Humility

Monday 23^rd Week Ordinary Time, 13^th Sept 2021, Josephinum

Lk 7:1-10

I want to focus on the words of the centurion, 

words that holy Mother Church puts on our lips at every Mass:

• “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof”

I’d like to walk you through 3 phases of faith and humility, and for you to ask yourself where you fit in these phases, and maybe, where you have fit in your own past.

First phase:

For those of us raised after the cultural revolution of the 1960s,

Humility often does not come naturally to us:

• We were raised on self-affirmation
• We received little discipline 
• We were told we were good.

To my generation, 

we would tend to think:

• “Lord, actually I AM worthy, 
• and I just don’t need you to enter under my roof”

A second phase:

When I went to college I found the Lord,

• I came to know Him “personally”, as we say.
• But, if I’m honest, I still thought of myself as “worthy”.

And while I wouldn’t have phrased it exactly like this, I think it would be true to say that my attitude was:

• “Lord, I AM worthy, 
• But you bring added value to my life, added meaning
• So,
• For MY own sake, please do come and enter in”
• That is NOT the faith of the centurion
• That’s a “faith” that is a problem

Still today, I know this is a problem in my spiritual life:

• My self-affirmation
• My lack of being criticised as a child,
• My upbringing has been such that I struggle to say,
• “I am not worthy”

Yet, 

• I know my eternal salvation depends on having the ‘unworthiness’ of the centurion

We need to be in a third phase, one that has a humility born of faith.

Let’s connect those 2 things: faith and humility

• The words of the centurion expressed humility, :I am not worthy’
• But the Lord praised him for his “faith” –‘not even in Israel have I found such faith”

True faith recognises the Lord for WHO He is:

• He is God
• He is much greater than me
• He is pure; He is goodness,
• “me?  ‘’I am not worthy’
• Real faith SEES this
• Real humility ACCEPTS this

Where are you in those three phases of humility and faith?

• If you are one of the post-1960s generations who struggle to be humble, then pray
• Pray for what is MOST important:
• Not healing the body
• But healing what is wrong in your soul:
• but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed”

“Power came forth from Him [that] healed them all.”

Tuesday 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Josephinum seminary

“Power came forth from Him [that] healed them all.” (Lk 6:19)

To return to one of my favourite questions:

What was it like to be in His presence?

And, as I often reflect, the reaction of the people shows us so much:

They sought Him out.

They came from vast distances:

The phrase, “the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon” 

means the Mediterranean -not the nearby lake of Galilee

means they came from gentile as well as Jewish towns

-as St Bede and St Cyril note, in St Thomas’s Catena Aurea (p.206)

They came  

“to hear”

“to be healed”

To have “unclean spirits” cast out

“Power came forth from Him [that] healed them all.” (Lk 6:19)

(pause)

As priests, power goes forth from us too.

As priests, it is a power 

to teach, 

that they might again “hear”, in a world of confusion

to comfort and console the distressed, 

that they might again “be healed” in a world of brokenness

The people long ago sought to “touch” the Lord

In many ways, they seek to touch us too

NOT

not because of something that is ours per se, 

but because of something we ourselves have touched and continually touch: 

The Lord 

 

St Ambrose points out a symbolism to be found in this passage (in St Thomas’s Catena Aurea (p.207)):

Jesus ascends the “mountain”, to the heavenly,

before DESCENDING to the “plain”, to the crowd, the earthly

Thus, might well say that, 

The mountain and the plain both meet in Him

Heaven and earth meet in Him

God and man meet in Him

And, if we want that “power” to touch others, this is what we must first touch ourselves.

(pause)

Here in seminary, there are many things we seek to do in you and to you

We seek to teach you

We seek to form and remedy human issues in you

But these, and many other things, PALE in comparison to the importance of leading you to a deeper encounter with the Lord.

The “power” that people will seek in you

The “power” that can “go forth” from you

-this power is not YOURS but HIS

So, we must first seek to come and touch Him ourselves.

Sermon: Fixed on Him

Monday Wk 22, Josephinum,  Lk 4:16-30 

 

I preached on this gospel last year, and as fate or the liturgist, has directed, 

I’m preaching on it again this year. 

It’s one of my favourite lines in the Bible, because it reminds me of two things: 

First, how people REACTED to the Lord 

 -the awesome power of His personality 

 -I love pondering on how people responded to Him, 

because it teaches me about HIM. 

Second, this phrase sums up how I know I need to still react to His awesomeness today: 

I need to be FIXED on Him. 

Let’s ponder for a moment, the different ways people REACTED to the Lord? 

We might think of: 

The guards who were sent to arrest the Lord, but returned to their superiors empty- 

handed simply saying, 

“No one has every spoken like this man”. 

The crowds, who said of Him, 

“He has done all things well”. 

His preaching manner summed up by the evangelist, saying, 

“He spoke with authority, and not like the scribes and the pharisees.” 

No wonder we get the line in today’s text: 

“All eyes on the synagogue looked intently at Him”. 

(Pause)  

Yet, that awesome power of His person also had others reject Him: 

In this passage, it starts with fascination but ends with them trying to throw Him from the cliff. 

 

What of me and you? 

There is another reaction to Him that I fear: 

Indifference, somehow letting Him pass by. 

Knowing that there is BACON at the PCJ breakfast, in less than an hour, and my mind not being with Him. 

 I want, in contrast, to be “fastened” onto Him in everything I do during the day: 

When I study, 

to study for love of Him, remembering Him, 

because it’s what HE wants of me, 

Even if you’re looking at Greek 

When I chat with guys, 

to do so with a heart that loves them BECAUSE He loves Him, 

Because He loves even better than I do. 

When I eat bacon, 

to rejoice in His presence, 

Because bacon is one of the signs that God is good. 

(Pause) 

But if I’m going to “fixed” on Him in bacon, I need to be fixed on Him where He is MOST particularly:

 The Tabernacle.

As I said last year: 

When I genuflect, especially, I need to know that I am greeting and honouring a PERSON 

I need to utter a little prayer of love HE is here! 

In contrast, a genuflection can LOOK like an empty action; can BE an empty action 

-rather than a pivot around which my daily awareness of His presence moves. 

An action: 

With eyes fixed on Him 

With a heart fixed on Him 

With prayer directed to Him 

With a body posture, a straight back, worthy of an act reverencing Him who the crowds gazed stupefied before.

“The eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at Him”. 

St Joseph the Worker

Wed 25^th Aug 2021, Josephinum

Today we’re keeping a votive Mass of St Joseph.

• Formators want us to focus our house Josephinum devotion 
• Wednesdays and the 19^th of the months are days traditionally given to St Joseph
• I have special prayer I always say on those days 

What to say about St Joseph?

• It might be thought that we don’t know much about St Joseph, 
• but
• what we do know gives us much to reflect in and much to learn from

How start?  Votive Mass of St Joseph the WORKER

• Start of lectures and schoolwork today, thus the WORKER
• What to say?
• What to LEARN?
• Not only an example, also a powerful patron and protector
• But, today, focus on example

3 points

(1) He slept

• What do the Gospels record St Joseph doing?
• More than ANYTHING, they record him sleeping
• 4 times the Gospels record an angel speaking to him while dreaming, while SLEEPING
• So, he slept
• WHY did he sleep so much?
• He worked HARD
• You can’t work unless you sleep
• Do you want to work well?  
• Then sleep well -go to joseph
• Do you struggle to sleep?  Go to Joseph
• Sleep:
• You can’t be a good priest or seminarian UNLESS you have a regular pattern of sleep
• How many hours do you take?  Enough?
• Do you go to bed on time?
• Do you get the physical exercise you need to sleep well?
• St Joseph slept

(2) Silent Doer

• St Jospeh is often called a 'silent' man
• There is not a single recorded word spoken by St Joseph
• He went to Bethlehem
• He went to Egypt 
• He returned 
• and went to Nazareth 
• he went to the temple in Jerusalem
• -not a single recorded word
• A DOER not a chatterer
• A MAN
• Scientifically, we know women speak many more words in a day than men
• Women talk and communicate
• Men DO
• St Joseph: a man’s man
• Be a DOER
• Get stuff DONE
• Don’t chat about what you plan to do, DO IT
• Nike: Just do it

(3) Union with God

• WHAT did St Joseph do? 
• The things God told him (via the angel), 
• in fact, ONLY things God told him
• “He did all that the angel told him to…” (Mt 1:24)
• Our Lady at Cana, “do whatever He tells you”.  
• St Joseph, probably deceased already, but he’d been living this in everything we see recorded of him
• What should WE do?  
• What God wants, 
• looking to what He wants, etc

• Lord, what do you want ME to do now?  
• Lord, would like me to procrastinate a little longer right now?
• Lord, would you like me to do this easy thing rather than this important thing?
• Tidy my sock drawer rather than write that paper? 
• Be like St Joseph:
• Always seek to God’s Will
• Be a DOER
• But a DOER of what GOD wants of us,

(4) Many other things -other sermons to be given...

Summary:

• We’re in his seminary, the 'Josephinum' 
• We’re starting our school work of classes
• Let’s look to him as a model of work:
• Sleep, 
• as he slept, 
• 4 times recoded in the Gospels
• Do 
• -without needing to talk 
• get it done, don’t get it talked about
• Do it in union with God 
• look to God to do the right work, 
• as he “did the angel told him to do”

Farewell Camp Gray: Coming Down the Mountain

Friday Week 12 Ordinary Time

Mt 8:1-4 

Those of you who have seen the ‘Paradox’ YouTube about Camp Gray, may remember its image of the mountain: 

Camp Gray is a mountain where people can come and ‘go up to the Lord. 

But, just as Peter, James, and John had to come down from the mountain, 

We all have to one day come down from the mountain, 

because there is work for us to do in the valley. 

Staffers have to leave, 

Priests have to leave, 

And, today, I have to leave. 

 In our Gospel text had the Lord Jesus come down from the mountain. 

My time with you has begun and ended with the lectionary gospel texts being with Him teaching from the mountaintop. 

It seems very ‘Camp Gray’ to leave with Him coming down the mountain. 

What does He DO when he comes down the mountain? 

Immediately, He is back to His ‘normal’ work of healing the sick. 

The leper is hesitant in asking, saying, “If you want to…” 

But He immediately returns to His work: 

“of course, I want to, be healed” 

 It is a continual pattern of our Christian living that 

 we go FROM the Lord 

 TO be WITH the Lord. 

We go:

From the Tabernacle in the Chapel 

To serving Him in the person of His little ones, 

 at table in the dining room;

From receiving Him in Holy Communion 

To serving Him in the person of His little ones, 

 adjusting the straps on their bike helmets. 

Always with the Lord.

This must be our vision: “Always with the Lord”. 

Not too many weeks from now, you too will have to leave the mountain. 

Let, “Always with the Lord” be your vision. 

Now: 

In the tabernacle 

In Confession 

In Mass 

In service of His little ones. 

Then: 

In your daily duties: 

Study, 

Love of family 

Love of friends 

Regularity in prayer. 

Always the Lord: 

On the mountain, 

in the valley. 

We don’t get to stay always on the mountain, but we do get to ALWAYS be with Him.

___

Camp Gray have two posts about me on their Instagram: 

A skit on my accent, here;

A little intro post, here, featuring a photo of me before competing in one of the games.

Sermon: Hope, 2nd Sunday of Lent, Year B

Mk 9:2-10

Today I’m going to speak to you about hope. 

Today, the second Sunday of Lent, is one of my favourite Sundays of the year. 

 I feel that in many ways it sums up the whole Christian life 

 -at least in this world. 

We pass through this world, as a vale of tears, Just as we are currently passing through Lent. 

We are given reasons to hope, as we live in their world, Just as the transfiguration is always given to us as a vision of hope this second Sunday of Lent. 

So, hope. 

 First, let’s note hope is something absent from our culture today,

 and absent from your generation. 

My parents’ generation, the people of the 1960s, they had hope. 

Admittedly, not real hope: it was Hippy-hope 

They sang of a better world to come. 

Their science fiction habitually pictured a happier future. 

The problem, is that world was poorly grounded: 

Hedonism, selfishness, rejection of discipline -this hasn’t built a better world. 

Today, science fiction is dystopian. We picture the future, and we picture something we fear will be awful. 

So, what we need is hope. 

2 questions: hope in WHAT? And hope with what BASIS? 

 The transfiguration, 

and the promise of the resurrection, 

and the awareness that this passes through the Cross, 

All this synthesises the Christian message of hope. 

But we can unpack it in more detail. 

 Two pivotal points: 

 (1) The REASON, the BASIS, for our hope? 

God is ACTIVE in our world. 

 The transfiguration was manifested at a pivotal moment: 

He had just predicted His death (Mk 8:31) 

He had just said that to be His follower you must “take up [your] cross”(Mk 8:34) 

AND He manifested His glory in precisely THAT context: 

The transfiguration is thus a testimony that God is ACTIVE through the suffering on the Cross; 

God is active through our sharing in it. 

And if He is active THERE on the Cross, If He is active in the greatest evil in human history -namely, God being killed, Then He is active through EVERYTHING. 

 This, surely, is half of the whole message of the Scriptures: 

It is a record of the deeds of God, 

It is record of how, again and again when we might mistakenly FEAR that He’s absent, Actually, He’s there, He’s doing stuff: 

Slavery in Egypt? The Exodus 

Exile in Babylon? Purifying His people and preparing to lead them home 

Both in the big picture, and in the small picture: He’s active, even amidst our suffering. 

The promise, the example, the testimony that this is so: 

This is the REASON to have hope. And the Transfiguration was given as pivotal promise and sign of this. 

 He’s active, but… 

(2) What is God active DOING? 

Remaking man. 

The transfiguration shows a vision of man remade. 

Looking glorious 

Looking “whiter than any earthly bleacher can make him” (Mk 9:3) 

Making him anew. 

 This goal, however, isn’t just about heaven. 

We are being remade upon earth. 

Man is CAPABLE of being remade, even now on earth -this is the message and promise of the Gospel. 

In Lent: 

 Our penances, our prayers, our almsgiving, are remaking us on earth, even now. 

The New Adam:

 Who was shown forth as Christ on the mountaintop,

 He is being remade, now, through our Lenten works. 

Back to our modern dystopian fears. 

We have hope, even in this world, 

 Because we have the promise of how man can be remade: 

Through the transforming power of His grace, 

Through sharing in the mystery of the Cross, 

To become new men, new men in Him. 

This gives us reason to have hope. 

There is something great in man, 

Something even more significant than the sin and suffering and concupiscence that weighs us down. 

This greatness was shown forth at the transfiguration, 

And it makes us look at fallen man with new eyes, eyes of hope.

To drawn that to a focus and conclusion: 

What does such hope do to my Lent? 

In Lent, possibly already in this second Sunday, 

It can be hard: 

The discipline, the hard work, the struggle of our penance 

The transfiguration gives us a vision to keep us going.

This failed flesh that I carry as my body, it CAN be transfigured like His.

It can be Pelagian: 

The heresy of doing it all by my own effort 

very English, also, very American.

The Transfiguration calls us to a change IN HIM 

As I struggle, I must look to HIM 

As I resolve, I must look to HIM 

Those 2 things again: 

(1) God is ACTIVE in this world, 

 as He was active through the Cross and leading to that glorification 

(2) God has a goal: 

 remaking man, remaking YOU.

Lent is long: 40 days is long.

Lent is hard.

  It’s a kind of sacrament of this whole ‘vale of tears’ 

It’s a sign 

But causing something: the bringing of a reality beyond: 

A share in the glorified Christ 

Manifested at the Transfiguration 

Achieved at the Resurrection 

Can be ours through our participation in Lent

Sermon: For this purpose I have come, 5th Sunday Ordinary Time, Year B

Mk 1:29-39; 1 Cor 9:16-19,22-23

What was it like to meet the Lord?

It was to meet someone who utterly knew what He was about, His purpose, His mission

In reading today’s Gospel text, I was struck by this:

The crowds at Capernaum were demanding,

Peter and the apostles demanding…

But HE,

He knew he had somewhere else to be

He knew he had another group who needed Him

“… for this purpose I have come”

 

To meet the Lord was to meet someone who utterly knew what He was about, His purpose, His mission

He spoke to you, knowing what He was about

He came to you, knowing what His mission TO YOU implied

He preached

He healed

He cast out demons

-doing these, and all things, knowing what He was about

 

The Lord comes to us, too, today 

And He still knows what He is about

He knows what YOU need from Him

The teaching YOU need, 

what you need to hear TODAY

The sickness of soul YOU need to be cured of, 

right now

The demons YOU need have cast out: 

the oppression, the weight, the sin, 

that you need release from TODAY

The crowds, as we heard, flocked to Him

What is OUR eagerness in coming to Him?

 

(Pause)

The Lord knew what He was about,

 He knew the purpose for which He had come.

St Paul, too, knew what He was about.

There are many things we recognise when we meet someone who knows what they are about,

But, I’d suggest to you, one of the most striking, 

is when we meet someone who is clearly “about” OTHER people.

Someone whose busyness isn’t with their OWN agenda, 

but with what they see OTHER people need 

-maybe not what other people WANT, 

but what they need.

St Paul, in a phrase that I sometimes find terrifyingly exhausting as a pastoral model, 

said in today’s epistle:  

“I have become ALL things for ALL people, 

that I might save some of them”.

To live our lives focussed on others,

To live our lives so focussed on others that we can talk:

liturgy with the trads, 

biceps curls with the jocks, 

and Star Trek stuff with the nerds 

Continually shifting, 

continually becoming all things for all people, 

because that’s just a part of what love is about.

 

(Pause)

It’s often said that if you have the honour to meet certain ‘great’ people, 

they radiant the sense that 

when they’re talking to you, they are utterly interested in YOU.

I’ve often read such comments from people who met John Paul II and Mother Teresa.

It must have been so, 

to a superlative degree,

to be with the Lord.

And,

This is the terrifyingly exhausting bit: 

if we would be His priests, 

then we must strive to make it so with us too.

To day by day, 

hour by hour, 

minute by minute, 

be continually shifting to be “all things to all people”.

 

Where do we get the power to be such a person?

Prayer.

“Rising very early before dawn, He left and went off to a deserted place, where He prayed.” (Mk 1:35)

If I would be like Him:

To about a man of purpose

To be about others

To be about love

Then

I must come to Him, 

meet Him, 

be with Him.

Peter went off looking for Him, 

and finding Him said, “Everyone is looking for you”.

Let us also look for Him, 

That we might become, like Him, 

men of purpose, 

men for others.