1st Sunday of Advent, Year C, Shaftesbury

Lk 21:25-28.34-36
There is an old joke you may have heard, that I remembered this week amidst all the rain:
A man was sat on the steps of his front door as heavy rain and flood water was rising, and a man in a Landrover drove by and offered him a lift to rescue him. But he replied, “Thanks, but I trust in God, He will rescue me”. Later, as the waters rose higher, someone in boat came by and offered to rescue him, but again he just said, “Thanks, but I trust in God, He will rescue me”. Later still, as he was sat on the roof of his house, a helicopter came and offered to help him. Again he replied, “Thanks, but I trust in God, He will rescue me”. Finally, he drowned, and went up to the Pearly Gates. And he said to Jesus: "I trusted You. Why didn't you rescue me?" And Jesus replied, "I sent you a Landrover, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you expect me to do!"

On one level it is a joke. But on another level is makes a serious point about how God is present in our lives, even when we don't see Him.
Today we start the season of advent, when we think of the coming of The Lord, in preparation for Christmas. The word ‘Advent’ comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning "coming." And in the season of Advent there is a threefold coming we ponder:
The coming of Christ as a child in Bethlehem -our focus for Christmas, where Advent is heading.
The Second Coming of Christ in glory at the end of time –we start Advent thinking of that to remind us that the little baby of Bethlehem is not just a little baby but the Lord God Almighty –that is WHOSE coming we are focussed on.
And the third coming is now –the DAILY coming of the Lord to each and every one of us.

Now, my point to you today is that in each of these coming we can fail to see Jesus:
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Jews of old failed to see God present in Christ, in their long awaited messiah.
We, at the end of time, amidst all the trials and tribulations we have been warned of, will we fail to see Christ amidst our suffering? Will we fail to see God reaching out to us, in all His many different ways? Be it a Landrover, a boat, or a helicopter?
And daily, how often are we aware of the fact that He is all around, that He is the Creator holding us in being, that He is the one giving us grace to bear our trials and conquer in our struggles?
He is there, but do we see Him?

Let me make one simple suggestion to you in this regard:
If we want to see God’s presence in our lives then it helps to have religious images of Him in our homes. Those of you married to unbelievers might note that this is an easy time to slip in religious images with the coming Christmas decorations. Those of you who have entirely ‘Christian’ homes, let me ask you if your religious imagery makes it LOOK like a Christian home? A Catholic home should have a crucifix somewhere prominent and natural, a statue of Our Lady, or an image or her or the Sacred Heart –these should be natural things in a Catholic home. Yet, frequently when priests visit homes these days they look like the homes of unbelievers.
Is it then surprising that we struggle to be aware that God is present in our lives?

This season it is easy to bring religious images into our homes. As you plan your decorations plan the place of Christ among them. In particular, if you do not have a Nativity set, a crib, it is easy to buy one. I have found them for £7 on Amazon, and for those of you not on the internet you can sign the sheet in the porch this Sunday and I should have them here for you next Sunday. Similarly for crucifixes. There is no excuse for a Catholic not to have these at home –it’s HIS season after all.
Some links:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snow-White-Nativity-Ceramic-Figurines/dp/B009QX58YU/ref=pd_sim_sbs_kh_1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snow-White-Nativity-Ceramic-Figurines/dp/B009QX5J8U/ref=pd_sim_sbs_kh_5
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Large-Metal-Wood-Crucifix-4-5/dp/B0086VZ5AU/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1354282345&sr=1-2-spell
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christian-brown-wooden-Corpus-hanging/dp/B00A00AI7A/ref=sr_1_7?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1354282627&sr=1-7

To return to where I began, it is easy to fail to see God in our lives. To fail to see Him in things much less dramatic than a Landrover, boat or helicopter. But he IS there. If we want to recognise His presence at the End of Time, if we want to recognise His presence at Christmas, if we want to recognise His presence in our hearts and lives this day, then restoring the place of religious images in our homes is a good and simple place to start.

Catholic Intransigence, Christ the King, Year B, Shaftesbury

Jn 18:33-37
This week there has been a lot of media coverage of the debate in the Church of England about whether or not to ordain women as bishops.
And, lurking in the background of those discussions, there has been the occasional reference to the Catholic Church –to those awkward intransigent Catholics who refuse to ordain women as priests. And on this, and many other issues, people often accuse the Catholic Church of being inflexible, and failing to move with the times, and so forth.
So, I want to say a few words today about why the Church is not only so inflexible, but why she is CONFIDENTLY inflexible.

Let me start by making a comparison. In the recent debate within the Church of England this week we repeatedly heard their highest-ranking archbishops argue that they must ‘move with the times’; that they need to ‘catch up’ with modern society. I want, respectfully, to say that these are deeply mistaken comments for a Christian to be making. It would be one thing to argue that they should ordain women because it is the RIGHT thing to do, but to argue that they should do so because these are the attitudes in our society is to lose sight of what it means to be a Christian in the first place:

To be a Christian means that we look to Christ. It means that we do not look to modern secular society to tell us what is right and wrong. Rather, it means we look to Christ.
We look to Him because He is the meaning of life, He is the One in whose “image” we were made (Rom 8:29, 2 Cor 3:18) , He is the One “through whom ALL things were made” –as we say in the creed echoing Scripture (Jn 1:3, Rom 11:36, Col 1:16, Heb 1:2). We look to Him because He is the Lord God Himself come down from heaven to earth. We look to Him because He said of Himself that He is the “truth”(Jn 14:6), and, as we heard Him say in today’s Gospel, He came to “bear witness to the truth”(Jn 18:33). Today we keep the feast of Christ the King, and He is a king beyond all others, a king who does not need the wisdom of others because He is all Wisdom itself.

Christ’s status is such that he does not change or alter from one age to the next. He is a truth more constant that the truths of mathematics. 2+2=4 yesterday, today, and forever. And, as Scripture says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”(Heb 13:8).
It follows that the way of life He offers us is constant and reliable too: The Eucharist is as truly Him today as it was a century ago and as it will be a century from now. The moral life he taught likewise does not change: re-marriage after divorce was adultery when Christ condemned it as such (Lk 16:18), it is wrong today, and it will always be so. Homosexual behaviour was wrong when the early Judaeo-Christian tradition followed our Lord’s embracing of that tradition, and it remains so today.
And, concerning the ordination of women, contrary to the views of our fellow-Christians in the Church of England, the Catholic Church views the behaviour of Christ as normative on this matter too: yesterday, today, and forever. Christ COULD have chosen women as His first priests (the 12 Apostles) had He so wished –He defied contemporary custom and tradition on many other things. But instead Christ chose only men, unlike the pagan religions that had many priestesses.
[If you wish to read more on this point see our parish website]

And the Catholic Church holds that we do not have the authority to do other than Christ did.
And we hold firm on this, we are intransigent in this, because of what we believe about Christ. That He is the one Lord, the true King, “and all who are on the side of truth listen to [His] voice”(Jn 18:37).
We are not intransigent because we like sticking out, or because we like being awkward, and I don’t preach about this or other things because I think it makes me popular or makes my life easy. The Church stands firm because she wishes to stand with Christ, and recognises Him as the One to stand firm with, “yesterday, today, and forever”(Heb 13:8).

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, Shaftesbury

Mk 13:24-32; Dan 12:1-13
A constant feature of human existence, and of each of us, is that we want our problems to go away. We’re all aware that in some manner we live in a world of suffering, we live in a world of problems, that in different ways we see evil all around us. And though we want it to be over, the evil will not go away easily, not the evil of sin, not the evil of suffering, not any evil. It will only go away when it’s finally vanquished.
If this truth is pretty much clear to us today, and it was even more clear to the Jews living in our Lord’s own time. As well as the general evils of suffering and sin, the Jews of our Lord’s own time had for some centuries been subject to various different military occupations, most recently the Greeks, and then the Romans. They yearned for a time when these enemies would be vanquished. They yearned even more, for a time of the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament, about the final vanquishing of evil and suffering.
And yet, they also realised that this vanquishing, this final battle, would be a tough battle for them too. The various prophecies of what are called the “apocalyptic literature” all indicate this.

That was the general background to what we heard Lord Jesus speaking of in today’s gospel. We heard Him speaking about a “time of great distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will come falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” (Mk 13:24). This text comes after Jesus had been speaking about the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the sacred Temple itself (Mk 13:1ff). To those who heard Him, the thought of a dramatic cosmic battle involving even the destruction of the holy city of Jerusalem, such a prophecy had a general context in which to make sense of it: a time of great distress, followed by the establishment of the reign of God.

This text, however, was only one part of the teaching of the Lord Jesus. And in the light of the other things He said, His disciples saw a twofold prophecy in this text: a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, and a prophecy of a later definitive Second Coming in glory.
The first, namely the destruction of Jerusalem, did indeed occur as Jesus promised, “before this generation has passed away”(Mk 13:30). It occurred in the years 70 A.D. when the Roman army leveled Jerusalem and the Temple itself to the ground. The Jewish historian Josephus writes that it was because the Christians had this prophecy from the Lord Jesus, with His advice that when they see these things happening they should flee to the hills (Mk 13:14), that the Christians did indeed flee to the hills and survived the Roman destruction.
The second prophecy, of His final coming in glory, has yet to be fulfilled. However, the fact that His first prophecy was fulfilled gives us confidence to believe His later one will be too.

It’s not fashionable any more, or at least it used to not be fashionable, to talk about the drama of the End Times. To warn of “wars and rumours of wars” (Mt 24:6), to quote visions and saints who warn of coming chastisements for sin, of signs and wonders before the coming of something else.
And yet, unless we have a conviction that there will be a final playing out of the conflict between evil and good, a final battle were good will be triumphant, unless we are convinced that that WILL happen, then we cannot live as a people with hope that the problems of this world will one day end. And this is why it is ESSENTIAL that we as Christians continue to believe in the Second Coming, continue to look forward to it in hope, even through the destruction, the difficulty, the trauma that will be involved. Because without that final context, there will be no final victory, and WE can have no SHARE in that final victory.

But if there will be a final battle, if there will be a final victory, then the difficulties that we live with, real though they are, will one day be over.
Let me conclude by noting WHO it is that Jesus says will be victorious: Himself. He takes the title from the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament, especially as expressed in the book of Daniel as we heard in our first reading this week and will hear again next week, and He says that He who is, THE “Son of Man”(Dan 7:13 c.f. previous sermon), He will “come on the clouds of heaven” in victory.
A victory to set His people free, to set us free from all that burdens us in this life.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, Shaftesbury

Mk 12:41-44
Today England keeps Remembrance Sunday when we remember all those who gave their lives in the wars of the past century. The readings we have at Mass today are those chosen by the universal Church on its three-year cycle and are not intended to correspond to Remembrance Sunday. That said, I would like to make at least one connection between the value of the sacrifice of the widow, and that of lives laid down in war. Because in both cases the value of what is laid down might sometimes seem to be something lost, and yet, the words of Jesus remind us that the true value of something lies in God's eyes and not merely in our own.

The widow, as we just heard in that account, had very little money, very little to offer to the God, just two small coins, "the equivalent of just a penny"(Mk 12:42). In the eyes of most of those who saw her what she gave may have seemed not worth bothering about. This, however, is not what the Lord Jesus said about her offering. He said it was worth more than all the other offerings that had been made, "she has put in more than all the other offerings”(12:43), because she was giving all she had to live on, whereas the others were giving merely out of their abundance.
Now, if we consider what the Lord meant here, He clearly was not saying that her penny would buy more gold for the Temple, or more animals to be sacrificed. No, obviously, at a material level her offering would not be more than the other offerings made. Rather, He was speaking about the true value of these things, namely, the value they have in the sight of God.

For ourselves, it can often happen that we have something to do that seems small and not worthwhile. Maybe we offer someone some help, and they are not appreciative. Or maybe we have to wash a child's socks, and, of course, he never thanks you for it.
Or maybe, in a different way, your deed is small because you are not able to do as much as you would like. Maybe you are not physically strong and fit enough to help as you would like, or as you used to when you were younger, and you can only do something that seems small and hardly worth bothering to do. Or, maybe you'd like to give a big sum of money to help a charity, but you only have a small amount to offer, and it seems like it’s not worth doing.

In these, or many other things we do, the question raised by the Lord's description of the value of the widow's mite, is, WHAT is it that truly gives value to what we do?
We can answer this question in two parts,
First, the value lies in how GOD, the author of all things, the value lies in how HE values them.
Second, we can go further and actually be bold enough to say that we can know HOW and WHY He values things. Namely, He who tells us that He is love itself, He values things by the LOVE with which we do them. St Thomas Aquinas teaches this point at the theological level, in specifying that the level of MERIT that God assigns to our actions varies, and it varies according to how we love.
If I do a great deed, but with little love, then it has little value in God's eyes.
If I do a little deed, but with great love, then it has great value in God's eyes.

What this calls for, in a way of CHANGING our actions, is this: it calls for us to constantly seek to purify and correct our intentions, so that we do the same deeds but with a greater inner attitude of love, offering them in love, offering them to God, doing them for sake of someone else, not for the sake of how they will benefit us. This is something easy to say, but is a great task to make into a habitual practice, a practice that inwards transforms how we do everything, how we do the same deeds that we do anyway

And that, not the outward physical level of our deeds, that, like the small widow's mite that was worth more than all the other Temple offerings, that is what gives value to our deeds and to our lives.

No Sermon this weekend

There is no sermon text this weekend because we had a mission appeal from an SMA priest

On why it is good to believe, 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, Shaftesbury

Isa 53:10-11; Heb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45
I've spoken in recent weeks about a couple aspects of what it means to believe. I'd like, today, to conclude that for a while by speaking of another aspect of what is involved in believing, namely, the need to CHOOSE to believe. Cardinal Newman spoke about this when he said that we need to choose to believe, and in order to choose to believe we need to first recognise that there is something DESIRABLE about believing, some reason why we should WANT believe:
reason can show us the reasonableness of believing, can show us why we should believe, but we still need to CHOOSE to believe.
St. Thomas Aquinas likewise spoke about how we need to recognise that it is GOOD to believe. This means, among other things, that we need to recognise the goodness of the One in whom we are called to believe, namely, to recognise the goodness of God. After all, why would someone choose to believe in an EVIL god?

Now, let me pause on that thought for a moment, because when people give reasons for why they DON'T believe the most common reason people give is a reason that basically boils down to saying that if there is a god he is an evil god, namely, people point to the reality of suffering, and people say this is why they don't believe in God. So, how can WE say it makes sense to believe in God in a world of suffering? How can it be GOOD to believe, given the reality of suffering?

These are tough questions, but, they are also questions that ONLY Christianity is able to squarely face. I don't means so much that we have the doctrine of Original Sin to explain that suffering was not created by God but only entered this world with sin, and, I don't mean so much that we have the doctrine of Providence to say that even through suffering God works to bring a good about for us that is even greater than the suffering He permits for us.
Rather, what I mean, is the truth that all three of our scripture readings today make reference to in different ways: that God has entered our world of pain and suffering and become one with us in it.

Our first reading spoke of the prophecy of the Suffering Servant who took our faults upon Himself (Isa 53:11). Similarly, our Gospel text referred to how Jesus gave Himself up, in suffering, to be the ransom for our sins; how He let Himself become a servant for our sakes. And, perhaps most directly, we have the passage in our second reading about Jesus as the supreme High Priest. Our second reading is part of a series of second readings from Hebrews that began 2 Sundays ago and goes on for another 4 weeks. But, from the perspective of what I Have been talking about, namely, God's entering our world of suffering and thus showing Himself to be a kind and loving God, it is today's text that is possibly the focal point: "it is not as if we had a High Priest who was incapable of feeling our weakness with us" (Heb 4:15) - we want a God who is with us in our problems, and this is exactly what He has made Himself.

So, to return to my opening question, about the desirability of believing in Him, about how He has shown Himself to be a good God, and about how it is good to believe in Him:
Evil seems, at one level, to be the ultimate reason to not believe in a loving God.
But, in the face of the incarnation, in the light of seeing that He has entered our world of suffering and pain, in the face of seeing Him upon the Cross,
we see that He has transformed what seems to show Him unloving, and made it into the greatest sign of His love.
He has, in this, shown us that it is good to believe in Him, and to thus by faith share in a communion of love with Him in the midst of a world where suffering otherwise can leave us alone.
So, given this, and given, as in other weeks I've been touching upon, and as our series of talks on faith are articulating, given that reason shows that there are reasons to believe in Him, then, the Cross also shows that it is GOOD to do so as well.
And so we can CHOOSE to believe in Him: He is a good and loving God, and this is what He has SHOWN Himself to be.

On the Commitment of Faith, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, Shaftesbury

Wis 7:7-11
There are many opinions we have that we only partly commit to. For example, I think that bottled water is not really healthier than tap water. This is opinion I have held for many years. It is an opinion that corresponds to what I read in the newspapers. But it is, nonetheless, not an opinion I am particularly committed to. And my life would not be radically changed if I reversed that opinion.
The point I want to make to you today is that faith is NOT like that, at least not what we mean when we talk about CHRISTIAN faith. Christian faith is something that you have to commit yourself to.

I say this in part because we’re now in the Year of Faith and I want to give a few sermons on what is involved in believing. But I say this also because our first reading speaks about the importance of seeking wisdom, and of seeking it from God rather than other things. The author of the book of Wisdom speaks of it as a “priceless stone” to be valued above worldly riches
However, to value the pursuit of Divine wisdom above other riches means we have to make a serious commitment to accept God’s revelation as true, and not just as a vague nice thought. And, for many of us, we can have made a partial acceptance of the truths of the Faith, but not have done so with that true commitment that means we’ve made an act of faith. So, we might “suppose” that it is true, or “think” that it is true, but not commit ourselves. The problem, however, comes when we meet some test.

To use a comparison from C.S.Lewis: you may say you think a rope is strong if you are only using it to tie up a parcel, but if you find yourself hanging off a cliff on that same rope then you know whether or not you really think it is strong.
And my faith in God: I may say I believe Him, and believe in Him, but some trial can come my way and I suddenly realise I wasn’t that committed to Him after all.

When I was young I thought I had firm faith. I was emphatic that there was a God and happily argued the toss with many an atheist. But when a certain period of suffering came my way I found that my faith crumbled, because it wasn't really faith at all -it was just emphatic opinion.
Let me put it another way: opinion rests upon ourselves, upon our own conviction.
Faith, in contrast, rests upon God and a TRUST in Him.
For myself, in my opinionated youth I thought God was a good and loving God. But the trial of suffering tested that opinion. Could He be good and allow this suffering? It was in the weight of the test that I shifted from thinking He was good because it tidily fit into my own experience of life, and I came to instead accept that God is good and loving because He has said so, and He has proved Himself true in other things so I believe Him about this thing too.

To come back to the question of the commitment of faith, to be committed to what God has revealed to us in Christ, to say, “I believe You” to Him, that commitment involves a mental commitment to prioritise what He has told us above other things. He has said He has the true riches that last in heaven, and living towards THAT goal involves a commitment in how I live in this world. And, to return to my own example, He has said He is a loving God, and to live based on that revealed truth involves accepting suffering and trials in my own life that I cannot understand.

To say, “I believe” is to make a commitment, a commitment that brings the greatest riches, but a commitment nonetheless. To accept what God has said BECAUSE He has said, not just to accept it as supposition.