Away at True Survivor: No Sermon this Weekend

I'm away being chaplain at True Survivor www.truesurvivor.uk

This photo is from when I joined True Survivor in 2016. As of 2017, I'm now chaplain to True Survivor, Bishop Mark O'Toole is our patron, and Will Hince will soon be doing this full time as part of a registered charity.

Away in the Holy Land: No Sermon this Weekend

Fr Dylan is on a parish pilgrimage in the Holy Land this weekend

Enjoying Beer with Jesus, 5th Sunday of Easter, Year A

1 Pet 2:4-9
I want to talk to you today about 3 things: Drinking beer, enjoying chocolate, & doing these with Jesus.
I want to talk about this for 2 reasons:
First, on Easter Sunday someone came up to me puzzled. He said: “A few weeks ago you were telling us to ‘give up’ things, and that you were not eating chocolate, and that there won’t be chocolate in heaven. But now, you’re saying we should be having 50 days of feasting. I don’t understand! Which is it?”
Second, our second reading, from St Peter, said we should “offer” our very selves as “spiritual sacrifices” to Jesus. Now, many of us somehow think we can “offer it up” when we are suffering, but don’t understand how to “offer up” our rejoicing and our feasting.

Here’s the thing: There is a notion of God that somehow thinks that God is only happy when you are miserable, that a “good” Christian is someone who is miserable and sad.
This, I want to say very clearly, is a heresy, and very damaging one.
In England, it has its roots in the Protestant Reformation and Puritanism. Those of you who know your history will remember that Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas in England. Puritanism has a very confused notion of pleasure and enjoying yourself, whereas the Catholic view says this:
Nature comes from God’s hands, He made it.
It is to be enjoyed, WITH Him;
But, it is to be enjoyed in the MANNER that He has established:
Beer and chocolate, but in moderation, not in gluttony;
For His first miracle the Lord Jesus turned water into wine, He didn’t turn it into fruit juice.
The problem for us in England, even those of us who are Catholic, is that we’ve been infected with the remnants of this Puritanism: So when we enjoy things, we somehow exclude God from them.
The old TV advert, “Naughty, but nice”, was a modern incarnation of this Puritanism -if something is “nice” is must somehow be forbidden, be “naughty”.
And, the Irish among us can have a different problem: the French Jansenist heresy infected much of Ireland with a similar mind-set: pleasure is bad.

What then is the authentic Catholic position?
When we look to our roots we see that Catholics believe in times of feasting as well as times of fasting.
Both of these are done by unbelievers too: they feast, they diet.
BUT these two things, when done WITH JESUS are done very differently. And this is a CRUCIAL thing to grasp is we are not only to have God through ALL our life, but also if we are to TRULY enjoy things properly.

So, having God in my WHOLE life. How does that work?
First, When I enjoy my chocolate, when I enjoy my beer:
I think of God:
I thank God for them;
I choose to use them in the manner in which God has established, following His moral laws;
I don’t feel any guilt about them -they are from God.
This means I come to God both in good things and in bad.
To emphasise what I just said, it means that I have to use these pleasures in the MANNER that God has commanded:
Moderation, not gluttony: not too much chocolate, not too much beer.
Otherwise I spoil a good thing, and guilt then does become appropriate.
And, even more tragically, the sinner is a slave to his sin, the glutton is slave to his pleasure.
Alcohol owns the drunkard; it is the MODERATE man who is FREE to truly enjoy it. The addict, the glutton, the sinner -none of these enjoy life and enjoy the pleasures of life the way the virtuous Christian can
And the pleasures of the bedroom, these can be with God, or He can be excluded -to our detriment.

In summary: offer your very lives to God, as a spiritual sacrifice (1 Pet 2:4-9)
Offer your 40 days of fasting in Lent;
Offer your 50 days of feasting now in Eastertide -be at union with Him in all things
And give back to Him the life He has given to you.

Vocations Letter & New Evangelisation Message from Bishop

For Vocations Sunday, Bishop Mark O'Toole has issued a pastoral letter which you can read here



It refers to his new pastoral message 'Go make Disciples' which you can read here