Deut 19:2-6; Mt 9:36-10:8; Rom 5:6-11
I want to say a few words about what God is like, which is a bold thing to be claiming to know: There are many people today who think that you cannot know what God is like. But Scriptures tell us, and the miracles prove it, in particular, His rising from the dead proves it. But WHAT does it prove? What does it show?
Well, to know what God is like, to know His heart, we can look to passages in the Old Testament, like the one we just heard from Deuteronomy. It tell us how God cared for His chosen People, “I carried you on eagles wings and brought you to myself” –he didn’t just care for them distantly but brought them to Himself.
In the Gospel, when God finally became a man, He revealed Himself fully. He took on a human body, a human heart, with real human emotions, and those emotions pulsed with the heart of God Himself –revealing what God is like. So when we see the emotions of Jesus revealed in the Gospel texts, we see the heart of God. What did it reveal in today’s Gospel text? Compassion: “When Jesus saw the crowds he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected”.
And what really PROVES what the Heart of God is like is indicated in our letter to the Romans: “what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners”.
But the sad truth is that although God has revealed Himself, the world has taken little notice. Even we in here in Church take little enough notice.
What more can God do? Well, one thing He has done is to repeat that revelation in countless private apparitions and visions. This month of June is the month of the Sacred Heart, when we recall in particular that devotion to the Sacred Heart that comes to us largely via visions to St Margaret Mary in 17th Century France.
Those visions of the Sacred Heart contained a message:
That He is today what He revealed before;
That He loves, and yet is ignored;
That He weeps, and is not consoled;
That He has a Heart, and we behave as if He did not.
Those visions ask of us:
That we repent and turn to Him, rather than continue to offend His love;
That we make Reparation to His Heart for the offences against it
That we make little sacrifices of love to Him
Sacrifices for our own sins, and for the sins of others.
God didn’t need to take on a human heart, He didn’t need to feel human emotions
He didn’t need to make Himself vulnerable
But He has done so because it somehow reveals who He is,
because it might awaken a response from us.
And He promises that if we turn to His Heart, devote ourselves to His Heart,
He will give us many blessings, as listed in the newsletter.
So, to return to where I began; What is God like? He has told us. Thus he is known, but not exhausted. His ways are not our ways, and He is more than our small minds can grasp. We only know Him by analogy and symbol, BUT, nonetheless, we do TRULY know Him because He has revealed Himself to us.
And the symbol more than any other that shows Him is His Heart.
A Heart that yearns to be known, yearns to be loved, and yearns to be loved by US.
Sunday, 15 June 2008
Sunday, 8 June 2008
10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, Shaftesbury
Rom 4:18-25; Mt 9:9-13
Last week there was the “Britain’s Got Talent” competition on TV, watched by some 4 millions viewers. It featured various amateur performers, from little children to adults, musicians to singers, each giving an act and then allowing the viewing public to vote by telephone, the final round. I don’t normally watch that kind of TV –life’s too short to waste it watching that stuff on a regular basis, but I happened to switch it on just as the final roundup and votes was occurring, and it was captivating to watch. Captivating, I found, because of the sense of excitement and hope, each group of performers hoping they would win.
Each one ‘hoped’, but only one could win -‘hope’ can seem a tragic thing sometimes.
And it’s hope that I want to say a few words about.
I want to talk about REAL hope –because hope is one of those things people say odd vague things about. “You’ve just gotta have hope”, or, “All you’ve got left is hope”.
But hope in what? And WHY have hope?
Abraham, we heard in our Second Reading from the letter to the Romans, Abraham had hope, even “though it seemed Abraham’s hope could not be fulfilled”(Rom 4:18).
And I can hope that I might win Britain’s Got Talent, even though “it seemed Fr. Dylan’s hope could not be fulfilled”. But what REASON would there be to hold such hope?
Abraham had hope because he believed the promise made him by the Lord would be fulfilled, and there is no more solid reason to have hope.
What better reason COULD there be to hope something would happen than having God promise you it will? There IS no stronger reason.
God has made promises to each one of us, promises that come to us via the Scriptures,
and I want to focus on just one of those promises:
the promise to enable us to do what he asks of us.
Abraham’s promise related to what God asked of him. God had called him to follow him, to leave his land and become the father of a mighty nation, even though he was old and seemed past it. But God is mightier than our weaknesses and limitations, and He was mightier that Abraham’s. Abraham hoped and believed the promise of the Lord, and he became the mighty father of the Chosen Jewish people, and through Christ -the Jewish Messiah- he has become the father of every Christian, over a billion and a half of us just today. Abraham believed even through the hard times, even when the going got tough.
We too have been called by the Lord. That call we heard in the gospel, “Follow me”(Mt 9:9), is a call He made and continues to make to each of us. And with that call goes the promise to enable us to follow that call –“my grace is sufficient for thee” (2Cor 12:9) -what we call the “graces of state”, the graces we need to do what God calls us to do. And Abraham stands as an example of that.
God promised. Abraham believed, and thus hoped.
And his hope was fulfilled. He was given the strength he needed to do what must be done.
So, back to talent competitions:
Jesus has not promised that everyone will win Britain’s Got Talent;
He has not promised us success in every endeavour we embark on.
But he has promised that His grace will be with us, that His grace will be enough for us,
and that gives us the reason for REAL hope
–hope that we can succeed in what God has called us to do: “Follow me”.
Last week there was the “Britain’s Got Talent” competition on TV, watched by some 4 millions viewers. It featured various amateur performers, from little children to adults, musicians to singers, each giving an act and then allowing the viewing public to vote by telephone, the final round. I don’t normally watch that kind of TV –life’s too short to waste it watching that stuff on a regular basis, but I happened to switch it on just as the final roundup and votes was occurring, and it was captivating to watch. Captivating, I found, because of the sense of excitement and hope, each group of performers hoping they would win.
Each one ‘hoped’, but only one could win -‘hope’ can seem a tragic thing sometimes.
And it’s hope that I want to say a few words about.
I want to talk about REAL hope –because hope is one of those things people say odd vague things about. “You’ve just gotta have hope”, or, “All you’ve got left is hope”.
But hope in what? And WHY have hope?
Abraham, we heard in our Second Reading from the letter to the Romans, Abraham had hope, even “though it seemed Abraham’s hope could not be fulfilled”(Rom 4:18).
And I can hope that I might win Britain’s Got Talent, even though “it seemed Fr. Dylan’s hope could not be fulfilled”. But what REASON would there be to hold such hope?
Abraham had hope because he believed the promise made him by the Lord would be fulfilled, and there is no more solid reason to have hope.
What better reason COULD there be to hope something would happen than having God promise you it will? There IS no stronger reason.
God has made promises to each one of us, promises that come to us via the Scriptures,
and I want to focus on just one of those promises:
the promise to enable us to do what he asks of us.
Abraham’s promise related to what God asked of him. God had called him to follow him, to leave his land and become the father of a mighty nation, even though he was old and seemed past it. But God is mightier than our weaknesses and limitations, and He was mightier that Abraham’s. Abraham hoped and believed the promise of the Lord, and he became the mighty father of the Chosen Jewish people, and through Christ -the Jewish Messiah- he has become the father of every Christian, over a billion and a half of us just today. Abraham believed even through the hard times, even when the going got tough.
We too have been called by the Lord. That call we heard in the gospel, “Follow me”(Mt 9:9), is a call He made and continues to make to each of us. And with that call goes the promise to enable us to follow that call –“my grace is sufficient for thee” (2Cor 12:9) -what we call the “graces of state”, the graces we need to do what God calls us to do. And Abraham stands as an example of that.
God promised. Abraham believed, and thus hoped.
And his hope was fulfilled. He was given the strength he needed to do what must be done.
So, back to talent competitions:
Jesus has not promised that everyone will win Britain’s Got Talent;
He has not promised us success in every endeavour we embark on.
But he has promised that His grace will be with us, that His grace will be enough for us,
and that gives us the reason for REAL hope
–hope that we can succeed in what God has called us to do: “Follow me”.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
9th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, Shaftesbury
You may have heard on the news, over the last few weeks, of the tornados in Midwest America –we’ve been praying for the victims these last couple weeks.
Well, this week I got a message from my family in Iowa (because my Mom is American) to say that Iowa’s biggest tornado in 32 years hit the town where some of our family live: Parkersburg, and wiped out a third of the town. I’ve since seen the photos on the internet, and it’s pretty grim: a place I’ve known as a child and adult with only remnants of buildings.
Dramatic storms like this are fortunately rare for most of us, but the small daily storms that assail us also test what our houses are built of. And what remains depends on whether our houses are well-built.
If the house of my life is built on small petty selfish worrying and fussing, then it will be continually buffeted by the storms of life that disrupt my comfort.
In today’s Gospel, we are not promised that life will be without storms, but we are told of how to build a life that will weather them.
Our Gospel, and our first reading, give a very clear but simple message of what constitutes a life well-built, a life that is a house built on rock, able to withstand storms, a life that will be what remains regardless of the tempests and buffets that come upon us.
Jesus says that the “house built on rock” is the life of the man “who listens to these words of mine and acts on them”.
While Deuteronomy records the Almighty’s words of warning that there is “a blessing or a curse” on the man who either does or does not “Let these words of mine remain in your heart”.
So, in both texts, the life well-built, the life with blessing, is the life that OBEYS the words of God. Now, for our Modern mentality, that is a problem, because we don’t really like talk of “obeying”. We prefer talk of “choosing”, of “options”, of “freedom”. So, why does Jesus insist on ‘obedience’?
To know why we must OBEY the Lord, we need to know WHO the Lord is.
The god revealed in the Scriptures is not a whimsical god who randomly dictates things.
Rather, He is a God who is eternal Wisdom, always acting for a purpose, always commanding for a REASON. Further, He is eternal Love, always acting for the benefit of His human creatures, always commanding what will lead for our fulfilment, even when that fulfilment only comes via the Cross, via difficulty, via the storm and tempest.
This revelation of God is what makes sense of the blessing-curse option:
To disobey a wise loving God is its own foolishness, its own curse, its own death, even if that death only comes slowly, even if it is only fully revealed on the Last Day.
But, to obey a wise loving God is its own blessing, its own life, a life that starts every time we repent and choose, again, to follow the Lord, to obey the Lord. Not just to obey Him in what is convenient and self-serving, but obey Him in what seems hard and self-sacrificing. To choose such a life, is to ‘enter into the Land’ of promise, a Land we experience only fleetingly in this world, a Land we only know with a mixture of storms and buffets, but it IS a life we can know –even now. And it is this life that endures even amidst the storms.
For my extended family in Iowa, not all their buildings remained, but judging from what they’ve said of their response, what has survived is their cherishing the family itself, rallying together, sharing what remains of their homes. My family are not all saints, but I’m sure that obedience to God’s word taught them to value the family, the family they’re now holding to. Obedience to God’s word has given them other things too that have survived the storm, and that can hold for all of us.
“Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall: it was founded on rock.”
Well, this week I got a message from my family in Iowa (because my Mom is American) to say that Iowa’s biggest tornado in 32 years hit the town where some of our family live: Parkersburg, and wiped out a third of the town. I’ve since seen the photos on the internet, and it’s pretty grim: a place I’ve known as a child and adult with only remnants of buildings.
Dramatic storms like this are fortunately rare for most of us, but the small daily storms that assail us also test what our houses are built of. And what remains depends on whether our houses are well-built.
If the house of my life is built on small petty selfish worrying and fussing, then it will be continually buffeted by the storms of life that disrupt my comfort.
In today’s Gospel, we are not promised that life will be without storms, but we are told of how to build a life that will weather them.
Our Gospel, and our first reading, give a very clear but simple message of what constitutes a life well-built, a life that is a house built on rock, able to withstand storms, a life that will be what remains regardless of the tempests and buffets that come upon us.
Jesus says that the “house built on rock” is the life of the man “who listens to these words of mine and acts on them”.
While Deuteronomy records the Almighty’s words of warning that there is “a blessing or a curse” on the man who either does or does not “Let these words of mine remain in your heart”.
So, in both texts, the life well-built, the life with blessing, is the life that OBEYS the words of God. Now, for our Modern mentality, that is a problem, because we don’t really like talk of “obeying”. We prefer talk of “choosing”, of “options”, of “freedom”. So, why does Jesus insist on ‘obedience’?
To know why we must OBEY the Lord, we need to know WHO the Lord is.
The god revealed in the Scriptures is not a whimsical god who randomly dictates things.
Rather, He is a God who is eternal Wisdom, always acting for a purpose, always commanding for a REASON. Further, He is eternal Love, always acting for the benefit of His human creatures, always commanding what will lead for our fulfilment, even when that fulfilment only comes via the Cross, via difficulty, via the storm and tempest.
This revelation of God is what makes sense of the blessing-curse option:
To disobey a wise loving God is its own foolishness, its own curse, its own death, even if that death only comes slowly, even if it is only fully revealed on the Last Day.
But, to obey a wise loving God is its own blessing, its own life, a life that starts every time we repent and choose, again, to follow the Lord, to obey the Lord. Not just to obey Him in what is convenient and self-serving, but obey Him in what seems hard and self-sacrificing. To choose such a life, is to ‘enter into the Land’ of promise, a Land we experience only fleetingly in this world, a Land we only know with a mixture of storms and buffets, but it IS a life we can know –even now. And it is this life that endures even amidst the storms.
For my extended family in Iowa, not all their buildings remained, but judging from what they’ve said of their response, what has survived is their cherishing the family itself, rallying together, sharing what remains of their homes. My family are not all saints, but I’m sure that obedience to God’s word taught them to value the family, the family they’re now holding to. Obedience to God’s word has given them other things too that have survived the storm, and that can hold for all of us.
“Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall: it was founded on rock.”
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Trinity Sunday, Shaftesbury
I was to say a few words about two things: the Trinity, and the movies Star Wars.
I was very very young when the first Star Wars movie came out, and it made a big impression on me, as it did on many of my generation. My Mom sewed me a Star Wars pyjama case, and my Dad bought me a plastic light saber. I used to dream of training in a Jedi academy, becoming a Jedi knight, and summoning the power of the all-pervading life energy of the universe called "The Force".
Instead, when I grew up, I went to seminary to train to become a priest.
Trendy "New Age" philosophy might try to equate the two: priesthood-JediKnight, battling the dark side of the Force-preaching repentance from sin, and Star Wars is full of such dodgy thinking.
And that brings me on to the Trinity.
Because the basic point I want to make to you is that today’s feast of the Most Holy Trinity is not just about some abstract doctrine, but it actually teaches us what God Himself is like, and he’s very very different to modern popular notions.
If you read contemporary literature and movies, a popular image of God today is pretty much summed up in the movie Star Wars. The God of Star Wars, is "The Force", the supposed sum of the spiritual energies of the universe, and that’s how many people today mistakenly think of God.
BUT the doctrine of the Trinity tells us what is different. “Three persons in One God”. It’s all about being a person, being personal, and being able to love.
God is not just an energy, He is personal. That’s why we refer to Him as “he”, and not just “it” –and that’s why He revealed Himself as a “he”, a person.
An energy cannot love you, an “it” cannot love you, cannot relate to you in personal way, cannot care for you, cannot choose to create you, and an energy cannot die on the Cross for you, cannot give himself to you in Holy Communion at every Mass.
When Jesus came down from heaven, He didn’t just hover around us as a force. He assumed a human body, He became a real man, something only a person can do. He ascended up to heaven with that body, which is a sign that He is still a person –it’s what He is.
The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised is also a person, a person promised to us by Jesus, “I will send you another helper”, He said, to help inside our hearts.
And the Father Himself, is a person. The whole Trinity is a community of three loving persons.
Only a personal God can exist in relationship. Only a personal God can love us. Energies and forces cannot do relate to you, cannot love you; and this is what makes our Faith so different to the other religions of the world.
Final thought: we are made in the image of God. The Trinity is a community of love. Three distinct persons, all equally God, all one, and yet existing in relationship with each other.
We are made in the image of God, and that means we too are made to love,
and to be loved,
to exist in relationship with others.
If we, mistakenly, think that God is just an energy then it changes what we think about ourselves.
That’s why being a priest is NOT like being a Jedi knight. A priest exists to make a person present, Christ the Lord. That’s why 4 times during the Mass the priest or deacon says, “The Lord be with you”, not “The Force be with you”. May a PERSON be with you, a person who loves you, and who gives much more to you than the energy of the so-called “Force”.
I was very very young when the first Star Wars movie came out, and it made a big impression on me, as it did on many of my generation. My Mom sewed me a Star Wars pyjama case, and my Dad bought me a plastic light saber. I used to dream of training in a Jedi academy, becoming a Jedi knight, and summoning the power of the all-pervading life energy of the universe called "The Force".
Instead, when I grew up, I went to seminary to train to become a priest.
Trendy "New Age" philosophy might try to equate the two: priesthood-JediKnight, battling the dark side of the Force-preaching repentance from sin, and Star Wars is full of such dodgy thinking.
And that brings me on to the Trinity.
Because the basic point I want to make to you is that today’s feast of the Most Holy Trinity is not just about some abstract doctrine, but it actually teaches us what God Himself is like, and he’s very very different to modern popular notions.
If you read contemporary literature and movies, a popular image of God today is pretty much summed up in the movie Star Wars. The God of Star Wars, is "The Force", the supposed sum of the spiritual energies of the universe, and that’s how many people today mistakenly think of God.
BUT the doctrine of the Trinity tells us what is different. “Three persons in One God”. It’s all about being a person, being personal, and being able to love.
God is not just an energy, He is personal. That’s why we refer to Him as “he”, and not just “it” –and that’s why He revealed Himself as a “he”, a person.
An energy cannot love you, an “it” cannot love you, cannot relate to you in personal way, cannot care for you, cannot choose to create you, and an energy cannot die on the Cross for you, cannot give himself to you in Holy Communion at every Mass.
When Jesus came down from heaven, He didn’t just hover around us as a force. He assumed a human body, He became a real man, something only a person can do. He ascended up to heaven with that body, which is a sign that He is still a person –it’s what He is.
The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised is also a person, a person promised to us by Jesus, “I will send you another helper”, He said, to help inside our hearts.
And the Father Himself, is a person. The whole Trinity is a community of three loving persons.
Only a personal God can exist in relationship. Only a personal God can love us. Energies and forces cannot do relate to you, cannot love you; and this is what makes our Faith so different to the other religions of the world.
Final thought: we are made in the image of God. The Trinity is a community of love. Three distinct persons, all equally God, all one, and yet existing in relationship with each other.
We are made in the image of God, and that means we too are made to love,
and to be loved,
to exist in relationship with others.
If we, mistakenly, think that God is just an energy then it changes what we think about ourselves.
That’s why being a priest is NOT like being a Jedi knight. A priest exists to make a person present, Christ the Lord. That’s why 4 times during the Mass the priest or deacon says, “The Lord be with you”, not “The Force be with you”. May a PERSON be with you, a person who loves you, and who gives much more to you than the energy of the so-called “Force”.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A, Shaftesbury
Jn 14:15-21
We heard Jesus’s goodbye words, and as I’ve said before, when we say goodbye to someone, especially if we're not going to see them for a while, people often try and say something important, something that they want the other person to remember while they are separated. Such words can be particularly important when someone is dying.
The words in today's Gospel are such farewell words. Jesus knew that he was going to die on the Cross, that he would be rising and ascending to heaven, leaving his disciples. And at the Last Supper he gave them his farewell discourse.
Part of what he said was a simple, but final, request, and Jesus emphasised it by saying, "IF you love me...". His love for us requires a response from us. And what he asks of us is total, "If you love me, keep my commandments". And he had earlier summed up his commandments saying, "I give you a new commandment: love one another just as I have loved you"(Jn 13:34).
What’s different about the part of the text read this year is: His final wish that we keep his commandments is linked with the two things that we heard him announce. He said that he would send his Holy Spirit, and that he would come again.
Part of the reason why we want to keep Christ's commandments is that we hope to see him again. If you never expect to meet someone ever again, then you are naturally going to be less concerned about what they wanted, because they'd never know whether or not you'd done what they asked. But with Christ we believe he will come again, because he has told us so, and if he will come again then it does matter that we do what he asked of us. We hope to continue and perfect that relationship which the apostles enjoyed while he was on earth, but the promise of eternal life with him only holds if we keep to the commandments he gave us.
The Spirit is given to us to enable us to keep his commandments. Alone, by ourselves, we are weak and we sin -we break his commands, we fail to love. We can be selfish and petty, impatient and irritable, careless and thoughtless of the needs of others. It’s only with the strength of the gift Christ promised us, the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we can hope to keep his commands. That's why one of the titles given to the Spirit is "another helper", the Advocate who remains at our side. The apostles had Jesus physically with them to encourage them, teach them, and correct them. We do not, but as Christ said, "I will not leave you orphans". This is true not only because he will come again, but because while he is gone his Holy Spirit is here with us.
That passage spoke of the Trinity, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are a communion of mutual love. The action of the Spirit in us forms us into the likeness of Christ, drawing us into the life and love of the Trinity. If we’re faithful then Jesus's words will be true of us at the end of time when he comes again, "On that day, you will understand that I am in the Father, and you in me and I in you". But this can only be true if we have kept his commands, if we have responded to his farewell request, if we have shown that we love him.
Christ's farewell request could hardly have been simpler: to love. But the motive calling for us to follow it is demanding and uncompromising. He says, IF you love me, and he said that on the night he was preparing to die for love of us, to show us what true love really means. When we look at Christ on the Cross, as we see him on every Crucifix in every Catholic Church, we see his love for us, and surely this must awaken a response in us, a response that seeks to return love for love. And the response he asks is clear enough: keep my commandments.
We heard Jesus’s goodbye words, and as I’ve said before, when we say goodbye to someone, especially if we're not going to see them for a while, people often try and say something important, something that they want the other person to remember while they are separated. Such words can be particularly important when someone is dying.
The words in today's Gospel are such farewell words. Jesus knew that he was going to die on the Cross, that he would be rising and ascending to heaven, leaving his disciples. And at the Last Supper he gave them his farewell discourse.
Part of what he said was a simple, but final, request, and Jesus emphasised it by saying, "IF you love me...". His love for us requires a response from us. And what he asks of us is total, "If you love me, keep my commandments". And he had earlier summed up his commandments saying, "I give you a new commandment: love one another just as I have loved you"(Jn 13:34).
What’s different about the part of the text read this year is: His final wish that we keep his commandments is linked with the two things that we heard him announce. He said that he would send his Holy Spirit, and that he would come again.
Part of the reason why we want to keep Christ's commandments is that we hope to see him again. If you never expect to meet someone ever again, then you are naturally going to be less concerned about what they wanted, because they'd never know whether or not you'd done what they asked. But with Christ we believe he will come again, because he has told us so, and if he will come again then it does matter that we do what he asked of us. We hope to continue and perfect that relationship which the apostles enjoyed while he was on earth, but the promise of eternal life with him only holds if we keep to the commandments he gave us.
The Spirit is given to us to enable us to keep his commandments. Alone, by ourselves, we are weak and we sin -we break his commands, we fail to love. We can be selfish and petty, impatient and irritable, careless and thoughtless of the needs of others. It’s only with the strength of the gift Christ promised us, the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we can hope to keep his commands. That's why one of the titles given to the Spirit is "another helper", the Advocate who remains at our side. The apostles had Jesus physically with them to encourage them, teach them, and correct them. We do not, but as Christ said, "I will not leave you orphans". This is true not only because he will come again, but because while he is gone his Holy Spirit is here with us.
That passage spoke of the Trinity, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are a communion of mutual love. The action of the Spirit in us forms us into the likeness of Christ, drawing us into the life and love of the Trinity. If we’re faithful then Jesus's words will be true of us at the end of time when he comes again, "On that day, you will understand that I am in the Father, and you in me and I in you". But this can only be true if we have kept his commands, if we have responded to his farewell request, if we have shown that we love him.
Christ's farewell request could hardly have been simpler: to love. But the motive calling for us to follow it is demanding and uncompromising. He says, IF you love me, and he said that on the night he was preparing to die for love of us, to show us what true love really means. When we look at Christ on the Cross, as we see him on every Crucifix in every Catholic Church, we see his love for us, and surely this must awaken a response in us, a response that seeks to return love for love. And the response he asks is clear enough: keep my commandments.
Sunday, 13 April 2008
4th Sunday of Easter, Vocations and Shepherd, Shaftesbury
We had our parish meeting of Sunday, which I’m happy to say seemed to go very well –a positive and constructive spirit seemed to characterise the whole event. The immediate follow-on from that is the survey form you’ve each been given –please fill it in and return it, it will enable us to know where our parishioners come from, why you come here, and where in N. Dorset we should have and not have our future churches.
One point I indicated at the parish meeting was that our diocese faces a huge crisis in priestly vocations and thus in the huge of available priests. At present we have 65 priests. We know who they are, their ages, and when they will reach 75 to retire. We know that in 10 years time 33 of them will have retired. That means our number of priests will drop in half. That’s going to be a big problem. That brings me on, very urgently, to today’s sermon.
Today, across the world, its vocations Sunday, the day when the church calls on us to pray for vocations to the priesthood especially.
If we think where priestly vocations come from, we might think of many natural factors, like family. But ultimately a vocation, a calling, is supernatural, it is the result of a call form God. And God tells us that those callings come as a result of our prayers.
Jesus said, ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest’. .
This time last year I was in my home parish of Paignton, and I was very aware that prayers of people there are a major reason why I received my vocation.
How often do we pray for vocations? How often do YOU pray? You want a priest in this parish. Do you say a rosary every week for the specific intention that one be called?
And if you don’t pray, are you still going to complain if you don’t get a priest? If in 10 years or 5 years or 2 years there is no priest here –will you complain if you didn’t pray?
I’d like to make a point of comparison: in the USA they used to be in the same situation as us, it seemed that numbers of priestly vocations were in terminal decline. But NOW, numbers are up, and the average age of vocations is down, i.e. more YOUNG men are coming forward.
But this statistic is not uniform, it varies from diocese to diocese. And when people compare the difference between the successful diocese and the ones that are failing is frequently attributed to Eucharistic adoration for vocations. Some dioceses promote it heavily, and their vocations have returned. Other dioceses are dying instead.
A priest friend of mine is in Kansas, and his diocese is about the same size as ours, it has 65 priests, and it used to be like ours, without vocations. But now, while we have 2 seminarians they have 36. I.e. Your PRAYER can make a difference.
If the heart and soul of a parish and diocese is turned to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament then priests will come.
Encouraging Vocations. Sometimes people are reluctant to encourage vocations because they think young men today will not be happy as priests. They envisage loneliness, or lack of money. Or, they see a young man and think: He could be something BETTER than a priest.
Sometimes these thoughts are well-intentioned, but they are misguided. There are lonely marriages, there are poor people who are not priests –these are not reasons to be embarrassed about the priesthood. But most fundamentally, they are reasons that, to some extent, are based on a lack of faith.
If I have faith, then I know that my own priesthood is one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given. But I can only see that if I have faith. If I seek to follow the Lord but am looking backwards over my shoulder at the glamour of the world, then of course I will not be happy. But the glamour of the world will pass, the beauties of flesh fade, power and money are not things worth sacrificing a vocation for. They do not last. Only love of the Lord lasts.
(pause)
God calls most people to love Him by means of loving their spouse (cf JPII teaching).
There are others he calls to cleave to Him directly, with what Scripture calls “an undivided heart”. And for a priest, that means that I must love the Church His spouse as MY wife too, because I am configured to Him. I don’t love perfectly, but I know that I will find happiness nowhere else.
One point I indicated at the parish meeting was that our diocese faces a huge crisis in priestly vocations and thus in the huge of available priests. At present we have 65 priests. We know who they are, their ages, and when they will reach 75 to retire. We know that in 10 years time 33 of them will have retired. That means our number of priests will drop in half. That’s going to be a big problem. That brings me on, very urgently, to today’s sermon.
Today, across the world, its vocations Sunday, the day when the church calls on us to pray for vocations to the priesthood especially.
If we think where priestly vocations come from, we might think of many natural factors, like family. But ultimately a vocation, a calling, is supernatural, it is the result of a call form God. And God tells us that those callings come as a result of our prayers.
Jesus said, ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest’. .
This time last year I was in my home parish of Paignton, and I was very aware that prayers of people there are a major reason why I received my vocation.
How often do we pray for vocations? How often do YOU pray? You want a priest in this parish. Do you say a rosary every week for the specific intention that one be called?
And if you don’t pray, are you still going to complain if you don’t get a priest? If in 10 years or 5 years or 2 years there is no priest here –will you complain if you didn’t pray?
I’d like to make a point of comparison: in the USA they used to be in the same situation as us, it seemed that numbers of priestly vocations were in terminal decline. But NOW, numbers are up, and the average age of vocations is down, i.e. more YOUNG men are coming forward.
But this statistic is not uniform, it varies from diocese to diocese. And when people compare the difference between the successful diocese and the ones that are failing is frequently attributed to Eucharistic adoration for vocations. Some dioceses promote it heavily, and their vocations have returned. Other dioceses are dying instead.
A priest friend of mine is in Kansas, and his diocese is about the same size as ours, it has 65 priests, and it used to be like ours, without vocations. But now, while we have 2 seminarians they have 36. I.e. Your PRAYER can make a difference.
If the heart and soul of a parish and diocese is turned to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament then priests will come.
Encouraging Vocations. Sometimes people are reluctant to encourage vocations because they think young men today will not be happy as priests. They envisage loneliness, or lack of money. Or, they see a young man and think: He could be something BETTER than a priest.
Sometimes these thoughts are well-intentioned, but they are misguided. There are lonely marriages, there are poor people who are not priests –these are not reasons to be embarrassed about the priesthood. But most fundamentally, they are reasons that, to some extent, are based on a lack of faith.
If I have faith, then I know that my own priesthood is one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given. But I can only see that if I have faith. If I seek to follow the Lord but am looking backwards over my shoulder at the glamour of the world, then of course I will not be happy. But the glamour of the world will pass, the beauties of flesh fade, power and money are not things worth sacrificing a vocation for. They do not last. Only love of the Lord lasts.
(pause)
God calls most people to love Him by means of loving their spouse (cf JPII teaching).
There are others he calls to cleave to Him directly, with what Scripture calls “an undivided heart”. And for a priest, that means that I must love the Church His spouse as MY wife too, because I am configured to Him. I don’t love perfectly, but I know that I will find happiness nowhere else.
Sunday, 6 April 2008
3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A, Shaftesbury
I'll only offer a brief thought today because we have a mission appeal at the end of Mass:
Do we take in the reality of the Res’n, or is it just a rumour, as it had been to those 2 men on the road to Emmaus? They’d already heard, but they only treated it as a rumour.
When Jesus Christ appeared to the 2 disciples on road to Emmaus, it made a big change in them:
From Despair to hope”
“faces downcast”
“Our hope HAD been” –past hope
“so SLOW to believe the full message of the prophets”
changed to:
“Hearts burned within us”
“set out that instant” –late, dark, dangerous road to travel
but urgent and full of joy
They understood the Scriptures –that ordained that Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory
What impact does faith in the Resurrection make on us?
Change us?
Cause for hope?
Focus of whole understanding of life?
Is Resurrection central to our thinking? Or is it just a rumour, like to the 2 men.
Do we understand that death and resurrection is the plan of God? As the 2 men came to understand?
That it is His victory over the sin and suffering that man has inflicted on himself and on God’s once perfect creation
There are many reasons to believe: There are many records of those he appeared to
Do we let it change us?
If not, then we are ultimately despondent, like the 2 men on the road, and Jesus’s words to them also hold to us: “You foolish men”. Foolish because not paying attention, not seeing what he has done for us, “so slow to understand”
Do we take in the reality of the Res’n, or is it just a rumour, as it had been to those 2 men on the road to Emmaus? They’d already heard, but they only treated it as a rumour.
When Jesus Christ appeared to the 2 disciples on road to Emmaus, it made a big change in them:
From Despair to hope”
“faces downcast”
“Our hope HAD been” –past hope
“so SLOW to believe the full message of the prophets”
changed to:
“Hearts burned within us”
“set out that instant” –late, dark, dangerous road to travel
but urgent and full of joy
They understood the Scriptures –that ordained that Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory
What impact does faith in the Resurrection make on us?
Change us?
Cause for hope?
Focus of whole understanding of life?
Is Resurrection central to our thinking? Or is it just a rumour, like to the 2 men.
Do we understand that death and resurrection is the plan of God? As the 2 men came to understand?
That it is His victory over the sin and suffering that man has inflicted on himself and on God’s once perfect creation
There are many reasons to believe: There are many records of those he appeared to
Do we let it change us?
If not, then we are ultimately despondent, like the 2 men on the road, and Jesus’s words to them also hold to us: “You foolish men”. Foolish because not paying attention, not seeing what he has done for us, “so slow to understand”
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