject of children, I was impressed by these words from this week’s New Statesman magazine. ‘The age of criminal responsibility’ it said, ‘should be at least twelve. Most parents do not treat ten year olds as responsible adults. They do not allow them to walk around the town unaccompanied, stay at home alone, hold unsupervised parties, play with matches or take sole charge of younger children. The statute book – on subjects from alcohol to paid employment – is full of laws that regard young people as impressionable, irresponsible and vulnerable until they are much older than twelve.’ Or as another writer put it, ‘If they can commit an adult crime at ten, let them vote at ten.’

All of these points, of course, can be and have been debated and it is perfectly possible for Christians to disagree on them. But there are other forces at work in the Jon Venables story which can have no place in the heart of any Christian. They are the vindictiveness, the hatred, the desire to do him harm, the instinct to hound this young man and pursue him all his life because of what he did when he was ten, the lynch mob mentality encouraged by papers like the Sun and others, the refusal to even consider the possibility that he and others are capable of redemption. These things are totally incompatible with the following of Jesus. We may feel them. We have, after all, no control over our feelings at the moment when they surface spontaneously within us. But what we feel and what we choose to do are two different things. Who knows what Jesus felt at the human level as he hung on the cross? What he said, however, was, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And so the big question for us today is not how we feel about Jon Venables, but can we pray for him. Because until we can do this for him and for others like him we cannot enter the kingdom of God.

But I would like, today, to add a personal note to today’s homily. We all have people in our lives whom we struggle to forgive. Mine, however, is the Catholic Church itself. For forty years as a priest I have argued at meetings against the clerical structures which underpin the current tragedy of child abuse in Ireland and elsewhere. Often I have felt like a voice crying in the wilderness and have been accused of being a stirrer or trouble-maker. And so now, as the full scale of what has been going on becomes clear, years of anger are surfacing in me. When I see the Pope on TV I want to punch his face. I take a twisted kind of pleasure in watching bishops in Ireland suffer and would be happy if they were all forced to resign. Sometimes I hate the Church to which I belong. And so, on this day when Pope Benedict’s letter of apology is being read in every church in Ireland, I invite you to pray for him, for the Church, for me and above all for the victims of paedophile priests everywhere. And if we have really understood Jesus then we will pray for the abusers too.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We pray this weekend for all those who have been the victims of child sexual abuse by priests, religious and other people within the Church. But we pray, too, for the courage and openness we need to look at the causes of this abuse and address them so that this evil does not happen again in the future. And what has become abundantly clear is that the root of this scandal is power and the abuse of power. And so we ask God for the wisdom we need to recognize the profound changes required to deal with this....Lord hear us

The demands of the gospel in relation to forgiveness could not be more radical. No-one is excluded from God’s forgiveness and to the extent that we refuse to forgive others we cannot look upon the face of God. But there are times when forgiveness is almost impossible for us. The anger and resentment are too deep and the hurt too great. And so we ask God to stir in us a desire to be able to forgive, or even a desire to desire it, which one day will grow into forgiveness itself ......Lord hear us

Not to be able to forgive becomes a cancer which eats away inside us. Those who are gripped by such a condition often live deeply unhappy lives where the constant bitterness they feel becomes a cloud hanging over everything they do. Those, on the other hand, who can forgive even great evils, become an inspiration to those around them, as we have seen over the years in Northern Ireland, South Africa and elsewhere. And so we ask God to raise up in the world many more examples of such forgiveness.......Lord hear us

In the first reading today the prophet speaks of how there is no need to recall the past. God, he says, is doing a new deed. And so we pray for people in the world’s most troubled places where, as a result of constantly recalling the past and reliving old battles, peace seems completely unattainable. There can be no more tragic example of this than the Holy Land itself, the very place where God lived among us and died on a cross for every human being. And so we pray for peace and forgiveness there............Lord hear us

In today’s Gospel, the woman caught committing adultery is humiliated in front of everyone. And this weekend, as happens every weekend, someone somewhere will have his or her sexual indiscretions exposed to full view by the gutter press. And so we pray for them. We pray for the moral maturity we need not to even read such things and the courage, where possible, to speak out against them, remembering those words of Jesus: ‘Let him who has not sinned throw the first stone.’...........Lord hear us

The woman in the gospel, like millions of other women down through the ages, was exploited and abused by men. This abuse, too, is rooted in the traditional power men have claimed over women and which remains as big an evil today as it has ever been. And so we pray for women who live with male violence; women who are trapped in prostitution; women who are the victims of human trafficking; women who are caught up in psychologically harmful abusive relationships; and many others.......Lord hear us

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

2010-03-06T05:59:00.000-08:00

In last week’s homily, I invited you to reflect on how, in both the story where the Covenant is sealed by cutting animals in half and in the story of the Transfiguration, the role of Abraham and the three disciples, was to say nothing, do nothing and let God be God. And I invited you to see in this a reflection of something fundamental to a life of faith. We saw how, at the heart of all primitive religion lay the notion – still very much with us today – that by performing religious actions we can somehow please God and even persuade him to do what we want, one obvious manifestation of this in our own day being the idea that saying certain prayers a certain number of times in a certain way will somehow make them ‘work’, along with the fear that failure to do so might cause something terrible to happen. This, along with things like not walking under ladders or ‘touching wood’ are pure paganism and a constant reminder to us that our pagan past is still quite recent in historical terms and our emergence from it far from complete. Another example of it is the way so many people, when something bad happens, start telling themselves it must be a punishment for something they have done wrong, an idea that Jesus knocks firmly on the head in this week’s Gospel. This is a relic of the pagan notion that the gods were often hostile and apt to lash out in anger, religious mumbo- jumbo that has nothing to do with genuine faith. The simple truth is that we don’t have to do anything to please God. He already delights in us, loves us with a love beyond our understanding and there is nothing we can do to either increase or diminish that love.
But, of course, that raises a question which I posed at the end of last week’s homily and promised to deal with in this week’s. And it’s a very simple one. If God loves us the way I say he does and if nothing we do or don’t do can increase or diminish that love, then what’s the point in being good? Why live a Christian life at all? Why come to Mass and do all the other things that go with being a Catholic or a Christian? Well, as I indicated last week, the answer lies in the concept of a free and loving response and to help us understand what that means I take you back to today’s first reading where Moses meets God in the story of the burning bush.

And what we see there is something very different from the primitive religion we spoke of a moment ago. In this story, God calls Moses by name and reveals himself to him. He tells Moses his own name, which in the context of the time in which the passage was written – some 2500 year ago - meant that he was entering into a relationship of some intimacy with Moses. And it’s this movement from gods who were unpredictable, fickle and often hostile, to a God who reveals his name and speaks to us as one friend speaks to another that marks the shift from religion to faith. The relationship we are called to have with God is not a Master/Servant relationship based on fear and obedience but a relationship of friendship and intimacy based on love. And, of course, that changes everything. People who love each other don’t need rules and regulations. Those of you who are parents didn’t feed your children because the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights says that they have a right to be fed. You didn’t not abuse your children because it is against the law and you would go to prison if caught doing it. What people who love each other do is done, not out of obligation, but as a free and loving response and only those who relate to God in that same way ever really know what faith, as opposed to religion is.

In the Catholic Church, for example, there is still a rule which says that we should go to Mass on Sunday. That has never changed. But for the man or woman of faith it’s an irrelevancy. He or she does not go to Mass because there is a rule about it. The word Eucharist means thanksgiving and the person who inhabits the world of faith rather than religion goes to Mass, not because he is afraid he will somehow go to hell if he doesn’t, but because she has begun to experience the depth of God’s love and so freely comes together with the rest of the Christian community to celebrate that love, express their gratitude for it and work together for the coming of the kingdom. And one of the obvious reasons for the dramatic drop in Mass attendance in recent years has been that, as the power of the law and the fear of hell have faded, many people have found that they had no other reason for being there and so, not unnaturally, have stopped going.

In the field of morality, too, we are entering a stage in history where the moral decisions we make will depend less and less on rules beyond ourselves and more and more on this kind of free and loving response. In his very first Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est or God is Love,Pope Benedict reflects on the German philosopher Nietzshe’s claim that Christianity, with all its commandments and prohibitions, has poisoned sexual love and turned to bitterness the most precious thing in life. He even acknowledges, in a most un-pope-like turn of phrase, the widely held view out there that the Church – and I quote - ‘blows the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the divine.’ And quite simply the Church’s moral teaching, whether on sexual matters or any other matter, will only work when it’s stripped of all those prohibitions, all those ‘thou shalt nots’ and is presented in such a way that people begin to see that, far from being about preventing us enjoying ourselves, it’s about what leads to genuine happiness through just living, respect for other people, control of the worst aspects of human nature and freely choosing to be everything that is best about ourselves. Only when people can see that, stop living out of ‘thou shalt nots’ and embrace a free and loving response to what makes sense because they can see it is true will the values of the Gospel take root in our society.

The we will witness the end of religion and the beginning of the final stage of humanity’s great journey of faith into the inner life of God himself.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer this week by holding up before God all those people who, in an age when the power of the Church’s law over what we do has diminished and the fear of punishment for not keeping that law has faded, have lost their reason for attending Mass and so have stopped coming. We ask God to lead us through this moment in our history to a new place where we learn to understand the Eucharist in new ways and so have new and deeper reasons for taking part in it...........Lord hear us

Our pagan past still haunts us and influences the way we think. Underneath what passes for faith lies a dark past which has its roots in our most primitive fears and anxieties. And so we ask God to free us from the superstition and magic which are mixed in with our Christianity,and in particular from the absurd and deeply unchristian idea found in today’s Gospel, and so common among us still, that when something tragic happens in our lives, we are being punished for something we have done wrong..........Lord hear us

The idea that millions today have about Churches is that they are against things: against drink, against sex, against having fun, against enjoying ourselves. For many, going to Church is associated with dullness, boredom and a long series of ‘thou shalt nots.’ The last thing they would expect is to find a ‘holy’ person in a pub. But at its heart Christianity is deeply joyful. At its best it is not against things but for things. Above all, it is for life in all its fullness. And so we pray that the world will come to see this.........Lord hear us

Young people in particular have grown up with very negative experiences of Church. The materialistic, consumer-driven world they inhabit seems to offer so much more than faith, which seems dull and boring in comparison. Conned by powerful commercial forces out to exploit them for profit, many seek the happiness they long for in places which can never deliver it. The result is deep, thinly disguised unhappiness in many. And so we pray for them today that they will discover in time the rich world of faith............Lord hear us

On Wednesday evening we have an important meeting for parents in the parish who want to teach their children about the love of God and introduce them to the world of personal faith. These parents are the primary educators of their children and all anyone else can do, whether it be the school or the parish community, is help and support them in this work. And so we pray for the parents and families involved and ask God to bless this week’s meeting and show us the way forward together...........Lord hear us

On Thursday,we have the first of three discussion evenings before Easter. There is a great need for adult education in faith if we are to be able to offer to the modern world a Christianity which is authentic and makes sense in the people of our time. The hope is that over the next few years we will offer in the parish a whole variety of different opportunities to grow in knowledge and understanding and we pray for the courage and commitment we need to embrace these opportunities.........Lord hear us

Second Sunday of Lent C

2010-02-27T03:03:00.000-08:00

All that stuff in the first reading about cutting a heifer, a goat and a ram in half and a firebrand passing between the halves seems at first sight to have very little relevance for us today. Indeed, it’s the kind of passage which often causes people to ask why we bother reading the Old Testament at all given that so much of it makes no sense to people. And yet, behind what is, admittedly, a rather unusual story, lies a truth which, if we could grasp it, would change the whole way we think about God. It takes us to the very heart of the difference between religion and faith and it’s for that reason that I invite you to look at it more closely today.

And what we find there is the very strange way in which people three thousand years ago sealed contracts and agreements. In the days before written documents, public ceremonies which emphasised the importance and solemnity of a contract needed to be developed. And in the reading we hear about one of them. The practice, strange as it seems to us today, was to cut the animals in two and for the two parties to the agreement to walk between the halves, the implication being that if either party reneged on the agreement they deserved the same fate as the animals. But in the case of God and Abraham this, if you noticed, was not what happened. Abraham, in fact, fell into a deep sleep and God alone, symbolized by the firebrand, passed between the halves. In other words, the Covenant which is being sealed here is not a quid prop quo agreement. It’s not a case of if you do this then I will do that in return. The Covenant God is making with Abraham is pure gift. It’s completely God’s initiative. Abraham has nothing to offer to God in return for it. All he can do – and all any of us can do in the end – is be open to what God gives, receive it, accept it and rejoice in it.

And yet how different this is from the kind of religion we are all so familiar with, a religion which, from its primitive origins right up to the present day, is rooted in fear and riddled with the idea that we have to keep God happy by doing the things that please him. Our ancient ancestors, in an attempt to exercise some level of control over the world around them, invented Gods who would send the rain when they needed it or protect them from disease. And the way to make sure this happened was to perform religious actions like offering sacrifice, performing ritual dances or chanting religious words. Jesus himself warns us against this, telling us that, when we pray, we should not babble like the pagans do. They think that by using many word they will make themselves heard – the underlying belief here being that the gods were at best uninterested or at worst hostile – but there’s no need for us to do that. And the reason is simple. God knows what we need before we ask, longs to give us what we need and like any good father would not dream of giving us a stone when we asked for bread or a snake when we asked for a fish. Our primitive ancestors were like slaves who lived in fear of their gods. But Jesus tells us that the relationship he wants to have with us is not one of slaves or servants but of friendship and an intimacy so deep that, in the Eucharist, he gives us himself as food and drink under the appearances of bread and wine. And yet two thousand years on the evidence of our pagan past in everywhere as millions of religious Church-going people still live in fear of an angry God and continue to perform religious actions in the hope of keeping him happy. Religion always was and still is about doing things for God while what we are called to is the kind of faith that is open to the amazing things God wants to do for us.

And we see it in the Gospel today too. Confronted with a vision from God which is utter gift, Peter’s reaction is a classic religious one. He wants to do something. He wants to build three tents. And did you notice what happened? Even as he spoke, Luke tells us, a cloud came and covered them with shadow, smothering Peter’s words even as they emerged from his mouth. God did not even respond to them. They were totally irrelevant. Peter’s role in this whole experience was to say nothing, do nothing and let God be God, which is ultimately what we, as men and women of faith as opposed to religion are called to do. Mary did it in the story of the Annunciation when she said to the angel: ‘Let it be done unto me according to your word.’ Jesus did it on the cross when he cried out: ‘Father into your hands I commend my spirit.’ And it is what we say every week, when we speak those words, ‘Only say the word and I shall be healed.’

But while we say things this, in reality many of our attitudes and the things we do belong still to the world of primitive religion. Many of us still see attendance at Mass as a duty and an obligation. We still see prayer as a way of persuading God to do the things we want. We still make deals with God along the lines of what one of my nieces said to me many years ago when I opened the door to her on Christmas Day – she was only three at the time – ‘We’ve got presents for you, have you got presents for us?’ And worst of all, many of us still live in fear of God and carry out religious actions – some of them little more than superstition or magic - to appease him and keep him happy. And the truth I invite you to see this week, and it is a very difficult one to understand, is that none of this is necessary. Ultimately, like Abraham who fell into a deep sleep and Peter covered by the cloud, we do not have to do anything. Everything that God gives is pure gift and our role is to receive it.

But if everything is gift and we don’t have to earn it, why live a Christian life at all? Or as many people have said to me over the years, if God loves everybody the same, why bother being good? Well, to answer these questions we need to explore the concept of a free and loving response, which, God willing, we will do next week.

BIDDING PRAYERS

In the first reading today,Abraham is told by God that his descendants will be as many as the stars in the heavens. Abraham believes God and in doing so becomes father in faith to millions of Jews, Moslems and Christians through the ages. At a time in his own life when he might have expected to be left in peace, Abraham was prepared to go where God led him and do what God asked of him, and in this age of change and transition in the Church, we pray for the grace to do the same ourselves...... Lord hear us

The book of Genesis speaks of how, in the presence of God, Abraham was seized with terror. And in the Gospel today, when the cloud came over them, the disciples, too, were afraid. In both cases they are completely overcome by a God who is greater than anything we can imagine and who cannot be adequately described by religious language or tied down to churches and holy places. This is the true God, the God who fills everything that exists and we ask that God to reveal himself to us here in this parish..........Lord hear us

As the story of the transfiguration unfolds, Jesus leads Peter, James and John up the mountain to pray. Throughout the Old Testament, the mountain was a place of prayer and encounter with God and it is there that Jesus chooses to reveal to the disciples the full truth of who he is. And so it will be with us. If we are to come to know who Jesus is in our lives, it will happen when we go up the mountain and learn the meaning of contemplative prayer. And so we ask God to teach us.........Lord hear us

In today’s story, Peter offers to build three tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. To have done so, however, would have been to create a religious shrine, and this was not what the Transfiguration was about. It was to prepare the disciples for what lay ahead and as soon as it was over it was time to go down the mountain again and get on with the work of preaching the Gospel. And so we pray that our prayer each week here in St Brides will lead us, too, to ministry in the midst of the world..........Lord hear us

One of the things that has happened in recent years is that many people who previously went to Mass out of fear or out of a sense of duty or obligation have become less afraid and more relaxed about such rules and regulations. And on balance this has been a healthy development. But now we need to go deeper and find more profound reasons for being here, reasons not based on fear or on rules, but on a new understanding of what Mass is about. And so we pray for this grace for the whole parish.............Lord hear us

Our Parish Week of Directed Prayer begins this evening. There are fourteen participants and four guides who are coming from other parishes in the diocese. And so we ask God to be with and guide both participants and guides over the coming days. We ask him to open up the Scriptures to them in a way which touches them deeply and give them the grace they need to go wherever God leads them. And we thank him for the generosity of those who give up so much time to be with us this week.........Lord hear us

First Sunday of Lent C.

2010-02-20T06:11:00.000-08:00

In a consumer-driven society which encourages the instant gratification of every desire, it’s inevitable that Lent, with its emphasis on fasting and self-denial, will seem to many of our contemporaries like the relic of a by-gone age. The idea that we should willingly do without things we like and enjoy is beyond the comprehension of many today. It makes no sense to a generation born into a world dominated by the idea that material things have within themselves the power to make us happy. And yet what I want to suggest this morning is that, in the whole of human history, Lent has never been as relevant as it is today, and that the prayer, fasting and almsgiving which have been at its core for centuries, take us to the heart of the challenges facing our society at this moment in history. So what do I mean by this?

Well, that the world today needs the grace of conversion and renewal is surely beyond doubt. How can it not do, given what we see all around us? Something, surely, has to change if the world is to find its way out of the vicious circle of poverty, violence and injustice which has bedevilled it since history began. The world, as we saw last week and as I will never tire of reminding you, is a god-filled place. But mixed in with what is good, like darnel in a field, there are other forces at work too; dark, destructive forces which, like a deadly virus, move silently through our world poisoning and contaminating the lives of its people. Why else in this country of ours, at a time when, despite the recession, we have levels of prosperity and affluence never seen before, are we challenging for top place in almost every league table in Europe when it comes to things like drugs, heart disease, teenage pregnancies, alcoholism, suicides and virtually every modern evil you care to mention. And as men and women of faith, we are called upon to identify, challenge and confront these dark destructive forces, the first and most important tool we have at our disposal during Lent being prayer.

And by prayer I don’t mean asking for things. Intercessory prayer is an important part of our tradition and will always have a place in our lives, but there is far more to prayer than that. I have already quoted the Irish Jesuit, William Johnstone, who, in one of his excellent books on the spiritual life, speaks about the future of the Church in the 21st century. And what he says is very simple. ‘We must give people mysticism or die.’ Prayer in this ‘mystical’ sense is not so much about what we do as what God does in us. It is about making ourselves available to God in such a way that he begins to transform us from within until we see the full truth about the world, ourselves and who we are in relation to him. It is to see the world as God sees it and this comes through the quiet, reflective, contemplative prayer Lent is calling us to in a world where there is so much that is superficial, noisy and empty.

Take, for example, the role played in our lives by television. It can be a wonderful thing, but it is important that we recognize th dangers in it too. For years in the Third World television was deliberately used by oppressive regimes as a way of keeping the minds of the poor off the poverty and injustice they were living under. The theory was simple. Fill their lives with cheap soap operas and they it will keep them off the streets. And something very similar is happening to us. Commentators call it ‘dumbing down,’ and we see it everywhere. We see it in the lack of serious documentaries on main-stream TV which might encourage us to think about and question what is happening around us. We see it in the way News bulletins are so often dominated by things like the sexual misdemeanours of John Terry or Tiger Woods or the latest episode in the life of some pathetic casualty of our so-called ‘celebrity’ culture, at the expense of the really important things going on in the world. And we will see it more and more in the coming weeks as a general election approaches and our politicians address us through sound-bites and slick advertising rather than the kind of serious debate you would find in a mature democracy. And all of this is a world where there are huge issues at stake upon which we, as men and women of faith, are called to reflect and shine the light of the Gospel. And this simply cannot be done without the kind of deeper prayer and reflection William Johnston speaks of.

And then there’s fasting. Can there ever have been a time in the whole of human history when was as necessary as it is today. We eat too much and spend fortunes in gyms trying to burn off the fat. Obesity is a serious cause of ill-health costing the country millions. We consume oil and other energy resources at a totally unsustainable rate. Binge drinking, doctors tell us, is destroying the liver of millions of our young people. We are obsessed with possessing things, many of which are luxuries and gadgets we don’t actually need. The idea of waiting for something or saving up for it has been so abandoned that the world economic system may still collapse under the weight of debt caused by us all, individuals and governments, spending money we did not have. Is it any wonder people think fasting, self-denial and doing without things is old fashioned when, in reality, they are the only thing now that will save the world from its own excesses?

And then there is almsgiving. As we sit in front of our TVs eating crisps and watching celebrities no one has ever heard of, millions of our fellow human being are dying of hunger and poverty. The SCIAF Lenten boxes are one way of responding to this and well worth using, but, of course, the situation has gone far beyond almsgiving. What is required now is a massive re-distribution of wealth, sharing on a previously unimagined scale and what politicians like to call ‘a new world order.’ But this can only happen when we, the people of the developed world, put down our glasses of Rioja for a moment, switch off the rubbish we are watching on TV for ten miniutes and take seriously what is happening in the world around us. And that, in essence, is what Lent is inviting us to do. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving go to the very heart of the issues facing the world today and there’s nothing remotely old-fashioned about them.

BIDDING PRAYERS

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to confront the demons that live there and engage in spiritual combat with them. And so we pray for the grace to do that ourselves this Lent: to confront in our own individual lives the demons of greed and self-indulgence which, after initially promising the happiness we seek, soon turn sour and cause so much pain and suffering in our world. We pray that, by confronting them in our own lives we can diminish their power everywhere.............Lord hear us

If we are to confront the demons at work in our world today then we must become, in the most simple and basic meaning of the word, mystics. Only quiet contemplative prayer in which God opens up our minds and hearts from within, slowly but surely enabling us to see the world as he sees it, can prepare us for the kind of spiritual combat we see Jesus engaged in today. It means moving beyond what is superficial and empty in the culture around us and going deeper. And we pray for this grace...........Lord hear us

To go where God leads us requires inner freedom. But there are many things in our lives which limit this freedom. Some are addicted to drugs or alcohol which limit their freedom, but we can be addicted to other things too, like food, television, shopping, the internet, having our own way and may others. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize our own personal areas of addiction or unfreedom and address them this Lent through a mature, adult use of fasting and self-denial...........Lord hear us

Up to its eyes in debt and continuing to burn up the world’s energy resources at a completely unsustainable rate, the developed world, - engaged as it is in an enormous binge – simply cannot carry on doing what it is doing. And yet we seem incapable of making the necessary changes in the way we live. Our wills are weak and we are hooked on a life-style which is destroying ourselves and others. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will finally see this and do something about it........Lord hear us

Constantly subjected to rubbish on TV, our minds become lazy and our capacity to engage with serious issues diminishes. And so we ask God to stir in us a fresh willingness to do so. Soon, we will be facing a general election, the result of which will have profound consequences for the lives of millions in our country, especially among the poor, and as men and women of faith it is our duty to reflect deeply on the issues involved and vote accordingly. And so we pray for the grace we need to do this.......Lord hear us

Giving to those in need has always been central to the message of the Gospel and still is today. It lies at the heart of what Lent is about and the SCIAF boxes each year provide us with a very simple, effective and safe way of giving. But the real challenge facing us as men and women of faith is to give, not out of what we have extra, but from what we need to live on. This is what the Gospel really asks of us and we pray for the generosity and freedom we need to respond accordingly this year........Lord hear us

6th Sunday of the Year C

2010-02-13T04:53:00.000-08:00

I can never make up my mind whether it’s a blessing or a curse, but one of the things nature has given me is very sharp hearing. The result is that I sometimes hear things I am not supposed to hear and there have been times over the years when it would have been better if I hadn’t heard them. But it can be an advantage too. One of the obvious benefits is that you get insights into what people really think. And there have been one or two examples of this since I came here to St Bride’s. The words have not always been the same, but what they have boiled down to are things like, ‘I’m not sure about this man’ or ‘I don’t know what I think about the new priest.’ And I have no problem with this at all. In fact I welcome it and am pleased to hear it. As I told you the very first week I was here, I have not come to West Kilbride to please you, seek your approval, tell you what you want to hear or live up to your expectations of what a priest should be. I had a hard enough time with all that nonsense twenty four years ago in Kilmarnock and one of the reasons I am so happy here is that those issues no longer trouble me. I know now that I am here to be the priest God is calling me to be, ultimately whether you like it or not, and that will always be my aim. And so, to the person who said, ‘But we’ll soon knock him into shape’ my answer is. ‘Oh no you won’t.’ And to explain why I must never allow this to happen I will turn in a moment to a fundamental truth about the Christian life contained in today’s readings. But before that, I remind you of another important truth which underpins the one that follows.

And this first truth, one I have already spoken about several times, is that the world is a place filled with the splendour of God. There is no place in the heart of any person who claims to believe in Jesus for the negativity and pessimism found in so many pious, Church-going people who sit in judgement on the world every day and find it wanting. Salvation is not something awaiting us in the future. As St Paul says in the second reading, we are already saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus. God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son. God in the Genesis myth of creation looked at what he had made and saw that it was good and one of the first signs of the Spirit at work in us is a growing capacity to recognize that goodness and rejoice in it. Indeed, a sign of someone without faith, as described by Jeremiah in the first reading, is that ‘if good comes he has no eyes for it.’

But having said all that, it’s important to recognize that, although the world is filled with the goodness of God, not everything that happens in the world is good. This is very clear in today’s Gospel where Jesus, in St Luke’s version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, contrasts the values of the world with those of the kingdom. And it’s very clear that they are not the same. The Second Vatican Council, in arguably its greatest document, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, committed itself totally and completely to the world saying, famously, that ‘the cares and concerns of the men and women of our time are the cares and concerns of the followers of Jesus too.’ But such a deep involvement with the world, along with the conviction of its fundamental goodness, makes it all the more important tha twe know the difference between what is of God and what isn’t. As followers of Jesus there’s a sense in which we will always be in the world but not of it. Deeply committed to the world, we will never be entirely at home in it. In one of his parables Jesus tells the story of the farmer who sowed good seed in his field only to have an enemy come along and sow darnel among the wheat. And as men and women of faith it is our task to live totally in the world while at the same time sifting through everything that happens to discern what is good seed and what is darnel. The person who does this, Jeremiah told us, is like a tree planted by the waterside while the person who does not is like a dry scrub in the wasteland. And it’s because there is so much darnel, so many areas covered in dry scrub, so many patches of wasteland in our otherwise fundamentally God-filled world that the preaching of the Gospel will always challenge and disturb us and, at some level, come into conflict with the culture of our time.

Not everything we hear on the Tele or read about in the papers, for example, is true. There are forces at work in our society which are deeply ungodly, the most obvious current example being the worship of money and the pursuit of material things at almost any cost which have almost brought the developed world to its knees and may still do so. Just look at Greece. Another area is the whole question of what constitutes truth. Truth in our day has almost become what any given individual wants it to be. Any concept of a truth which is greater than we are is in danger of being lost and as men and women who believe in a God who is the source of all truth we simply cannot allow ourselves to be seduced by such thinking Morality, too, what constitutes right and wrong, has become a kind of free-for-all in today’s society and anyone who dares to take a stand on anything is immediately vilified and treated as if they were some kind of dinosaur. And so it takes a person of genuine courage to do so. But, of course, the greatest manifestation of darnel in our field is the scandal of poverty and hunger in the world. In today’s Gospel, Jesus not only promises that the hungry will be satisfied. He also warns those who are rich – and on a world scale we all are – that we are having our consolation now.

And so the preaching of the Gospel can never be entirely comfortable. It cannot always be what we want to hear. It will challenge us. It will disturb us. And so there’s one thing I can promise you. I will always try to speak the truth to you, even if you don’t like it.

BIDDING PRAYERS

As followers of Jesus, men and women of the Gospel, we are called through our baptism to be in the world but not entirely of it; to be deeply committed to the world but to work at all times to bring about the coming of the kingdom within it. And so we pray for the grace we need to do this: to love the world and its people with a deep love but, at the same time, to challenge the world and, by the way we live, show them new ways of living and open up new possibilities rooted in the teaching of Jesus.....Lord hear us

To love the world begins with a deep sense of its fundamental goodness. In the first reading, Jeremiah reminded us that the man without faith is like “a dry scrub in the wastelands: if good comes he has no eyes for it,” words which are too often true in the lives of pious, church-going people. And so we ask God to lead us beyond the pessimism and negativity of many in today’s world and enable us to recognize all around us a world filled to overflowing with the splendour and goodness of God........ Lord hear us

To be able to see God in the world does not mean being naive about what is going on around us. To live discerning lives today means being able to see what is of God in the world without being blind to what is not of God and so deeply unhealthy and harmful for the world and its people. It is to be able to tell the difference between the wheat and the darnel and we pray, not only for the wisdom we need to do that, but for the courage to challenge what is not of God whenever we encounter it.........Lord hear us

The great sign today that something is profoundly wrong with our world is the economic chaos we see everywhere along with the still growing gap between rich and poor. For years we have worshipped the goddess money, lived by her commandments and sacrificed the lives of millions of our fellow human beings on her altar. And now we are paying the price for so much avarice and greed. So we pray that the world of today will come to see what it is we have been doing see the need for radical change.....Lord hear us

Lent begins on Wednesday when millions throughout the world will come to receive their ashes. But there is nothing special about these ashes. Since the earliest days of the Church they have been a sign of willingness to be converted and embrace change through prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Without this commitment, to receive ashes is little more than superstition and religious mumbo jumbo. And so we pray that the ashes we receive on our foreheads this week will be a sign of something much deeper.....Lord hear us

In just two weeks our parish Week of Guided or Directed Prayer will begin. Over the last twenty years, hundreds of people just like ourselves from all over the diocese have taken part in such weeks and benefited greatly from them. For a significant number of people they have become like an annual retreat. And so we pray that fear will not prevent anyone in this parish from taking part. We pray that those whom God is inviting to do so will recognize the invitation and have the courage to respond to it.............Lord hear us

5th Sunday of the Year. C.

2010-02-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

A strange thing happens to a priest when he is appointed to a new parish. It happened to me in 1980 when I went to Sanquhar, Kirkconnel and New Cumnock. It happened to me again in 1985 when I went to St Matthew’s in Kilmarnock. And it happened to me a few months ago when I was appointed here to West Kilbride. It is, I think, the nearest I could ever come as a priest to feeling what parents feel when a child is born. The baby is a complete stranger to them. They have never met him or her before. And yet, as soon as the child is born, they fall in love with it. They want everything that’s best for it. The baby becomes the focus of their attention and they dream of what he or she will become one day. They want their son or daughter to be everything they are capable of being, a feeling which comes from deep inside themselves and is almost a pain or an ache. And without being sentimental in any way about it, that’s how I feel about you. Since the day Bishop Cunningham asked me to come here I have felt that ache. In a very real sense, I have loved you and wanted so many things for you, a feeling which has increased rather than diminished in the intervening months.

But what is it that I want? What are these dreams I have for you? Well there’s a sentence in John’s Gospel which expresses this far better than I ever could and it’s when Jesus, speaking to the Samaritan woman about all the things that have happened in her life, says this to her: ‘If only you knew what it is that God is offering you.’ Today is Catholic Education Sunday. But in fact the word Catholic here is superfluous in that the education we are speaking about here is a life-long process the purpose of which, from a faith perspective, is to come to know what it is that God is offering, what it is to be a human being, and clearly this is for every person. And what God is offering is something truly mind-blowing and beyond our understanding. He has such dreams for us, so many things he wants to share with us, and as I have listened over the years to people like that woman at the well, talking about their lives, the longing for them to come to know what it is that God is offering them has often been almost physically painful. And with young people in particular, the focus of attention this weekend in parishes throughout Scotland, the pain is even more intense. Born into a world they did not create, a world filled with so many things which militate against their spiritual growth – like the materialism of our age and the shallow, empty, superficial consumer-driven culture that goes with it – I have found myself, time and time again when with young people crying out silently within myself those same words. ‘If only you knew what it is that God is offering you.’ And that, in the end, is what education is about. In the long run - I think it was the great economist John Maynard Keynes who said it - we are all dead. And it’s only when we see our Catholic Schools from the perspective of eternity that we can cut through all the politics that surround them in Scotland today and see that what they are really about is enabling our young people to begin to glimpse what it is that God is offering them and how much he values them. And if they only knew this, what an amazing difference it would make to their lives.

But, of course, the same is true of us and if we are to come to that same knowledge then, in some form or another, we all have to make the same journey Peter made in today’s Gospel. And the first thing Jesus tells him to do once he has got into his boat – in other words, once he has established the beginnings of a relationship with Peter – is push out a little from the shore. If we are to know what it is that God is offering us, then, as I suggested last week, we cannot just keep doing what we have always done. What used to be is not good enough. Something has to change. In some kind of a way, we, too, have to leave the safety and security of what we have always known and push out a little from the shore. And I invite you to take time this weekend to ask yourself what pushing out from the shore might mean for you at this moment in your life. It will be something quite simple. But if we are to know what it is that God is offering us then standing forever at the edge of the water, afraid or unwilling to take that first step, is not an option.

Having pushed out a little from the shore, however, Jesus then tells Peter to put out into deep water and pay out his nets. This is a much more serious and radical step to take and sometimes many years can pass before we are ready for it. Pushing out a little from the shore was one thing. Peter could understand that. But he was an experienced fisherman who had fished all night long and caught nothing and what Jesus was asking him to do made no sense to him as a fisherman. But he did what he was asked and was completely overcome by what happened. And so it is with faith. To launch out into deep water is to step out of our comfort zone, move beyond what makes sense to us and go where God leads. It often means turning human thinking on its head, but if we trust God enough to do it the results will astonish us too. To begin to glimpse what it is God is offering is to have the whole way we see the world transformed. It’s like moving from black and white to colour. It’s like being blind and suddenly being able to see.. It’s to find a depth of meaning in our lives previously undreamt of. It is, in effect, to begin to see the world as it really is for the first time and to live life as it was always meant to be lived.

But it starts with that pushing out a little from the shore. It means taking a chance on God. It means doing something we have not done before. And for some of you at least, putting your name down for the Week of Prayer at the beginning of March, might be the place to start.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Jesus’ words to the Samaritan Woman, ‘If only you knew what it is that God is offering’ are addressed to every human being who has ever lived. If only we knew the sheer depth of God’s love for us it would transform the way we see everything. And so we ask God to lead us slowly but surely from the empty world of religion into the rich, deep, satisfying but profoundly challenging world of faith and so open up our minds and hearts to the fullness of truth about who God is....................Lord hear us

If there is a God who loves the world, and if that God’s deepest desire is to share his life with us, not only after death, but now, as we make our way through life, then to live our whole lives and never know that love – never at least glimpse what it is that God is offering - has to be one of the saddest things that can happen to a human being. And so we pray for the world of our time that, having understandably rejected the God of religion, it will now discover the God of faith.........Lord hear us

It can take many years to come to know God. Mature, personal faith is not possible until mid-life. All we can do, therefore, with our young people is work with them to lay the foundations of adult faith and make sure that these foundations are strong and as free as they can be from distorted ideas that will prove an obstacle to healthy growth in the future. And so we ask God to be with the teachers and pupils of our schools and guide them as they engage in this important but challenging process.............Lord hear us

If we are to begin to glimpse what it is that God is offering then we must be prepared to push out a little from the shore. This is not as easy as it sounds. For many in the Church today it means letting go of ideas and ways of thinking which have been with us since childhood and which we cling to like a child with a favourite toy. But history does not stand still. The Church has moved on, and we pray for the courage we need to push out a little from the shore and move on with it..........Lord hear us

To put out into deep waters can only happen after we have pushed out a little from the shore. It means moving into an unfamiliar place where things are not what they used to be. What was important to us once is no longer so. Things that we took for granted in the past no longer seem so obvious. Our values change as God leads us beyond human logic and begins to teach us to see the world and its people as he himself sees them. And so we ask for the grace to be open to this change...........Lord hear us

Peter and his companions, completely overcome by the catch they had made, left everything and followed Jesus. In the first reading, the young Isaiah, in reply to God’s question ‘Whom shall I send’ answers, ‘Here I am, send me.’ And so we ask God to raise up from our Schools today many young people ready to answer God’s call to be witnesses to the Gospel and bearers of good news to the world of our time, who will become the foundations of a Church fit for the age in which we live................Lord hear us.

4th Sunday of the Year C

2010-01-30T07:56:00.000-08:00

The thought that has developed into this week’s homily started two weeks ago, the day I went on holiday. In the second reading that morning, and again last Sunday, we heard St Paul speak of how, in any Christian community, there are a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit, and all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord. He went on to explain that the particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose. Called to be signs of the kingdom and make the teaching of Jesus a reality in society through all the circumstances of history, it would be no use if we were all the same. To build a house you need brick-layers electricians, plasterers, joiners, plumbers and many others, and to be a living sign of the Kingdom of God in the world, the vocation of every parish community, large or small, an even greater variety of gifts and talents are required. And as one of the bidding prayers said that day, it is utterly inconceivable that, having called us, God would not give us in abundance the gifts we need to fulfil our vocation. It’s a complete impossibility and a contradiction in terms. Everything we need is here. All the gifts we require are present in this community, and only when the gifts of every single person in the parish, without exception, are first recognized and then harnessed and directed towards the task on hand, will we be the people and the parish we are called to be. More than forty years ago the Second Vatican Council challenged the whole Church to understand this and respond to it for the sake of the men and women who share this moment in history with us, and it’s a challenge I have thought a lot about over the last two weeks.
Going away as I did, three months to the day after arriving in West Kilbride, the holiday has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my experience so far. And I have to say that I have felt optimistic and excited about it. Even before I came here I had heard very positive reports. Fr Willie McFadden, who supplied here at Easter, spoke to me several times about how impressed he had been by you. The Bishop, when he asked me to come, spoke of the parish in glowing terms, a message I heard from others, too, when the appointment became public. And my own experience since late October has more than confirmed this. Many expected that, after twenty four years in one parish, moving would be a difficult and even traumatic experience for me. But it hasn’t been that way at all. I came with a real sense that the move was God’s doing and nothing has happened since to change my mind. Above all, I have a deep sense that this is a parish filled with the gifts of the Spirit Paul spoke of and filled, too, with men and women who are ready to move on to the next stage of the Church’s great journey through history and begin to embrace and become the kind of Church envisaged by the Second Vatican Council and so much needed by people today. There is, of course, resistance to this too. How could it be any other way? But that doesn’t worry or discourage me. It has always been thus.

So why am I telling you all this today? Well, the first reason, obviously, is that a few days away provided me with an opportunity to look back over these three months and reflect on them. And the second is in this morning’s Gospel, where Jesus reminds us that no prophet is ever accepted in his own country. It’s the old ‘Ah kent his faither’ syndrome. The ‘Who does she think she is? She was in my class at school’ way of thinking. Rubbing shoulders with each other as we do, and sometimes not seeing eye-to-eye with each other on certain issues - as happens even in West Kilbride – it’s so easy to lose sight of the goodness in the people around us and not recognize the gifts God has given them. And that is why I am telling you today how wonderful you are and inviting you, in your turn, to look around and see it for yourselves in each other. There are prophets in this Church and I invite you to recognize them.

But if what I am saying is true. If you are so wonderful and if the parish is so full of potential, what does it all mean, where is it leading, and what implications does it have for us now? Well, the simple but very profound answer to these questions is that God is inviting us on a great journey into the very heart of who he himself is. He longs to share his life with us and through us reach out to the men and women who share this moment in history with us. But if I could identify one thing above all others at this point it lies in what St Paul says in today’s second reading. ‘When I was a child’ he says, ‘I used to talk like a child, and think like a child and argue like a child, but now that I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me.’ And in this we have the single biggest challenge to men and women of faith today. Quite simply, if we are to be of any use to the world at this time and have anything authentic and meaningful to say to it about God, then, like Paul, we must grow up and put childish ways behind us which means learning to let go of the often infantile ideas we have in our heads. We have to be willing to open up our minds to new ideas, new insights and new ways of thinking about the Scriptures, the Church, God, prayer and all manner of things connected with what it means to be a Catholic in the world of the 21st century. Failure to do so, clinging to inadequate, half-baked ideas which have neither changed nor developed since we were children, which the Church herself has long ago moved beyond and which we just keep repeating to ourselves regardless of whether we even believe them, is a complete failure to rise to the challenge of the time through which we are living. And what I have found so encouraging in the short time I have been here is the sense I have, rightly or wrongly, that there are many of you who are not only ready, but willing and able to engage with these sometimes difficult questions.

So am I right or am I wrong?

BIDDING PRAYERS

In the first reading this week God tells the prophet Jeremiah how he knew him before he was formed in his mother’s womb, how, before he came to birth, he had consecrated him and that he has appointed him a prophet to the nations. But every single word of this is true of each one of us here. God has called us, consecrated us and appointed us, too, as prophets to the age we live in. And so we pray for the grace and courage we need be everything we are called to be at this moment in history..........Lord hear us

If we are to be prophets to the men and women of the 21st century then our faith must be modern, up-to-date and relevant to the times we are living through. Our Catholicism must be a modern Catholicism which reflects where the Church is now and not where it was fifty years ago. It must be a Catholicism rooted in the Scriptures, in the Second Vatican Council and in modern Church documents. What used to be is not enough today and we pray for the grace to embrace the implications of this truth.........Lord hear us

If we are to be a modern Church then we must embrace the concept of Adult Education in faith. One of the reasons why so many people have given up on religion over the years is because the general level of education in faith after 1945 did not keep pace with the educational advances taking place in society at large, leaving many feeling that faith had no intellectual credibility in the modern world. And so we pray for the wisdom to move beyond this unfortunate stage in our history.............Lord hear us

The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, remarked that the irony of the modern world is that the stupid are filled with certainty and the intelligent are filled with uncertainty and doubt. Certainty where there is none is the refuge of those who cannot believe in a God is beyond our comprehension and who can never be fully described in human language. And so we pray for the grace to let go of old, false certainties from our childhood and, having let go of them, enter a place where God is able to astonish and surprise us.......Lord hear us

The people of Nazareth were unable to accept Jesus for the simple reason that they had known him all his life. He was one of them. His family still lived in the village. He had sat with them as they had listened the words of the ancient prophets. But now the one whom those prophets had spoken of was in their midst and they could not recognize him. And so we ask God to open our eyes to recognize the prophets among us here in this parish and rejoice, without envy or jealousy, in each other’s gifts.......Lord hear us

To work together as a parish community is not easy. We are called by God to be a prophetic people but that does not mean that we cease to be human. Within any Christian community there will always be tensions, disagreements and personality clashes. But love, St Paul tells us today, is always patient and kind. It does not take offence and is never resentful. It is always ready to excuse the faults of others and delights in the truth. And so we ask God to pour this kind of love into our parish..........Lord hear us

Second Sunday of the Year C

2010-01-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

It would be an exaggeration to say that this morning’s Gospel passage changed my life, but it certainly played a huge part in shaping the direction it has taken over the last twenty-one years. It happened in March 1989 while I was in St Beuno’s, a Retreat House in North Wales, near Rhyl. I had gone there to do a three month course on the Spirituality of Saint Ignatius Loyola, at the heart of which lay what are known as ‘The Spiritual Exercises,’ which I experienced in the form of a thirty day silent retreat. The very idea of being silent for thirty days might seem a bit daunting, but, despite difficult and painful moments, it was a wonderful experience. Some people in the parish in Kilmarnock, mind you, could not get their heads round the idea that someone would willingly take on such a thing and clearly thought I had been sent their as a punishment for some misdemeanour or other. But there was no truth in this whatsoever. I had, in fact, been attracted to the idea since the early eighties but had done nothing about it believing that I could not possibly be away from the parish for three months. In 1988, however, I spent a week in hospital in Ayr with an eye problem. That was an crucial experience, teaching me, as it did, that the world and the parish could manage fine without me, and less than nine months later I was driving down the M6 towards Wales.

The first three weeks there were spent preparing for the retreat which began at the beginning of March and the experience I am speaking about today happened about half way through the month. It was a Sunday morning and for a whole day I had been praying the story of the Marriage Feast at Cana. Each day of the retreat contained five periods of prayer, each lasting an hour and spread evenly over a whole day, one of which, therefore, was during the night. The days, however, did not necessarily go from midnight to midnight but from the time you met your director one day to the time you met him the next, which was why, although it was the middle of the morning, I had already prayed the passage four times. And as I approached it for the fifth time, I had a strong feeling that there was nothing left in it for me; as if, like an old piece of chewing gum, I had chewed to the point where there was no taste left in it. I was tempted to move to another passage, but something in me resisted this and I went to the wedding for the fifth time. And as I did so, my mind drifted back to Kilmarnock. As I said earlier, it was a Sunday morning and I began to imagine the people in the parish gathering for the 11.00.a.m. Mass. Although only half way through the retreat, God had already done amazing things for me and as I imagined the scene in St Matthew’s I began to look forward to the time I would go back there and tell them all about the things God had shown me during those days. And as I did this, a sentence from the story which had meant nothing to me during the previous four hours leapt out of the page and, in a way only the Word of God can and which you will only understand if it has happened to you, grabbed hold of me and, for a second or two, simply overwhelmed. And it was the phrase, ‘Only those who drew the water knew.’ In that fleeting moment of insight and revelation I saw with utter clarity that it was not about going back to Kilmarnock and telling people about what God had done for me during the retreat. Only those who drew the water knew. This kind of knowledge is not passed from one person to another. It’s not possible. Each person has to draw the water themselves and from that day to this the focus of everything I’ve done as a priest has been to help people do that.

And so when I came home from Wales one of the first things we did was to move towards having in the parish what is known as a ‘Week of Directed Prayer.’ These were developed first in Dublin and in October of that year, 1989, we had our first Week of Prayer in St Matthew’s, to be followed by twenty others in each of the years since. These weeks have helped so many people draw that water themselves and come to know God in completely new ways and my hope is that they will do the same here in West Kilbride when, during this coming Lent, we have a Week of Prayer here in this parish. Many other parishes in the diocese also have them every year and this has been possible because one of the other things we did when I came back from Wales was train lay men and women to act as Prayer Guides during those weeks, an enterprise God has blessed beyond our wildest dreams. And then there are the Spiritual Exercises themselves. Over those twenty one years more than a hundred individuals have done them in parishes near here in a form which does not involve thirty days of silent retreat but which can be experienced at home in the midst of daily life over a period of six or seven months. Currently I am helping four people do this, one a priest of the diocese, two laymen, one from Cumnock, the other from Prestwick, and a woman from Fife. Several others are about to start, including someone from this parish, and my greatest wish and prayer is that many of you will do the same over the coming years. I know what these Exercises can do for people and want you to share in that experience.

A well-known Jesuit writer from Derry called William Johnston says in one of his books that the Church today must either give people mysticism or die. Religion is no longer enough in the twenty first century. To have heard of God, listened to sermons about God or read books about God is not enough. Another famous Jesuit, Karl Rahner, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, often spoke of how only those with personal faith would survive in the Church of the third millennium, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he is right. God showed me that day in 1989 that only those who draw the water themselves know. And so, for as long as I am here, helping anyone who wants to draw that water will always be my first priority.

So how thirsty are you for it?

BIDDING PRAYERS

When the writer, William Johnston, says that the Church today must give people mysticism or die, he is not talking about something strange or exotic of the kind we hear about in the lives of some of the saints. The mysticism he speaks of is simplicity itself. It is the ability to look at everything around us and see beyond the surface of it to recognize the presence in it of the God who is closer to us than the air we breathe. And so we pray for that this parish will be filled with mystics of this kind..........Lord hear us

If we are to be men and women of faith in the twenty first century, it is not enough that we have heard of God, listened to sermons about God or read books about God. Such knowledge is by its very nature second hand and cannot sustain us at this moment in history or survive the pressures of our age. Only those with personal faith, predicted Karl Rahner, those who know God from their own experience, will survive in the Church of the third millennium and we pray for the grace to be such people.............Lord hear us

But it is not just for the sake of our own faith that we need to have personal experience of God at this time. Called to bearers of the Good News of God’s love to the world, we will only have credibility with people and be able to say something meaningful to them if they recognize in us something that is real. In other words, that, like Jesus himself, we speak with authority based on what we ourselves have seen and heard. And so we pray for the integrity and inner consistency we need to do this...........Lord hear us

Over the last twenty one years, Weeks of Directed Prayer have helped many people in parishes throughout our diocese come to deep personal faith rooted in their experience of God. Wherever these weeks have taken place, God has poured blessings into those who have taken part. And so, as we begin to move towards having one ourselves this Lent, we pray that some among us will feel a desire to take part and, with God’s help, overcome the natural human fears which can so easily get in the way............Lord hear us

In the second reading this week, St Paul speaks of how there are a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit. There are all sorts of service to be done but always to the same Lord working in different kinds of people. Called to be witnesses to the Gospel here in West Kilbride it is impossible for God not to have given us the gifts we need to fulfil this mission. But it can only happen when the gifts of every single person in the parish are put at the service of the Community. And so pray that this will happen..........Lord hear us

The News this week has been filled with reports of the earthquake in Haiti, often referred to as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. But what is not so widely reported is that the reason Haiti is so poor is that the developed countries like America and ourselves have, for political reasons, deliberately chosen to keep it poor. The fact that, while even the presidential palace collapsed, the American Embassy remained standing, speaks for itself. And so we pray for justice as well as aid in that part of the world............Lord hear us

Baptism of Jesus

2010-01-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

The longest journey in the world, they say, is from the head to the heart. In other words, it’s one thing to know something and another thing to make it part of who we are and live it out in our lives. And in the second reading this week we have an example of this which takes us to the heart of everything Jesus stands for. ‘The truth I have now come to realise’ says Peter to Cornelius and his household, ‘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,’ an idea which you might think would have been obvious to Peter. He had, after all, heard parable after parable on the subject, been the recipient of Jesus’ command to teach all nations and had been there that day in Jerusalem when people of different nationalities had all heard the message of the Gospel proclaimed in their own language. But it wasn’t that simple. Peter speaks today about a truth he has come to realise, but it took him a long time to realise it. The story of how he eventually did is told in chapter ten of the Acts of the Apostles from which today’s reading is taken, and I invite you to look at it more closely now .

The chapter begins with an account of how the Roman centurion, Cornelius, the first gentile convert to Christianity, first hears the call of God. In a vision he is told by God to send to Jaffa for a man called Peter who, without knowing Cornelius, is himself having a vision. In it he sees a large sheet being lowered from heaven filled with every kind of animal, reptile and bird, and is told by God to kill and eat. But Peter refuses. ‘Certainly not, Lord’ he says, in what is one of the funniest sentences in the Bible, ‘I have never eaten anything profane or unclean.’ God himself is telling Peter to do this and on the grounds that it’s against his religion the rock on which the Church is built refuses. And so, turning on its head everything Peter has been brought up to believe, God says, ‘What God has made clean, you have no right to call unclean,’ something so important that it is repeated three times. Some men then arrive to tell Peter about Cornelius’ vision, and so, putting the two stories together and understanding, at last, what his own vision is about, Peter goes to Cornelius and utters those famous words. ‘What I have now come to realise’ he says, ‘is that God does not have favourites and that anybody of any nationality is acceptable to him.’ It had been a struggle, but the penny had finally dropped. A truth Peter had heard many times had finally made the long journey from his head to his heart and something of immense importance for the future of the Church had been clearly established.

Except that it hadn’t. God is the God of every human being. That’s a fact. All barriers between peoples have ceased to exist in Christ. That is true. Humanity is one. Yes, it is. God is Father of every human being. There’s no doubt about that. Every person is, to use the words of today’s Gospel, God’s beloved son or daughter and his favour rests on each of us. That’s a given. The problem is that, even for those of us who believe these things, the journey from the head to the heart simply has not happened yet. The Jesuit writer, Anthony de Mello, describes in one of his books how, at a certain point on flights from America to Canada, to pilot announces to the passengers that they are now crossing the American-Canadian border. But if you look out, he says, there’s nothing there. National borders and barriers between people, he is reminding us, do not exist in reality. They only exist in our imagination. We have created them. There’s something deep within the human psyche that has always wanted to draw lines on maps and put up fences which keep people apart. The result has been centuries of warfare and violence, and if we want to understand why this is we might do well to remember that one of the devil’s oldest titles is ‘The Divider.’

But, you might think, we are not like that. We are not racists. These are things for politicians and others to deal with and we cannot really do very much about them. Well, I suspect Peter would have said something like that about himself until the moment God finally revealed to him something he had not seen before. And that is what I hope God will do for us here today in some small way. Because, especially having lived abroad for some years, I firmly believe that as individuals and as a nation we are all up to our eyes in racist attitudes of a very specific kind and that these aspects of our culture are to a very large extent the product of our imperial and colonial past. So what do I mean?

Well, there are, of course, parts of the world where racism is more obvious than it is in Britain. But that does not mean that it does not exist here, and all I ask you to do today is reflect for a moment on very simple things about our national attitude to people in other countries. And where better to start with the word itself, ‘foreign.’ There’s something about the way we even use the word which reveals our deep-rooted sense of superiority over others. Foreign jails are always ‘hell-holes’. Foreign policemen can never solve crimes the way ours do. British drug smugglers in foreign courts are always innocent and never get a fair trial. Foreign footballers always dive and feign injuries more than ours do. Water from foreign taps is not as clean as ours is and if we drink it and need a foreign doctor, he or she will not be up to the standard of doctors here. And, of course, because they don’t speak English, foreigners are stupid; so stupid, in fact, that even when we speak more slowly and shout at them, they still don’t understand us. Even our politicians, who should know better, speak about Europe as if it were a foreign place instead of being the continent we belong to, have always belonged to and, barring some catastrophic earthquake or continental drift of some kind, always will belong to.

This, of course, is not Apartheid in South Africa or the Deep South in 1960s America. But it’s a subtle and very British form of it and my prayer this weekend is that, like Peter, we will come to realise that it’s not of God.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Through our baptism, we are called to make present and real in the world the values of the Gospel. The teaching of Jesus does not belong on the pages of the New Testament but on our streets, in our lives and in the world. And so we pray, today, that this teaching which we have heard so often in our lives and are exposed to every Sunday when we come together, will make that great journey from our heads to our hearts and truly become part of who we are as individuals and as a parish community...............Lord hear us

In Jesus, we find a universality previously unknown in history. The great prophets of the Old Testament had glimpses of it. Kings and emperors of the ancient world longed to establish it through conquest. But in Jesus we find something radically new. In him there is no more distinction between peoples. Every person is a beloved child of the Father. There is only one God. He is the God of every human being. Old national religions are redundant. And so we pray for the grace to be signs of this for others........Lord hear us

Sadly, and often tragically, the world of our time is far from recognizing the new vision for humanity introduced into the world by Jesus. Nations continue to erect barriers between themselves and others. Countries continue to wrangle and fight over disputed territories or natural resources and racism, prejudice and bigotry run riot among us. And so we pray for the world at this time that God will raise up in it men and women with the vision and generosity of heart to lead us into a different future.......Lord hear us

One of the forces shaping our world today is globalisation. As businesses reach out to bigger and bigger markets in far-flung parts of the world, globalisation is, in its own way, breaking down barriers between nations. But very often this is at the expense of the poor as those with power exploit the powerless and the world becomes even more unjust. And so we pray that as the world struggles to deal with what was near financial meltdown it will not once again be the poor who pay the highest price..........Lord hear us

One of the consequences of globalisation is that, as the world becomes smaller, people from poorer countries want to leave their homes in the hope of building a better life for themselves and their families in other parts of the world. And so they become migrant workers, immigrants, and, in some cases, asylum seekers. Many of us, of course, are descended from people who did the same in their own day and we pray that the memory of that will enable us to be generous and welcoming now.........Lord hear us

Traditionally, racism and bigotry in Scotland are associated with two areas in particular. The first is religious bigotry which often attaches itself to football and continues to be a blot on the Scottish landscape. The second is our attitude to England and English people. We make jokes about it and tell ourselves that it is not real racism, but neither of these aspects of Scottish life should have any place in the hearts of people who claim to be followers of Jesus. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this........Lord hear us

The Epiphany

2010-01-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

One of these days I must tell you more about St Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish Basque who lived from 1491 to 1556 and founded the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. His Spiritual Exercises have had a huge influence on me and on thousands of others and it’s his life that’s depicted on the ten paintings hung like the Stations of the Cross in the hall. I mention him today because one of his great insights was the importance of desire in our lives, and in particular, the importance of getting in touch with our deepest desires. These, he came to understand, are the key to discerning the movement of God in ourselves. They are the equivalent in our lives of the star which led the Wise Men to Jesus and if we follow them and go where they lead, they will lead us to Jesus too. And so I would like to look more closely at them today.

The first difficulty, of course, is that there are as many desires surface in us in the course of our lives as there were stars in the sky the day the Wise Men set out on their long journey, and the challenge, then as now, is to know which of them to follow. Not all our desires lead to God, just as not all the stars in the sky two thousand years ago led to Bethlehem. Those of you even remotely familiar with the theories of Freud will know about the ‘id’ the ‘ego’ and the ‘super-ego.’ The ‘id,’ according to Freud, is where our raw, primitive desires lie, desires which we quickly learn as children have to be controlled by the ‘ego’ if we are to fit into society and be acceptable to others. And so we know from childhood that we cannot live out all our desires, many of which are dangerously selfish, destructive and cruel. And, of course, one of the dangers connected with the great emphasis we put today on things like counselling and psychotherapy is that, in the hands of those who do not fully understand them or choose not to understand them, they can degenerate into an excuse for just doing whatever we feel like; the ‘if it feels good, do it’ approach to life which is widespread in our culture today. But these dark inclinations and desires lie deep within us and when, in certain individuals, they are let loose and not controlled, the results, as we read in the papers every day, are horrific. So, clearly, these are not the deep desires St Ignatius was talking about.

What he was talking about, however, was the importance of taking seriously what goes on inside ourselves. A brilliant psychologist before psychology as we know it was invented, he noticed during months of lying in bed with nothing much to do while recovering from a wound received in battle in Pamplona in Northern Spain, that among the myriad of thoughts, feelings, inclinations, ideas and desires which passed through his consciousness every day, there were particular ones to which, in time, he gave the name ‘spiritual’. They were gentle movements which did not force themselves on him. If he had been living a busy life at the time he may never even have noticed them. But with nothing to do but read a handful of books and reflect on the experience, he came to see that they were God moving in him and that if he followed them, as the Wise Men did the star, they would lead him to Jesus. And that central insight, undeveloped as it was at the time, became the basis of everything he did and wrote afterwards and which have affected the lives on so many people since.

But if Ignatius is right, if God is moving in every single one of us in the way he describes, then how do we recognize this movement? Not everything that sounds like God or quotes the Scriptures or uses pious words and religious vocabulary is of God. The world, as I said a couple of weeks ago, is full of nutters who are convinced God is speaking to them. Ignatius, of course, knew this and so his answer to our question is this: Search inside yourself for any movement or desire which builds up faith, hope and love and you can be sure that it is of God. And the reason is simple. Only God can stir these things. They are what are known in theology as the theological virtues and, provided they are genuine, and not mutton dressed up as lamb, or, to use Ignatius’s phrase, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they can only come from God. And so I would like to offer you two things the presence of which would indicate the genuineness we speak of.

And the first is very simple. The movement or desire we experience will be entirely consistent with the Gospel and the teaching of Jesus. Among such movements would be a desire for justice, a sense of sadness in the face of injustice, poverty or hunger, and a longing to respond in some way. It could also be a sense of shame or regret about our past actions which have not been consistent with the Gospel or the teaching of Jesus, manifesting itself in things like a heightened awareness of past selfishness and a desire to be more generous to others than we have been. Or it could be a felt-sense of hope and trust in God, especially in situations where there was no obvious reason at a human level to feel such hope and trust and where, on other occasions, we might have been more inclined to pessimism or despair. And many others.

And the second indication that a movement is genuinely of God is that there is resistance to it in us. Discerning the movement of God in ourselves is not at all about self-indulgence or an excuse for doing what we like. Where there are things in us which are not of God, the movement we speak of may well be experienced as disturbance. It will not always be easy but will invite us to embrace truths about ourselves which are challenging and involve quite deep and radical conversion. It will involve doing in some way what the Wise Men did and setting out on a journey which will take us across new frontiers into places we have never been to before and where things are so different that, for a while, we may feel lost and disorientated. Our star, unlike the one in the story, does not shine in the sky. It shines deep within us. In some way it will involve returning home changed and by another route and, in the end, there is only one question:

Are we willing to follow it?

BIDDING PRAYERS

We are all created in the image and likeness of God and called to make him present in the world. The particular form this universal vocation takes in each person, however, is unique, and the clue to what it is lies within us. It is there that the Spirit of God moves, inviting, pointing, indicating, inspiring, encouraging. He never forces himself on us but nor does he ever give up or go away. And so we pray for the wisdom to recognize this movement of God in us and follow his star wherever it leads........................Lord hear us

The key to recognizing what the Spirit is calling us to lies deep within the many thoughts, desires, hopes, fears, dreams and longings which go on inside us every day. Not all of these come from God. In the course of any given day there are many other spirits at work in us which have nothing to do with God and everything to do with our own selfish selves. But it is possible to sift through our inner experiences and discern the deep movement of God in us and we ask him to teach us how................Lord hear us

Millions in the world today are searching for God without knowing exactly who or what they are searching for. But to search for the truth is to search for the God who is the source of all truth. To hunger and thirst for justice is to hunger and thirst for the God from whom true peace and true justice come. To search for something deeper than the externals of religion is to search for the God who cannot be contained within the narrow limits of such things. And so we pray for all searchers in the world today................Lord hear us

The wise men in today’s story came from the East, the home of all the great cultures and civilisations of the ancient world. People in places like China, India, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on were highly civilised and educated at a time when our ancestors were little more than savages. Even today, much of what passes for culture in the West is little more than materialism, consumerism and greed. And so we pray for a deep sense of respect for people from the East and a willingness to understand them......Lord hear us

Today’s feast means that, in Jesus, all national barriers between peoples have come to an end. Jesus is the saviour of every human being, revealing to the world a God for whom every man, woman or child is a beloved son or daughter, making us all brothers and sisters in Christ. Two thousand years later the world has still not understood this. We are still divided according to race and nationality. But we pray that, in the course of this millennium, the world will finally move beyond this way of thinking....Lord hear us

There can be few things worse than to come to the end of our lives and be filled with deep regrets about the way we have lived, haunted by bad decisions made at crucial moments, opportunities squandered and lost through laziness or fear, potential unfulfilled, dreams and ambitions which came to nothing because we kept putting them off until it was too late. And so we pray for the courage we need to grasp life now and to follow our star while there is still time..............Lord hear us

Feast of the Holy Family

2009-12-31T13:38:00.000-08:00

Christmas is about a God made flesh and living among us. The real God does not, as that pleasant but theologically flawed Cliff Richards song from some years ago put it, ‘watch from a distance.’ He is Emmanuel, God with us. He is part of our world and part of our lives and can be found in every human experience by those who have eyes to see. And so, on this Feast which we celebrate every year on the Sunday after Christmas, I invite you to reflect on how he is to be found in that most human experiences, the family.

The foundation stone of any family is a father and a mother. Legislation both in Scotland and at Westminster in recent years has highlighted a whole series of other issues around this reality. I am thinking, obviously of such things as civil partnerships and same sex couples adopting children. But I don’t want to go into these issues today. Nor do I want to go into the areas of single parenthood or marriage versus cohabitation. These, important as they are, are for another time. I begin, instead with what has always been the basis of the family, a man and a woman who enter into a committed sexual relationship with a view to having children and caring for them. So where, if anywhere, is God in this most human of experiences and what do we mean in the Catholic tradition when we call this union a sacrament?

Well, in the course of forty years as a priest, I have conducted several hundred weddings and for the last twenty-odd years my message to couples in the minutes before they exchange their vows has never varied. I remind them that, by proclaiming their commitment to each other before the Christian community, they are undertaking to be sacraments or signs to each other of what God is like. They commit themselves to love each other, not the way the world loves, but the way God loves and there are certain qualities of God’s love that I always invite them to reflect upon.

The first and most basic of these is that God’s love is permanent. It lasts forever. Nothing can change it and that in the end is the only credible basis for the Church’s insistence on the permanence of marriage. In purely human terms it makes no sense. Its sole purpose is to point us beyond the purely human to the presence of something divine in our midst. The fact that so many marriages fail, with all the pain involved, doesn’t fundamentally change that. It merely reminds us that, although we are called to be like God, we are not God, a truth that is perhaps seen most clearly in the contrast between what human sexuality is at its best and what human beings sometimes make of it. At its best it’s the very image of God’s love, a tangible experience of God with us, and yet it can also descend into cruelty and abuse of the very worst kind. We are deeply flawed creatures, a lesson marriage and family life teaches us over and over again, a constant reminder that to love as God loves is only possible through the power of God living in us.

No matter how much a bride or groom love each other, of course, there is a limit to how much time they can spend staring into each other’s eyes. Sooner or later, if their love is to blossom and grow, it has to turn outwards. And the most obvious way in which this happens is through the birth of children. The birth of a child opens up in most parents a way of loving they never knew before. And as such, it is a glimpse of how God himself sees every human being. Remember that experience, the deep instinctive love you felt for your new born child, and understand that that, only far more so, is how God loves you. And for the child, too, to be loved in that way, to be adored, to be cherished and cared for by a doting Mum and Dad, is also an experience of God. Sadly, of course, it doesn’t always happen this way, with life-long implications for those involved, another reminder to us of our flawed humanity and that, while we are called to share the life of God we are not ourselves Gods and should not expect perfection of ourselves or others.

Adorable as they are, of course, new born babies are totally self-centred, and so the long process of opening outwards to other people and the world begins. It is a painful process and the most basic lessons are learned in the midst of our family. Learning to share with our brothers and sisters, learning that we are not ourselves the centre of the universe is hard and involves many tears, umpteen little fights and not a few tantrums. It also draws out of parents another kind of love, as we turn out to be not quite as adorable or perfect as they first thought.

But if that’s bad, it’s nothing to what happens later when adolescence kicks in. It is a vital stage in our growth as, like a rockets launched into space, we push against everything that has given us life. To negotiate this stage in our lives more or less successfully, we need to know deep down that our parents love us and, like God himself, will keep loving us no matter how awkward or difficult we become And for parents at this stage the call to love as God loves is put to its greatest test. There is no greater evidence of God’s presence among us than a mother or father, but most often a mother, who will love a difficult child almost to the point of crucifixion. The hope is, of course, that, in time, all this will sort itself out. And usually it does. For some of you, however, this will not have happened. There can be wounds that remain open for years, families split and torn apart, another reminder of our human weakness, that we are not Gods, and that only the one who is God can ultimately resolve such things.

And so the ultimate reality for every family is death. Parents die. Husbands and wives die. Sometimes, tragically, children die, and those of you who have experienced this in your own lives know only too well that there is no pain on earth like it. But even the pain of bereavement itself is ultimately an experience of God in that it teaches us, no matter how painfully, that in the end all human love is but a shadow of what awaits us beyond death. And when we see the real thing all the rest will finally make sense to us.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayers on this Feast of the Holy Family by praying for married couples everywhere. Called to be signs of God’s presence in the world through life-long, self-giving sexual love, we pray that they will never lose sight of their great vocation by sinking into complacency. We pray that they will keep loving each other for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health until death does them part, and so show the world what God’s love is like……Lord hear us.

In our modern society, many marriages fail, and in doing so cause great pain to those involved. And so we pray for all around us who live with this pain and its long-term consequences for their lives. We pray that their experience will not cause them to give up on the possibility of genuine, lasting love or lose confidence in the idea of marriage itself and that they will go on to find the fulfilment and happiness they long for in other relationships and friendships..........Lord hear us

There are many single parents in our modern society. Sometimes this is by choice, sometimes it is because of bereavement and sometimes it is the result of divorce or marital breakdown. But there are still many cases today of women and girls who are simply abandoned by partners and left to bring up children on their own. And so, whatever, the cause, we hold up before God today single mothers everywhere and ask him to give them the strength and courage they need..........Lord hear us

Human relationships, even within a loving family, can be very difficult. All kinds of tensions can exist and sometimes these result in serious breakdowns in communication. This, in turn, can lead to estrangements which go on sometimes for years and years. And so we pray for families we know where this has happened, perhaps even our own, that, with God’s help, there may be reconciliation and mutual forgiveness in the course of the coming year…........Lord hear us

The first reading today speaks of the need to show respect for elderly parents. ‘Even if his mind should fail’ it said ‘do not despise your father in your health and strength.’ And so we pray for the many families today who are struggling to cope with dementia or altzeimer’s disease. We pray, too, that, even in the midst of a recession, our country will be one which shows more respect for the elderly, not least by its willingness to spend money on the support and care they need…….......Lord hear us

Children are at the heart of every family. They are also at the heart of every parish. One of the reasons a parish exists is to provide the support parents need in the task of bringing up their children as people of faith and we do this by becoming a community in which children, as they grow up, can recognize, whenever they come among us, a faith that is alive, real and active. And so we pray for the grace to be this kind of parish for the sake of the children among us.........Lord hear us

Christmas day

2009-12-24T09:21:00.000-08:00

If atheism is the great new religion of the 21st Century, then it is important that we understand it. It is the inevitable consequence of the times in which we live, and only those who are willing to engage with it in an open and honest way will be able to share the Good News of God’s love for the world with the men and women who share this moment in history with us. At Christmas we celebrate the mystery of a God who became part of our history and shared our experience, and only those who can do the same today, feeling what the atheist feels and seeing the world as the atheist sees it will have anything helpful to say to the people of our time. And so I invite you to reflect briefly on some of the roots of modern atheism and see what Christmas has to say about them.

Given the fact that we have recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth, there has been lots of coverage recently of the influence of Charles Darwin on modern atheism. But while this has undoubtedly been very important, there was another even more important influence several hundred years earlier. This was the realisation by Copernicus and then Galileo that instead of the sun revolving around the earth, the earth, in fact, revolved around the sun; and that the sun itself was just one star among millions in the universe. Now that may not seem much to us today, but it was a discovery which shook to the very foundations the way people had thought about themselves up to that point. Based on the bible’s version of creation, our ancestors thought of themselves as the pinnacle of God’s creation and the earth they lived on as its centre. To discover that this was not the case, that they lived on small planet in the middle of nowhere, had a devastating effect on the way they saw God, themselves and the universe. It was a bit like an only child going to school for the first time to discover that the world did not, as he had previously thought, revolve around himself. He was not the centre of things any longer and life could never be the same again. And then, much later, along came Darwin.

Darwin’s influence, of course, is still being felt and is the basis for most of the attacks on the idea of God being launched today by high priests of atheism like Richard Dawkins and others. At the root of this, however, has been a complete failure to understand the nature of the Book of Genesis and its account of creation, as a result of which, when they were first published, Darwin’s theories shocked and horrified many. If the discovery that we are not the centre of the universe was a shock in Galileo’s day then the idea that we are descended from monkeys finally shattered the illusions of those whose faith was rooted on an infantile literal understanding of the Bible. And so the scene was set for atheism as we have come to know it. There is, however, a price for everything in life and that has included atheism. Take God out of society and other things will take his place. And so we have seen in our own day the rise of so many false gods promising happiness if only we believe in them and live by their commandments. And chief among them in the modern world has been the goddess money along with the materialism and consumersim which are her children. But taking God out of life has had other effects too. Much of the art and literature of the 20th century has been marked by a deep-rooted sense of the absurdity and pointlessness of life, hardly surprising if you remove from the equation the one thing which enables it to make sense. Anyone who looks to materialism or consumerism to provide happiness will inevitably be disappointed, and this has contributed in no small part to the sense of despair and confusion which lies behind, for example, a culture of drug-taking among young people today. If life has no meaning, if global warming is going to destroy us, providing swine-flu or some giant meteorite doesn’t do the job first – the background against which many see life at the beginning of a new century – then what’s the point anyway?

And in Christmas we have the answer to all this. Realising that we are not the centre of the universe had to come. Learning the true nature of the Genesis stories and facing up to the discoveries of modern science is all just part of growing up. But like every person who moves through childhood and adolescence into adulthood, the ultimate challenge for the world is to find out who we really are. And that’s what Christmas is about. Our planet may exist in the middle of nowhere. We may have evolved from apes. But in Jesus Christ, God has become one of us. Any doubts we may have about the meaning or otherwise of our own existence are overcome forever by the person who comes to realise that we have a God whose one desire is to draw us to himself so that we can share in his own life. If this is true, then far from being absurd or pointless, human existence is filled with meaning so far-reaching that it is far beyond our power even to imagine it.

But there’s a problem. And it’s this. Just as a failure to understand properly the great stories in the book of Genesis was part of the mixture that led to modern atheism so a very similar misunderstanding of the Christmas story is what prevents the people of our time recognizing the true meaning of today’s feast. As long as we remain stuck at the level of donkeys, shepherds and inn-keepers and tell ourselves that Christmas is ‘for the weans’ the world will never know the depth of what we celebrate today. This is no children’s story. The donkey and the inn-keeper are mere packaging. Behind them lies a truth with the power to transform the world. And that is the challenge currently facing us: to unpack what is a truly wonderful story and open up to the men and women of our time what it all means.

Richard Dawkins has said that he had become an atheist when he was fifteen. And in many ways that is what he and others like him are: adolescent atheists. And so we have nothing to fear from their atheism. It will, like adolescence itself, prove temporary. Beyond it lies adult faith, the kind which, once we have learned to embrace the deeper meaning of the story – something we will explore in the Bidding Prayers - Christmas is really about.

BIDDING PRAYERS

The presence of the angels in the Christmas story symbolizes the coming together in Jesus of heaven and earth. God has become part of our world giving new meaning to human existence in all its rich variety. There is no longer any distinction between the spiritual and the physical. And so we pray for a deep sense of the dignity that goes with being human, especially in a world where many have lost touch with God and see no point in life and are filled with fear and anxiety about the future.........Lord hear us

The shepherds in Jesus day were the outcasts of society and their presence in Luke’s Gospel is a sign of Jesus profound commitment to the poor and marginalized in every age. He began life among the poor and ended it among them, crucified between two thieves. And so we pray that the followers of Jesus throughout the world today will show that same commitment to the poor of our time and that here in this parish will always make them welcome and have a place for them in our lives.........Lord hear us

The Three Wise Men, or Magi, represent people in every age who are searching for the truth. There are many such men and women in the world today, and in a society with so many versions of the truth their search is not an easy one. And so we pray for them, that they will have the courage to follow their star wherever it leads and however long it takes until they come to know the God who created them and longs to share his life with them……Lord hear us

The shadow of the cross hangs over the Christmas story in the murder of the Innocents, the flight into Egypt and Simeon’s prophecy that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s heart. And so we pray for suffering humanity, that, in moments of grief and despair and in the midst of warfare, violence and hunger, people throughout the world will know the presence of God and find hope in the mystery of his coming among us............Lord hear us

We are living through an age of widespread atheism the likes of which has never before been seen. And so we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to understand this phenomenon. We pray, too, for the courage to recognize the part the Churches have played in creating this atheism by offering people a version of the great truths of faith, like Christmas, which are infantile and so are rejected today by many intelligent people as little more than fairy stories on a par with sleeping beauty or the three bears ..........Lord hear us

And we pray, finally, for the grace to enjoy to the full these days of Christmas celebrations. We pray for the insight we need to see God in our families, to taste him in the food we eat, to savour him in the drinks we drink and to recognize in the gifts we give and receive, a sign of his immense generosity which has caused him to pour so much goodness into our world.........Lord hear us

4th Sunday of Advent C

2009-12-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

One of the problems about Year C of the liturgical cycle, I often think, is that, when it comes to this time of the year, we tend to get the readings that are left over, the ones, if you like, which A and B didn’t want. On this last Sunday of Advent, for example, A has the story of Joseph and his struggle with Mary’s pregnancy. B has the story of the Annunciation. And poor old C, always at the tail end, is left with the story of the Visitation, not exactly the first scene that comes mind when they think of Christmas. So what are we to make of this story today and what does it have to say to us, especially in relation to our Advent theme of integrity? Well, the key, I think, lies in the answer to a very simple question, which is why Mary went to see Elizabeth in the first place.

As a child I was told that she went because Elizabeth was old and needed help. But I’m afraid I don’t buy that explanation. The much more likely answer, I suggest, lies in the Annunciation story itself and, in particular, in Mary’s question to the angel when he tells her why he has come. ‘But how can this be,’ she says, ‘since I am a virgin.’ Mary does not understand and isn’t afraid to say so. She has a question and is not afraid to ask it. And so the angel gives her a sign. Elizabeth, her elderly cousin, after years of longing for a child, is expecting. And so Mary, willing to do what God asks – yes, but sensible enough to know that not everyone who claims to be an angel comes from god, heads for the hill country of Judah to check things out. And how clever it was of God to send her to Elizabeth, a woman of complete integrity who, as Luke tells us earlier in his Gospel, was worthy in the sight of God and scrupulously observed all the commandments and observances of the Lord. Elizabeth, the older woman, was the ideal mentor for Mary, the perfect person to accompany her through this moment in her life, not least because, having been childless for so many years herself, something which was a terrible disgrace in the culture of those days, she knew from personal experience the kind of criticism and gossip Mary could expect in a small village like Nazareth. And so they spent six months together, a vitally important time of prayer and reflection for each of them, and a time which would never have happened had Mary not been willing to ask that crucial question: But how can this be? What is going on here? I need to understand this better; questions which, I would suggest, we all need to be asking about the things of God at this moment in history. So what do I mean by this?

Well, two weeks ago, on the second Sunday of Advent, I put it to you that, if we are to be people of integrity, we must be constantly learning and increasing our knowledge. We live in an age of questions. As we enter a new millennium, the men and women of our time are uncertain about almost everything. Our world is a veritable market-place of truth where each individual is free to peddle his or her own particular version of it. There has never been such uncertainty around questions of what is right and wrong. Millions have lost faith in God. Atheism has become the new religion of the 21st century and even among those who believe in God there is an enormous amount of disillusionment with Churches, organized religion and all that goes with them. Old, traditional ways of thinking no longer make sense to people and as a result the world is desperately searching for new answers to new questions. And what I invite you to see today again is the tremendous potential for good in all this. To ask questions is what leads to knowledge and the really big questions people are asking today about the purpose and meaning of life in our modern world are what will lead them to God. Where there are no questions there can be no growth in knowledge. Questions are what open us up to the truth, except that if the questions the men and women of our time are asking about God are going to lead them to God, then, like Mary in the story of the Visitation, they will need their own Elizabeths to help them. And we are called to be those Elizabeths. So how can this be?

Well, the answer lies in the Eucharistic Prayer we use each week where we ask God to keep us alert in faith to the signs of the times and eager to accept the challenge of the Gospel. We pray for the grace to share the experience of the people of our time – as Elizabeth shared Mary’s experience – so that we can advance together with them on the way to salvation. And the word ‘together’ is of crucial importance here. We can only do for the men and women of our time what Elizabeth did for Mary if we are prepared to enter deeply into their experience. We have to ask the questions they are asking about religion and Churches. We have to be able to feel their disillusionment, their disgust, their complete alienation from all that traditional religion stands for, something which, if we are really honest with ourselves, many of us do feel but are sometimes afraid to express. We have to confront our own deep questions about all these things. We have to get in touch with the little atheist inside each one of us. Because it’s only if we are willing to do this and feel what they feel that we will be able to offer something meaningful when the Marys of today come to us wanting to know ‘how this can be.’

But, of course, we need our own Elizabeths too. And what I invite you to see is that one important form she takes in our lives is our parish. For men and women committed to living lives of faith in the midst of today’s world, the parish community should be that village in the hill country of Judah where, without fear, we can explore together the great questions about God, spirituality, churches and religion, discover together what it means to be men and women of faith today and so prepare ourselves to be Elizabeths to others. It means doing what Mary did and setting out on a journey. It means being pregnant and carrying Jesus for others. But, although I have been here for just a short time, I really believe we can do it.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin today by praying for the world of our time. We ask God for the insight we need to recognize how, in the midst of all the doubt and uncertainty which characterizes the age in which we live, God is drawing humanity slowly but surely to himself. We pray especially that the rampant atheism of our age, along with the disillusionment many feel about Churches and religion, will, in time, lead the world to deeper and more authentic ways of thinking about God........Lord hear us

If we are to do for the people of our time what Elizabeth did for Mary in the story of the Visitation, then we must be willing to enter into their experience. We must be willing to confront the questions about God, Churches, religion, morality and so on which surface from deep within us too. Rather than be afraid of them, we must welcome them and see them as stepping stones to deeper truth, and we pray for the grace to do this in our own lives.........Lord hear us

If the atheist in us does not rear his head from time to time, then the God we say we believe in is not the real God, but an idol whom we have created in our own image and likeness. The real God is always far greater than we can understand. Nothing we could ever say about him is adequate. In the end he can only be known by those who go beyond the limits of reason and make a leap of faith. And so we pray for the grace to make this leap and move beyond the limits of human thinking..............Lord hear us

But it is not just as individuals that we are called to confront questions of truth and untruth. And so we pray that, as a parish community gathered around the Word and the Eucharist, we will learn to explore the great questions of our time together and so grow together into deeper and deeper faith. We ask God to give us the courage and generosity we need to do this, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of others, especially the absent children and young people of our parish.......Lord hear us

In the story of the Visitation, Elizabeth pinpoints the source of Mary’s greatness. She believed that the promises made her by the Lord would be fulfilled. But we, too, have received promises. Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of time. He has promised us the Spirit, who, he says, will lead us into the complete truth. And so, at a time when many in the Church are afraid and losing heart, we pray for the grace to believe that these promise, too, will be fulfilled............ Lord hear us

Christmas is very near. At its heart lies the most amazing truth. The God who created everything that exists and who holds it in being has become part of our world and part of our history. He is ‘Emmanuel’ ‘God with us,’ and he has given us everything we have. And so we pray for the grace to recognize him in the coming days in the sudden desire we all have at Christmas to give to others, especially those in need, in a way we simply do not do at other times of the year........Lord hear us

29th Sunday. B.

2009-10-17T13:33:00.001-07:00

You might think that on an occasion such as this – my last Sunday in the parish after more than twenty four years – I might have something wise or insightful to say. But I’m afraid it isn’t like that. I have really struggled with this week’s homily and have decided, in the end, to just tell you how it was that I came to be here in the first place and how it has come about that I am leaving tomorrow to go to West Kilbride. My hope, in doing this, is that it will help us see the providence of God at work every step of this journey and help us understand what it is he is doing among us at this particular moment.

The story began in 1981, about a year after I had been appointed parish priest in Sanquhar, Kirkconnel and New Cumnock. In September of that year I was also appointed Diocesan RE Advisor for Secondary Schools and as a result spent the next four years driving around the diocese at the rate of 30,000 miles a year. It was a far from ideal situation and as this became more and more obvious, Bishop Taylor assured me that, as soon as an opportunity arose, he would move me to a parish which would involve less travelling. And so, when in the summer of 1985 it became clear that a series of moves were about to take place, I expected to be involved. On the day the bishop was actually making the moves, however, I received three phone calls from him. The first, just before the Vigil Mass that Saturday, said that, despite his promises, he was not going to be able to move me after all. The second, which awaited me on the answering machine when I came in later that evening after having been out for a meal with Robert Johnstone, was that he was going to move me but didn’t know where. And the third, which came about half past eleven that night, told me that he was sending me here, to St Matthew’s. His original plan, it turned out, had been to send Fr Alistair Tosh here. That very morning, however, Fr Charlie McLaughlin’s doctor had told him that he must retire immediately, as a result of which Fr Tosh went to Kilbirnie and, two weeks later I arrived here filled with hope and enthusiasm.

As you know, of course, my first few years here were very difficult, undoubtedly the most difficult of my life up to this point. The problem was not the people in the parish, although one person, very unhappy at my arrival, was heard to ask, ‘Whit, is he going to live in Fr McSorley’s hoose?’ The real problem was inside me: in my need for approval and my inability to cope with a level of antagonism and personal criticism I had never experienced before. And this took me into two and a half years of psychotherapy to try and make sense of what was happening to me followed by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius which proved to be the single most powerful movement of God in my life. The approval issue hasn’t gone away. These iissues never really do. But it does not have anything like the power now it once had. Mind you, I could do without it being put to the test in West Kilbride in the coming weeks and months.

And so the years passed. I was actually moved once and appointed parish priest of St Margaret’s, Ayr. But that move came to nothing since it was challenged by three of the priests involved in the process and never happened. From time to time priest friends would suggest that maybe I should think about a change. Every few years the bishop would send us all a letter asking us to let him know if we were interested in moving. But whenever I took this to prayer there was never any inclination or desire in me to do so. Over and over again the message seemed to be: Leave it. Do nothing, Trust, and something will happen. And then, earlier this year, something did begin to happen.

And what happened was that I suddenly began to notice a change inside me and a gentle, tentative attraction to, of all places, West Kilbride. Canon Sam McGuiness had died in the February. I was approaching the fortieth anniversary of my ordination and the idea that West Kilbride would be ideally suited to me at this stage on my journey began to grow. I wondered at one point if I should volunteer to go there, but in prayer the message was still the same, ‘Do nothing.’ And then, in August, the bishop called a meeting of what are know in Canon Law as the ‘consultors,’ where the changes that needed to happen would be discussed. As a consultor, a should have been there, but due to the fact that I had a wedding rehearsal that afternoon at Glasgow University, I could not attend. Afterwards I was so tempted to try and find out what had happened, but again the message was, ‘Do nothing.’ By the following Tuesday I was convinced I was not involved in the forthcoming moves and during the Hour of Prayer that morning the call to trust was very strong. And then, five minutes after Mass, the phone rang. Could I go down that day and see the bishop? And the rest is history,

So why do I tell you all this? Well to help us all to see that what is happening here today is of God. It is God’s doing and, as such, it is our job to embrace it in faith. Leaving here is a huge step for me. I came here when I was forty and so in St Matthew’s have lived through what Miss Jean Brodie would have called ‘my prime.’ But I go to St Bride’s to face the future filled with hope and invite you to do the same and to give Martin all the support he will need in the months and years ahead.

I have been really struck over the last few days by the words of the first reading. ‘ The Lord,’ we heard, ‘ has been please to crush his servant with suffering.’ Well he did a bit of that in my early days here. ‘If,’ however, ‘he offers his life in atonement’ and I have tried to do that, ‘He shall see his heirs and have a long life.’ I don’t know about the long life, but my heir is sitting here right beside me. ‘And through him’ the passage ended, ‘what the Lord wishes will be done.’

I believe it has been and is being and invite you to join me today in thanking God for it.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin today by praying for the whole parish at this moment of transition. Our God is a God of constant new beginnings and we pray for a real openness to what he is doing among us at this time. We pray, in particular, for the grace to go where God leads so that there is no challenge too great and no invitation from God too demanding for us. We pray, too, for a deep sense of gratitude for all that God has already done in us and will continue to do in the future........Lord hear us

We pray, too, for Joe as he prepares to leave us for West Kilbride. We ask God to guide him in the days and weeks ahead and to give him the graces he will need as he begins the process of adapting to life in a new town, in a new church, in a new house and with new parishioners. We ask God, too, to be with the people of St Bride’s as they also enter a period of uncertainty and change, that they, in their turn, will be open to the challenges Joe will no doubt present them with........Lord hear us

And we pray for Martin. Having spent the last five years in Ecuador, he now faces the challenge of adjusting again to life in Scotland, a very different place from Ecuador. And so we ask God to be with him. We pray that his experience in the developing world will help the people of this parish come to a deeper understanding of the great issues of poverty and injustice facing humanity today and inspire us to respond to them in a way which is effective and appropriate......Lord hear us

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that in the Kingdom anyone who wants to be first must become the servant of all. And so we pray for priests throughout our diocese, called in a very particular way to a life of service, that they will always remain faithful to that calling. We pray, especially, that they will never succumb to the dangers of a clerical system which encourages, not service, but the seeking of status, power and position within the parish community............Lord hear us

The second reading from the letter to the Hebrews speaks of how Jesus, the high priest has experienced in his own person what it is to be a weak human being. And this, of course, is true of every priest in the Church today. They are all weak and often deeply flawed men. And so we pray that people in our parishes will have the maturity, not only to recognize this, but embrace it and provide priests everywhere with the help and human support they so often need............Lord hear us

Perhaps the most amazing thing about God is the mystery we call Divine Providence. God does not control events, either in the world or in our individual lives. Having given us the gift of freedom he is often helpless in the face of the decisions we make. And yet, deep within everything that happens, in a way far beyond our comprehension, he works to bring about his dream for us. And so we ask for a deep sense of this providence at work among us today..........Lord hear us

28th Sunday of the Year

2009-10-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

Last week’s homily, which you may or may not remember, was, on the face of it, about divorce. But, in reality, it was about something much more profound and far-reaching. Having heard what Jesus had to say about divorce, we certainly spoke about the appalling way in which divorced and remarried people have sometimes been treated in our parishes over the years, often rejected even by family and friends and made to feel that they could not attend Church, even although many longed to do so. We saw, too, how there was never any justification for this; how it was completely against the teaching of the Church as expressed in Pope John Paul II’s 1981 document on the family in which he speaks of how the divorced and remarried must be made part of the parish community and encouraged to play their part in its life.

But while we did talk about these things - and they took up half the homily - the real point of what I was saying came after that when I asked what thousands of divorced and remarried people in our parishes are to do in the face of what the Pope says about divorced and remarried people not going to Holy Communion. This led us to reflect on something which traditional Catholicism has not prepared most of us for, the world of discernment based on an intimate, personal relationship with God and on the century-old principle of Catholic moral teaching, that conscience is the ultimate norm of morality. And I spoke of that lonely place where law is no longer able to answer all our questions and we have to stand before God with our personal moral choices and trust him with them. What this means in practice, of course, is not always simple. As one parishioner asked me on Monday morning after the homily ‘Does what you were saying yesterday mean that, if I do something and don’t think it’s wrong, that I am not committing a sin?’ Well that, I’m afraid, is one of those questions to which the answer is ‘Yes and No!’

When push comes to shove, of course, the answer is ‘Yes.’ Even as a small child I was taught that if a person believes that what he is doing is right then he cannot commit a sin. But to try and express such a profound idea as we are dealing with here in such simple terms is to leave it wide open to misunderstanding and abuse. And so, from being a matter of moral principle and spiritual maturity, the whole concept of conscience and discernment can very easily and very quickly degenerate into an excuse for self- indulgence, for just doing what we like or what suits us at any given moment: the modern ‘truth is what you think it is’ approach to morality. Personal discernment and conscience, however, have nothing to do with this mentality. They are, instead, about opening ourselves up more and more to the Will of God in every situation we face in the course of our lives. If we want to live as mature, adult, discerning individuals, we will discover very quickly that the ‘conscience is the ultimate norm of morality’ principle will demand more of us, not less. To allow the Spirit of God to guide us on our journey through life - which is what we are talking about here – will always mean being drawn ever more deeply into the following and imitating of Jesus. It will mean learning to love as God loves and this in itself will mark the end of the religious stage of our life – when we live by rules and do the minimum necessary for salvation - and the beginning of a life of faith which will ultimately lead us into the very heart of God himself, a journey which in some semse will mean dying to our self-centred selves and being born into God.

But if this is ever going to become a reality for us, then there is one word which sums up the journey we must undertake. And it’s the word Freedom. St Ignatius talks about it at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises. We are, he says, created to share the life of God. Everything on the face of the earth is gift from God, but it is not God. And so, while using and enjoying the gifts of creation, we must never fall into the trap of turning them into gods or making them ends themselves. We must never become attached to any created thing, as the young man in today‘s Gospel clearly had, but must use them in ways which lead us to God and not away from him. And so when Jesus tells our young man to sell everything he has and come and follow him, what Jesus wants for him is the freedom to go where God leads and so become the person he was created to be. And it was the same in the Gospel of two weeks ago which I know confused some of you. When Jesus spoke that day about cutting off hands or tearing out eyes, he is not advocating some form of self-harm. He is speaking of this same freedom and the need to let go of anything, no matter how good it may be in itself, if it is threatening to come between us and God. Some of these attachments can be to material things: to money, to a certain life-style, to material comforts, to a career or a job. But they can be to less tangible things like our own opinions, our own ways of thinking, our own world-view, our own prejudices and so on. But it is when we are attached to them and so lack the basis freedon to go where God leads that personal discernment can very quickly become that excuse for self-indulgence and doing what we like. Our capacity for self-deception then knows no bounds and when that happens there is almost nothing that we cannot justify to ourselves.

And yet this freedom is what we are created for. At certain points in our moral and spiritual development we need rules and regulations to guide us. But if we live our whole lives in this way we are like a tree that never produces fruit or a plant that never flowers. We are made for more than rules. We are, in the end, created, not to obey, but to choose freely, out of love, what God offers. This is the wisdom the first reading spoke of, a wisdom which the author esteemed more than sceptres and thrones and compared with which he held riches as nothing. He prayed, he says and understanding was given him. He entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to him.

May it come to you too.

BIDDING PRAYERS

In a world where relativism has run riot - the idea that truth is what the individual thinks it is and there is no truth outside or beyond ourselves – there is a greater need than ever before in history for people who have the moral and spiritual maturity to make good choices for themselves rather than just do what everyone else around them is doing. And so we ask God to give us the wisdom we need at this time, the wisdom the author of the first reading valued above all other things.........Lord hear us

To become free of all attachments so that we can freely go where God leads us is itself a gift from God. Left to ourselves we could never come to such freedom. But we can prepare for it by becoming more aware on a daily basis of our un-freedoms. And so we ask God, through the power of his Spirit living in us, to enable us to see more clearly than ever before where our deep-rooted attachments lie so that we can begin the process of becoming free of them............Lord hear us

Un-freedoms come in manyforms. In our modern consumer-driven society many of us are hooked on buying things and acquiring more and more material possessions. The world of our time tells us that along this road lies happiness, and millions travel along it only to discover that it is an illusion which, in the end, leads only to disappointment and unhappiness. And so we ask God to show our world the way out of the trap we are in....Lord hear us

Perhaps the most powerful example of un-freedom in our world today are the many forms of addiction which bedevil our society. And so we pray today for all who suffer from such addictions, especially to drugs and alcohol. These can completely take over a person’s life, robbing them of the very freedom and will-power they need to escape from the deep, dark dungeon they live in. And so pray for them and ask God to do in them what they cannot do in themselves......Lord hear us

In the story of the rich young man, we see a reflection of the world we live in. He wants to know, love and serve God, but is not yet free enough in himself to be able to do so. Our world, too, longs for the things of God - justice, peace, freedom, deeper more spiritual ways of living which go beyond the old, redundant religions – but, like the young man, it is unable or unwilling make the changes necessary for this to happen. And so we ask God to stay with us and guide us......Lord hear us

This week’s passage from the letter to the Hebrews speaks of the power of God’s Word. It can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, we heard. It can judge secret emotions and thoughts. Through it everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the one to whom we must give an account of ourselves. And so we pray for the grace to live in such a way that, in the end, we can come into God’s presence with lives lived to the full and free from all fear......Lord hear us

27th Sunday of the Year B

2009-10-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

Many things have saddened me during my forty years as a priest, but the most common has been listening to people who have found themselves at odds with the official teaching of the Church on marriage and divorce. For many of a certain generation this is a cause of great anxiety, and as I have listened to their stories over the years I have felt, not only sad, but angry. Angry, not at the people involved, and not fundamentally at the Church either, but at the fact that so much of the suffering people experience is completely unnecessary, based, as it so often is, on a complete misunderstanding of what the Church’s position on these matters actually is, a misunderstanding which often arises – and it gives me no pleasure to say this – from the fact that many of my fellow priests have themselves not understood the Church’s position and so have placed on people burdens they did not need to carry. And so many good people have spent years feeling rejected by the Church, feeling they could not go to Mass and, worst of all, living with the often deeply buried fear that, if they were to die, they would be rejected by God too and go to hell. Many of you will know of such cases. You may even be one yourself. And so, having listened to Jesus’ own words, not easy ones for us to hear, I would like to try and clarify what exactly it is the Church is saying today. The key document here is one published by Pope John Paul in November 1981 on the subject of the family, and I could not even begin to count the number of times I have t read it to people over the years.

In it, the Pope, in a a section towards the end – numbers 80 to 84 if you want to Google it – speaks at length about the variety of situations people find themselves in in today’s society, including people who have been divorced but who have not remarried – with whom the Church has no problem whatsoever - and those who, having been divorced, have subsequently married again. I can’t quote it all to you today, but if you do read it for yourself you will see how the text simply oozes compassion, understanding and care for the individuals involved, qualities which, sadly, have not always been reflected in the attitude of the Christian community. But I do want to quote you the last part, words which I virtually know by heart now, and which sum up the official view of the Church, if not the view of many Catholics and not a few clergy. And this is what the Pope says: ‘I earnestly call upon pastors and the whole community of the faithful to help the divorced (and remarried), and with solicitous care to make sure that they do no consider themselves as separated from the Church, for as baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. Let the Church show herself a merciful mother and thus sustain them in faith and hope.’ a far cry, I am afraid, from the experience of many people in our parishes. As a Church, we should hang our heads in shame for what we have sometimes done to them and if any of you here have been the victims of such gross ignorance I can only say that I am sorry.

There is, however, a ‘but’ and it is a pretty big ‘but’ because, although you can sense in the text his sadness at having to say it, the Pope reaffirms in this document the practice of the Church, based, he says, on Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion, divorced persons who have remarried, his fundamental reason being what he sees as the Church’s need to do nothing which would undermine in any way the permanence and idissolubility of marriage. Human beings, in other words, are made for and ultimately capable of a love that is permanent and unchanging and, in a world which more and more rejects the mere possibility of this, the Church must stand up for it. So faced with this, what are individual divorced and remarried people in the Church to do?

Well, here we come to an area which traditional Catholicism has not prepared us for, the area of discernment based on an intimate personal relationship with God. And, as I prepare to leave for West Kilbride in two weeks times, one of my hopes would be that, in the twenty four years I have been here I would have helped some of you, at least, to enter this very challenging, sometimes lonely, often painful but profoundly rewarding world of personal choice. And by personal choice, I do not mean doing what we like or what suits us. It’s much more profound than that and can only be understood by individuals with a high level of moral and spiritual maturity. It has nothing to do the kind of attitude that says; ‘The church is wrong. Who cares what the Pope says? I’ll just do what I like.’ This is infantile or, at best, adolescent, and has nothing to do with discernment. Genuine discernment in this area begins with a real respect for and willingness to understand why the Church says what it does and to recognize the truth contained in it. But there’s another truth here, too, which has been the basis of Catholic morality since the early Middle Ages, which is that conscience is the ultimate norm of morality. And so the mature Catholic, while accepting the teaching of the Church for what it is, has, in the end to stand before God in prayer and, using all the tools of personal discernment, which includes respecting the rights and sensibilities of others, decide what is the right thing to do and, with God’s grace, have the courage to do it. And there is no point in expecting the Church to agree or tell you that it’s OK. It cannot do that. Only the mature individual can do it for his or herself, which is why, in forty years as a priest I have never told any divorced and remarried person either to go to Communion or not to go. Many times, I know, they would have liked me to. Sometimes I could see the look in their eyes, pleading with me to make their decision for them and let them off the hook. It would have made things so much easier. But to have done so would have been to rob them of a privilege and responsibility which goes with being human. In the end, you see, we all have to make our own moral decisions and have the courage to stand before God with them.

And its not always easy.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin today by praying for all those men and women who, as a result of painful and complicated relationships in the past, have found themselves at odds with the Church’s laws on marriage and as a result have felt rejected and abandoned by the Christian community. We ask God to reach deep into their hearts today and heal the hurt they feel and, if it is what they want, give them the courage they need to return to the Church into which they were born................Lord hear us

In the document w heard from today, Pope John Paul uses over and over again words like, ‘care,’ ‘compassion,’ ‘understanding,’ ‘tolerance’ and ‘love’ for people in all kinds of situations. He calls on us to understand the world we live in with all its pressures and never to indulge in judgement or condemnation. And so we pray that, both as a parish and as individuals we will become more like this ourselves and so show to the world the true and authentic face of the Church..................Lord hear us

When it comes to things like relationships, marriage and so on, the world we live in is in a constant state of turmoil. Old certainties have been lost or abandoned and the world is struggling to find alternatives to them. Caught up in this turmoil are the young. Born into a world almost lacking in moral landmarks or signposts, they are left to find their own way at an age when they are simply not ready to do so. And so we ask God to guide them when we do not............Lord hear us

Faced with the turmoil and confusion of our time, the Institutional Church feels a great need to defend the whole institution of marriage. For centuries marriage and the belief that human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, are capable of life-long, faithful unconditional love has been the foundation stone of our society. And so, at a time when many no longer believe in this vision, we pray for the insight to understand why the Church says what it does................Lord hear us

In the first reading today from the book of Genesis, we hear the most amazing affirmation of the fundamental equality of men and women – ‘This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh - an idea which, when Genesis was written, was light years ahead of its time. Even now the world is a long way from fully understanding this truth. And so we pray for a final end to all chauvinism on the part of men and of all discrimination against women in the world................Lord hear us

And we pray for married people in our parish and in the community around us. We ask God to give them the courage, generosity and selflessness they need to be what they are called to be and which, with God’s grace, they are capable of being. But we pray in a special way for couple who are struggling at this time to be faithful to the promises they made that, with God’s help, they will find a way forward together.............Lord hear us

25th Sunday B

2009-09-19T07:01:00.001-07:00

Whenever I hear today’s passage from the letter of St James, I always think of Blairs where I spent six years from 1957 to 1963. Virtually every priest in Scotland of a certain age spent his formative years there and so there are things about the priesthood in this country which can only really be understood by those who have some knowledge of what Blairs was like. And so, having listened to what St James had to say about worldy ambition, something which should have no place in the Church, but sadly often does, I would like to tell you something about it.

There were about two hundred of us when I arrived there in 1957, and in the refectory we sat in long tables split into groups of six. At the head of the table sat the oldest boy, known as the divider. As the name suggests, his job was to divide up the food, a position which gave him great power over everyone else at the table. Beside him sat the sub-divider. His job was to divide out the bread pudding we ate every day in life, and it was not unusual for the divider and sub-divider to eat half the food between them. Seniority was everything. The youngest boy at the table was known as the lowest and the second youngest as the second lowest. And if the numbers were uneven and a seventh boy had to be squeezed in at the end, he was known as the sub-lowest and spent half his life falling off the end of the bench. And so if you were a lowest, or even worse a sub-lowest, your one ambition in life was to live long enough to become a second lowest, a mindset which ran right through the whole system. Those who had power used it and those who hadn’t looked forward to the day they would have, when they, too, could eat half the pudding while those below them watched and dreamt of the day when it would be their turn to do the same. It was, of course, a totally un-christian way of living, the opposite of everything the Church is meant to be about, and sadly it didn’t end with Blairs.

Throughout most of Scotland, curates, with a few exceptions, are a thing of the past. But there was, of course, a time when most parishes had them. In Glasgow, for example, until not that long ago, many priests celebrated their silver jubilee as curates, and the stories of how they were treated can only be understood in the light of what went on in Blairs. Parish priests acted like dividers and sub-dividers and the youngest priest, known as the junior curate, was the grown up version of the lowest. It’s often said that the order of importance in most presbyteries was the parish priest, the housekeeper, the housekeeper’s dog and the curate. Often the curates did all the work with the result that when they became parish priests themselves they virtually retired, lived in their rooms and treated the curates the way they had been treated themselves. It was ingrained in generations of clergy and helps us understand the traditional importance attached to getting bigger parishes, being canons or monsignors, having important jobs and so on. Much has been written in recent years about this kind of thing, about the effects of what’s known as clericalism and its power to block what God is calling us to in today’s Church, but the question I would like to explore very briefly with you now is this: how did we get from ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all’ to being a Church so dominated by rank and hierarchy.

Well, of course, that’s a long, sad story. But those of you who did the history course last year may remember that one absolutely key moment in it was the conversion of the Emperor Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century, one of the effects of which was explained very well to us by Fr John Hughes who gave that part of the course. And what he explained was that, faced with the task of controlling his vast empire, Constantine saw that there was no point setting up a vast system of civil servants when there was a ready-made one already there in the form of the Church and its bishops. And so, from being a persecuted minority, the Church, almost overnight, became part of the very structure of government with what many would see as catastrophic long-term consequences for the spread of the Gospel. Gradually the Church and those in it began to imitate the world around them. Bishops became princes, acquired both riches and power and were called ‘Lord.’ In time there emerged Popes who were no more than political leaders and slowly but surely power did what it always does. It corrupted the Church at every level until, far from being a sign of the kingdom of God in the world, it was no more than a reflection of a society filled with all the things St James speaks of this week: jealousy, ambition, disharmony and wicked things of every kind. The whole history of the Church is littered with these evils and, if we are to become again what we were always meant to be, a sign of the kingdom, these things must be addressed.

And it’s happening. The God who works in strange ways and who writes straight with crooked lines is hard at work in our time. All around us, as secularism and atheism make more and more inroads into our modern society, the Church is being stripped of the status and power it once enjoyed. It once controlled people’s lives. Now few even listen to it. Even the scandals of recent years have played their part, destroying illusions, exploding myths and knocking clergy from the pedestals we occupied for so long. This has been a painful process and continues to be so, but what I invite you to see today is that, in all this, God is at work, calling us back to the simplicity and humility that characterized the Church for the first three hundred years of its history.

History, in the end, can only be understand when we stand back and look at it as a whole. And when we do that, what seems bad often turns out to be good and what looks like a disaster proves in the long run to be a blessing. And so my prayer today is that we will understand this. And that, in understanding it, we will be filled both with a sense of gratitude for the times through which we are living and a deep sense of hope and trust in God about the future.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Lord Acton famously wrote in 1887 that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the whole of human history confirming the truth of his statement. And yet, despite the fact that Jesus was born without power and died without power, the Church down through the ages has succumbed over and over again to the temptation of power. And so we ask God to give us at this moment in history the courage we need to embrace powerlessness as Jesus did........Lord hear us

When the disciples in today’s Gospel are found arguing about which of them is the greatest, they are falling into the same trap as many people in our own day. Led by the media and its superficial celebrity culture, many of our contemporaries are conned into believing that being famous or important in the world’s eyes will somehow bring happiness. And so we ask God to help the people of our time, especially the young, to see this for the lie it is.........Lord hear us

Faced with his disciples’ desire for worldly power, Jesus holds up a child before them as an example of what the kingdom of God is like. Elsewhere, he tells them that unless they become like little children they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And so we pray that this parish will always be one which not only welcomes children, providing an environment where their faith can deepen and grow, but strives to become like them in their openness, simplicity and trust....Lord hear us

For years, commentators have described our society as a ‘me first’ society. We have been encouraged to look after number one and to ‘go for it’ even if this means trampling over other people along the way. Politicians and others speak constantly about a breakdown in society and lament the lack of any sense of community in our towns and cities. And so we pray that the whole country will come to see that the answer to all this lies in what Jesus says in today’s Gospel........Lord hear us

In today’s second reading, St James speaks of how the battles that go on in society start with the desires fighting within ourselves. ‘You want something and you haven’t got it: you have an ambition which you cannot satisfy, so you fight to get your way by force,’ he says. And so we pray for the courage we need to confront the selfish desires in ourselves, recognize and accept that we cannot always have what we want, and so come to greater generosity of spirit towards other people.........Lord hear us

And we pray in a particular way for those who govern our country either at local or national level. Over the summer we saw just how much power can corrupt our politicians and it was a shocking experience for everyone concerned. And so we pray for all who were involved in this whole fiasco, that it will help them see things about themselves that they had previously chosen not to see and so prove to be a turning point in the way government itself functions in Britain.......Lord hear us