Being Catholic, St Peter and St Paul

Today’s feast of St Peter and St Paul gives us a great occasion to reflect on what it means to be Catholic, to be part of the UNIVERSAL Church, to be part of something bigger than we are.

This concept of BELONGING is very counter-cultural.
Lots of people today talk about the LOSS of a sense of COMMUNITY,
and almost every single community organisation in the UK is in numerical decline.
There is a very weird contradiction here:
people talk about community, and mourn its loss,
but few seem to recognise the things we need to DO to belong:
-for example, I need to commit, to commit to something other than myself.
The modern mindset is very individualistic:
I do my OWN thing, I think my own thoughts
-and no one else can tell me what to do.
One of the problems with this, however, is that it’s a very LONELY approach to life
-just me figuring out life on my own,
which is lonely when you’re YOUNG with your whole bewildering life ahead of you,
and lonely when you’re OLD and you’re facing whatever comes next.

In contrast, to be a Catholic is the opposite of being alone
-it’s to be a part of a group with over a billion members.
And it’s the opposite of “doing your own thing”.
-to be a Catholic is to seek to do CHRIST’s thing, not my own thing -to think HIS thoughts.

The bigger reality that we belong to as Catholics stretches in two directions: space and time.
St Paul typifies the thing of “space” because he was the great missionary. Chosen by Christ in a special vision and sent to take the truth about Jesus Christ to all the gentile nations -in his own brief time he went all around the Mediterranean basin.
He symbolises the universal “Catholic” Church in that the Church has a mission to spread to every corner of the world -we tend to think that we are universal now because we are spread on every continent, but our real sense of being universal is that BELONG everywhere, we have a MISSION, a sending by Christ, to BE in every place, to bring ALL people into the unity of His Catholic Church.

The other dimension, time, is typified by St Peter, and expresses our Catholicity in a different sense.
-the modern mindset often just lives for today,
but the Catholic mindset finds meaning in our today by seeing how it links to the past and the future.
-the future, where Christ will come again in glory and take His faithful home;
-the past, where Christ came in Galilee and revealed the truth.
The Church belongs everywhere because it proclaims a set of truths that belong everywhere.
The Church belongs everywhere because it is rooted in Christ.
St Peter, the first pope, was the first entrusted with that teaching mission.

Before I conclude, let me note that the media frequently tries to point out the sins and failings of the members of the Church. Sometimes, we can feel embarrassed to be associated with such people by belong to the same Church as them, especially when its clergy.
The Church, in every age, needs to purify herself of filth, “ecclesia semper reformanda est” (said Vatican 2).
The members of the Church are human, we are sinners, but the reality that constitutes us is something more, something Divine -and THAT, not sin, is what we belong to by being Catholic.

So today, on St Peter and St Paul, let us rejoice to belong to something bigger than ourselves,
let us rejoice to belong to the Body of Christ.

First Holy Communions -Our Daily Bread, Corpus Christi

Today is one of the most joyful of all of the days in the parish year, and for the children here making your First Holy Communion it should rank as one of the biggest days not just of this year but of your life. So I'd like, this morning, to say some words directly to the children making their First Holy Communion, and then to their parents.

So, children: today is your special day.
But it is special because it's about something other than you: it's about The Lord Jesus, and how He is going to come to you for the first time today in Holy Communion.
I want to remind you of a line from a prayer that you say all the time, a line of the Our Father:
"Give us this day our daily bread".
That prayer is about Holy Communion. What is the "daily bread"? It's Jesus, in Holy Communion -the bread that is no longer bread but has become Jesus Himself.

Jesus loves you. And He cares for you in lots of different ways, and He gives you lots of different things: the sun that shines on us, the roof over your head, the food on your tables, and so forth. And all of these things we pray for when ask, "Give us this day our daily bread".
But the oldest saints in the Church, the ones we call the 'Fathers' of the Church, they explained that this prayer refers especially to the Eucharist, to Holy Communion (and this interpretation is given in the GIRM n81)

Let me remind you what I've said about the Eucharist: that it is Jesus.
I pointed out to you that many things in life don't look like what they are.
This here, the processional cross behind me, this crucifix looks like Jesus, but it isn't Jesus.
And, I have a photo of my little nephew, and it looks like him, but it isn't him.
Well, the Eucharist is like that: it looks like one thing, but it IS something else: it looks like bread, tastes like bread, but it IS Jesus Christ: His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity -all present in Holy Communion.

So, this 'bread' is not bread, it is Jesus.
And the most important 'bread' we need is the food that satisfies not just our bodies but our souls, the heavenly food.
This is why this 'daily bread' is better called our 'bread of tomorrow' because in receiving it we receive and are strengthened by the food from heaven that will take us to heaven.
And it's because this is so important that you've been preparing for this all year and learning about this all year.

Now, parents:
You are here because you want something important for your children. You are here because you care about your children. You have brought them to be prepared during this year because you want this precious thing for your children.
Let me tell you, however, that all of that is a waste of time if it does not become a REGULAR repeated thing. Receiving Holy Communion will only be possible for your children if you are bringing them to Holy Mass each and EVERY Sunday: this is the only way they can benefit from this precious gift that they are receiving for the first time today.
I know that there are many things you want for your children, many things that compete with God and compete with Mass. But the most important gift to give your children is the food that LASTS, the food of heaven, the "bread of tomorrow" that we pray that we be permitted to receive 'today' -that Jesus has promised to give us today.

That is the great gift that those here are to receive for the first time.
So, children, be ready. Pray to Jesus. Ask Jesus to help you focus your thoughts. So that you will be ready to receive this great gift.

Medjugorje, Trinity Sunday, Year C

Rom 5:1-5
I’ve just come back from Medjugorje, where I was with some of our parishioners on pilgrimage.
It was a wonderful experience. I first went there when was 20 years old, and was first convinced of the authenticity of the visions by the abundant signs of God’s grace being out poured on people, on people CHANGING and converting their lives -it seems to me that God can choose where He pours His graces, and I don’t think He’d pour them so abundantly on the site of a forgery, so I think its genuine.
This summer Pope Francis formally approved Medjugorje as a shrine for official public pilgrimages.
As yet, however, a verdict hasn’t been passed on the visions themselves, or alleged visions -I imagine such a verdict will only be passed when the visions cease, when the event is complete, or claims to be complete. So, any words that follow are conditional on the future judgment of the church on their authenticity.

That’s said, I’d like to refer to how, according to the alleged visionaries, Our Lady speaks of unbelievers. She refers to unbelievers as “those who have not experienced the love of God”.
She speaks also of her own love for us, and says, “If you knew how much I loved you, you’d cry of joy”.
And, to EXPERIENCE this love is transforming, all-absorbing.
One of the visionaries, Mirjana, speaks of the experience of having her visions, how when she’s with Our Lady her only desire is to be with her, and even her beloved family almost “do not exist” -so all satisfying and all-absorbing is this experience of heavenly love (c.f. Mirjana Soldo, My Heart will Triumph, p.271).
If WE experienced God’s love fully, we would likewise be totally enthralled, entranced, satisfied.
“God is love”(1 Jn 4:8), so teaches the Bible, and to experience God is to experience love.

There is a particular relevance to this today, i.e. on Trinity Sunday.
The Trinity is not some irrelevant doctrine, rather, it teaches us about God, and it teaches us about ourselves.
“God is love”(1 Jn 4:8), so teaches the Bible. He is three persons in an eternity of love, loving each other, outpouring that love into each other.
The unique teaching of the Christian religion is that God isn’t just an “entity”, or force, or energy, rather, He is PERSONAL and loving
-and the doctrine of the three PERSONS of the Trinity is the heart of our understanding that God is personal, that God is loving
You and I are made in His image, you and I are (a) made to love and (b) made to experience love.
Thus, Our Lady refers to unbelievers as those who have not experienced God’s love.
And, thus our second reading, chosen for Trinity Sunday, spoke of “the love of God [being] poured into our hearts”(Rom 5:5) by our experience of the Triune God.

But HOW do we experience the love of God?
In many ways:
(1)By being loved by others -thus those how have not experienced human love can often struggle to understand that God loves them.
(2)Also, by seeing the evidence of His care and providence in the world -seeing that the world is good shows us that God is loving.
(3)More particularly, by reading of His loving work in the Bible -with this often comes the experience of recognising that we are sinners and realising what God has done in forgiving us.
But, in all these ways, and others, I think that ultimately to experience that God loves you is a GRACE, a supernatural gift, a mystical experience of some form.
-for some people, that experience comes dramatically, in precise moments,
-for some others, it’s a cumulative experience.
But, I think that for all of us, in as much as we have experienced it, we have experienced something of God HIMSELF -He who IS love.

To be a believer, a believer in Christ, a believer in the Triune God, is to “experience the love of God”.
In as much as our faith is weak, in as much as we have failed to experience that love, let us pray this day that we might ever more have “the love of God… poured into our hearts”(Rom 5:5).

Hope of Heaven, Ascension Year C

Lk 24:46-53; Eph 1:17-23
It might be asked, ‘What relevance is the Ascension?’
I’d like to offer part of the answer to this question by contrasting the ‘joy’ of the apostles with a certain despair people sometimes have today.
The Apostles left the scene of the ascension ‘full of joy’ –they’d had a glimpse of Heaven.

I can remember talking about Heaven to a woman once, and she said, most bizarrely, “I hope there is no heaven. It would be awful to think about this life going on and on and on. Life is so full of suffering that I hope it just ends at death”.
A particularly gloomy way of expressing it, but a thought that many people have in different ways.
The problem with this thought is that it thinks of Heaven as just being a continuation of Earth.

Heaven is not just a mere continuation of Earth.
All through Easter, the second reading at Sunday Mass has been taken from the book of Revelation –a book full of much complex symbolism, with talk of dragons, beasts, and battles, but a book that makes one thing clear:
The Lord who rose from the dead will also be victorious in a final vanquishing of the Devil, and he will vanquish all that the Devil has caused: sin, suffering, sadness.
“Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst… God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:16-17)
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain, for order of THIS WORLD is passing away”. (Rev 21:4).
Heaven will NOT be like the world we know now.

So, What will heaven be like?
Well, some things we don’t know. As St Paul says, ‘Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).
But, we do know some things. Beyond knowing that there is no suffering, we know that every need and hope of the human heart will be satisfied. This is a central part of what the Ascension teaches us –Christ took His body to Heaven, and our bodies will be bodily satisfied there.
We will not be angels in Heaven. As I preached recently (see here), we will not be mere spirits
As we say in the creed, we believe in ‘The Resurrection of the Body’
Every need and desire my body now has will be satisfied in Heaven, and more.

One of the mistakes that believers have made through the ages, and that the apostles made frequently before the Holy Spirit came upon them, was to think that the Kingdom of Heaven would be like a kingdom on Earth
-even in that opening passage from Acts, the apostles were asking the Risen Lord if He was going to restore an EARTHLY Kingdom to Israel.

Our Gospel passage ended with the Apostles, ‘full of joy’. Why? Because they had seen a glimpse of Heaven. They had seen the Lord glorified as He was ascended. They had begun to grasp what it was all about.
They, like us, live to follow our Lord.
He died, and we must die to sin.
He rose, and we hope to rise to a new life of grace.
He ascended, and we hope, if we are faithful, to enter the glory of Heaven with Him.
While we live on this world, we carry our Cross, as He carried His cross.
But the life of the Cross will not last forever. Suffering will end.
As St Paul said in our 2nd reading, the Lord has “promised” (Eph 1:20ish) “rich glories” to the saints.
And, “the one who made the promise is faithful” (Heb10:23 –alt 2nd reading)

If we look to Heaven, if we look to our Ascended Lord, then the joy of the apostles will also be ours, because we will have faith to share His Glory.

The Spread of the Church, 6th Sunday of Easter, Year C

Acts 15:1-2.22-29
I want, today, to say a few words about the Acts of the Apostles.

As you may well have noticed, this Eastertide and every Eastertide the first reading at Mass is taken, all through the season, from the book 'The Acts of the Apostles'.
It describes what the Apostles did after Jesus had ascended into heaven.
It describes how they SPREAD the Gospel of the Lord's Resurrection all across the known world
-Starting from Jerusalem, and ending, very symbolically, in Rome, the centre of the Roman Empire, the centre of the then known world.
They had lived with Him, seen His ministry, heard His preaching, watched Him suffer and die on the Cross.
And then, to their surprise, had seen Him after He rose from the dead.
Their encounter with the risen Lord transformed them and He sent them out to “make disciples of the nations”(Mt 28:19),
and everywhere they went they established the Church.
As we just heard, "In each of these churches they appointed elders (the Greek says, 'presbuteros', from which we get our word for 'priest'), and with prayer and fasting they commended them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe."(Acts 14:23).

The simple point I wish to draw your attention to today, however, is the SPEED with which all this happened
-the speed with which the early Church spread.
Because this is one of the SIGNS, one of the proofs, that the Church is OF GOD and not just a human institution.
Yes, she is made up of humans. But the LIFE within her, what makes her truly what she is, is the grace and power of God.
And one of the SIGNS of this is the speed with which God established her initial growth.
This speed was so remarkable that it is a PROOF that the founder of the Church is who He claimed to be, namely, proof that Jesus is God.
As the First Vatican Council taught in 1870AD, this is one of the "motives of credibility" for believing in Him: "The Church itself, by its marvellous propagation... is a vast and perpetual motive of credibility, and an irrefragable witness of its own Divine legation." (First Vatican Council, De Fide Catholica, c.iii.)

The early Church had a great many things against her.
She faced PERSECUTION by both the Jewish authorities in Palestine and the Roman imperial forces elsewhere.
She faced RIDCULE from the sophisticated Greek philosophers for following an unsophisticated Galilean preacher, and, worse still to the Greeks, preaching not only the ‘resurrection’ of this man but of ALL men (whereas Greek philosophy sought to escape the captivity of the body -as they saw it).
She taught an UNPATRIOTIC rejection of the national pagan gods.
Perhaps toughest of all, she taught a demanding MORAL & sexual code to a permissive pagan world.
And, unlike some religions, she taught peace and did not seek to spread herself by warfare.
For all these reasons, human expectation would have said she would fail.

Yet, on her first day, at Pentecost, 3000 were added to her number.
In the lifetime of the apostles she spread throughout Asia and to Rome.
By the mid-second century St Justin could observe that,
"There is no race of men, whether barbarians or Greeks, among whom prayers are not offed through the name of the crucified Christ". http://www.goodcatholicbooks.org/fathers/justin-martyr.html
And by the year 313AD in the Edict of Milan, even the emperor himself submitted to the faith.

How did this happen? Not by the work of men. But by the grace of God.
And, as we hear the Acts of the Apostles read to us through this Easter season, let us recall and give thanks for the power of God being manifested in this way.

Not an Angel, 5th Sunday of Easter, Year C

Rev 21:1-5
Today I want to say a few words about a specific point:
About the fact that when we die we do NOT become angels.

As Christians, we believe in the “the resurrection of the dead”
-as we say every week in the Creed and as we’ll say again in just a few short minutes.
In contrast, you sometimes hear people attempt to offer words of consolation when someone has died and say something like, “Don’t worry, he (or she) is an angel now”.
These words seem nice. Seem reassuring.
However, they are not true.
And, here is an important point:
these words are not as reassuring as the TRUTH, namely, that there is a resurrection of the BODY.

Angels, Scripture tells us, and our Catholic Faith has solemnly defined, are spiritual beings, purely spiritual.
They have no body.
We, however, as humans, do have a body.
Having a body is part of what we are.
We also have a spiritual soul, but what makes us DIFFERENT from the angels is that we have a body.
When we die, our body dies, though our spiritual soul lives on.
But that is not the end. We receive a new resurrected body.
If we have been good and lived with Christ, then that new body is transfigured and glorified like Christ’s resurrected body.
We don’t get our old bodies back, but new transfigured bodies.
And the degree of glory in our new body will depend on the degree of love in our soul while we have lived on earth.

Our second reading today, and all through Eastertide, is from the book of Revelation.
It describes a series of apocalyptic events that pretty much culminate in the truth we heard in the text today, that:
there will be “a new heaven and a new earth;
the first heaven and the first earth”(Rev 21:1) will disappear.
And WHO will do this? Who will work this change?
The Lord of life who Himself rose from death, the one who “sits on the throne”(Rev 21:5).
“Through Him all things were made” (Jn 1:3) in the beginning, and through Him all things will be re-made,
“Behold, I make all things new”(Rev 21:5).
This is what we celebrate all through Eastertide.

And that making of all things new includes the re-making of our bodies.
And that is something BETTER than the ANGELS have.
The Lord Jesus became a man. He has shared our nature.
He did not become an angel. He has not shared the nature of angels.
As a consequence, we enjoy a greater glory and a greater union with God than that enjoyed by the angels.
And what this means is that “the resurrection of the body” is a much greater thing than becoming an angel.

Good Shepherd Sunday, 4th Sunday Easter, Year C

Jn 10:27-30; Rev 7:9,14-17
Today, I’d like us to consider where we are going in life.
Many people seem to be going nowhere. They may be going to Tesco and back. To the TV and back. To the kitchen and back. But with no real purpose beyond this. Living for comfort, living for rest, but nothing more.
Life, if it is to be WORTH living, needs a meaning, a purpose, a DESTINATION.

At the eternal level, our destination for eternity, there is the issue of heaven and hell.
If we’re going somewhere important, getting the destination RIGHT is crucial.
More than once, I’ve plugged a destination into Google Maps and failed to get to the destination, because the map was wrong.

Today we keep ‘Good Shepherd Sunday”, and one of the things that the Lord Jesus has revealed about Himself as our Shepherd is that He KNOWS where He is going.
Jesus knows the way to heaven because He came FROM there.
Jesus knows the way to heaven because He RETURNed there.
Jesus shows us the REALITY of heaven by His resurrection from the dead.
Jesus SHOWS the way to heaven because even though He is shepherd He is also the LAMB:
Our second reading today says this directly: “the Lamb who is at the throne will be their shepherd and will lead them”(Rev 7:17).
He has come among us, He has become ONE of us, He has taken our flesh as human.
He thus “leads” us as one like us.

But what is the destination?
Scripture repeatedly speaks of the sheep being led to “living water”(Rev 7:17), “still waters”(Ps 22:2).
Scripture uses water as a symbol of life.
For us in England, water might not seem important. We have lots of rain, lots of water.
But for most of the humanity, water is precious, water is life.
There is good water, and dirty water. Water that is healthy, and water that brings sickness and destruction.
God, the source of life itself, is thus described as “LIVING water” -if you want life, you need to find Him..

Let us turn to another aspect of the shepherd, that we hear in our Gospel text: the “voice” (Jn 10:27).
God leads us, but we need to know how to recognise His voice.
This is part of why we pray for priestly vocations on this Sunday:
God speaks to us, God leads us, through His Church.
Part of what we celebrate on Good Shepherd Sunday is that He gives us His guidance in the sacraments, in the Bible, in the Catechism.
To recognise His voice is to know the way to the living water.
To recognise His voice is to know true life.

To sum this up,
For life to have meaning it needs a DESTINATION: Jesus has shown us the destination, eternal life.
For life to have security, we need to be LED there: Jesus is the shepherd who leads us.
For the destination to be CERTAIN, we need guidance along the way by one LIKE us:
Jesus is the Shepherd over us who is also the Lamb among us,
who also gives us His priests, His sacraments, His teaching.

Many people spend life going nowhere more exciting that Tesco.
There is, in contrast, another destination we can know:
God Himself, the living water,
and the Good Shepherd is both the destination and the way.