22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Heb 12:18-24
We heard a line in our second reading that well describes our experience at Mass: “What you have come to is nothing known to the senses”(Heb 12:18).
What we come to in the Mass is God Himself –but this isn’t what we experience directly with our senses:
Our senses say merely that we have come to a gathering of human beings, human beings that in many ways might not seen particularly god-like: they might sing badly, they might mumble their responses inaudibly, some of them might even look bored and distracted. Our senses might also say that what is given out at Mass just looks like wafers of bread, not like the Lord Jesus Himself.
But, and this is the basic point of my sermon today: there is more to the Mass, and more to life in general, than just what immediately strikes our senses. If we limit our appreciation of life to only what is immediately self-evident to the senses then we miss much, in fact, we miss the most important things.

Now, to say that in the Mass, “What you have come to is nothing known to the senses”, does not mean that the senses cannot aid us in helping us appreciate what we have come to.
For one thing, the senses enable us to see the signs and symbols, the sacramentals, that point us towards the reality we have come to.
For example, looking ahead of us to the sanctuary, our sense of sight can see that there is a veil that hangs in front of the tabernacle, a sign indicating to us that God dwells inside –and the tabernacle veil of the Church was pre-figured in the tabernacle veil of the Old Testament: when the Jews wandered in the desert God was in their midst in the tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting that Moses would enter to commune with God, and later in the temple in Jerusalem there was a veil in the sanctuary of the holy of holies of God’s dwelling.
Another example, the red hanging sanctuary lamp is another thing that our sense of sight can perceive –this also indicates to us that God dwells here in the Tabernacle, just as in the Old Testament God commanded that a lamp should always burn in the Tabernacle of the tent of meeting(Ex 27:20-21).

But a final and more pivotal example: our sense of hearing hears the priest utter the words that Jesus Himself uttered: “This is my Body”. At this point our sense of hearing conflicts with part of our sense of sight and taste: our hearing tells us that this is the Lord Himself, present because He is faithful to His promise to come when we “do this in memory” of Him, but, our sight and taste mistakenly thinks it looks and tastes just like bread.
Our senses can HELP us perceive what is here, but what is here is BEYOND what our senses can exhaust.
To see what is really here, to see what is really important in life, we need to look more carefully, we need to look with the eyes of faith.

“What you have come to is nothing known to the senses”, Saint Paul said these words of God Himself and of the splendour of heaven. And as he said in another of his letters (1 Cor 2:9): “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, what” wonders there are.
In a few weeks the Pope will be here in England, and many atheists like Richard Dawkins, will be appearing on the BBC to tell us what a fool they think he is. But the Pope is coming to remind Britain, and to remind us, that there is a world beyond our immediate sense perception, and it is this world that gives ultimate meaning to everything our senses are capable of perceiving, and without the eyes of faith we fail to see what is really here. The Lord is here in this tabernacle, here in this church, and He is present in our lives if we will but see Him. To have closed our eyes to such realities is to have missed out on the greatest things there are.
“What you have come to is nothing known to the senses”(Heb 12:18).

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Lk 13:22-30; Heb 12:18-24
There are some questions that I get asked many times as a priest. One question that comes up again and again, and that I was asked again this week, is, "How many people go to Hell?” or, the reverse, “How many go to Heaven?" This is a good question, an old question, a question that has concerned people down the centuries. It is also a question that Jesus was asked, as we heard in today’s Gospel: "Sir, will there be only a few saved?"(Lk 13:23). But it’s interesting how few people today seem to recall the Lord’s answer.

Jesus’s answer was certainly not comforting to the person who asked the question, because Jesus started by questioning the salvation of the questioner:
"Try YOUR best to enter by the NARROW door, because I tell you, many will TRY to enter and will not succeed"(13:24).
He went on to say that many would knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us” (13:25) but be turned away.
More worryingly still, Jesus said that many who thought they were saved would not be: they will say to the Lord that they knew the Lord (or so they thought), but the Lord will say to them, “I do not know where you come from” and cast them out into the “weeping and grinding of teeth”(Lk 13:28).
And it will be others who will be saved, others from the “east and west”(13:19) who will take the places that the comfortable and complacent thought they had waiting for them.

The Lord’s answer is clearly not one to encourage complacency in His hearers, or in us.
And yet, we ourselves live in an age where popular opinion makes us complacent in such matters. Hell is something that is rarely talked about, even as a possibility -it is often dismissed as being only for people who are so wicked that they only exist as theoretical examples.
But Jesus's teaching does not encourage such presumption. He speaks in this text of a “narrow” door, not a wide one. And as He says elsewhere, “The road is wide that leads to perdition and MANY walk in it"(Mt 7:13).

So, what must WE do?
To repeat the words Jesus said to His questioner: “Try YOUR best to enter by the NARROW door”. We ourselves also need to enter by this narrow door, and we know that it is narrow because it can be HARD WORK to be good, to walk the path of salvation. Our second reading from the letter to the Hebrews reminded us of the suffering and training that is involved in being a Christian. Just as the athlete suffers and endures so that he may enters the arena and win the game, we too must not shrink from the hard work that is involved in living the moral Godly life that Christ calls us to. Anything good is worth striving for, and eternal salvation is no exception.

But, to conclude, let us remember that though the Lord speaks of hell and tells us that we must “strive”(Lk 13:24) to follow Him, we are striving not against Him but with Him.
Let us remember the text we heard in our second reading from Hebrews, "Have you forgotten that encouraging text in which you are addressed as sons?"(12:5)
If we wish to ponder the question, "How many will be saved?" and more directly, "Will I be saved?", we must not forget that God calls each and every one of us to become His adopted child. For EACH of us He has a special plan, He guides our lives and even our sufferings, to lead us, daily, towards Him and the salvation He desires for us. He wants us to be saved, He calls us to Himself, He has come to us because He is the way, He Himself is the “narrow door” that leads to life.

If we would enter that door, it is not complicated: We must embrace His will, daily repent of our sins, continually call on His mercy.
And, if we are humbly among the little ones acknowledging our sins and weakness and calling on His mercy, rather than presuming on our strength, then we will be among the “men from east and west, north and south, [who] will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God”(Lk 13:29).

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Eccles 1:-2:23; Col 3:1-11; Lk 12:13-21
Today’s readings warn us of the need to place our hope in the things of heaven, not of the passing things of this world. I’d like to illustrate this point by referring to the life of St Bernadette and a promise made to her by Our Lady.

Two weeks ago I was in Lourdes, a site that attracts 6 millions pilgrims a year, and I was reminded while I was there of the promise made to the little girl Bernadette when Our Lady appeared to her. Our Lady said, “I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next” –to repeat: not happy in this world, but in heaven.
And, thinking of that promise, I wondered what my own response would have been if Our Lady had said such a thing to me. I think I’d have wanted to say something like, “Thanks for the offer of happiness in heaven, but, could I perhaps have a little bit of happiness in this world too? I was rather set on a cosy little life in Shaftesbury, with the odd glass of red wine. OK?”
But such a response from me would be rooted in the fact that I have an insufficient grasp of the reality of heaven –I know of it, but it is not a thought sufficiently in my continual daily consciousness.

St Bernadette, however, saw more than I have seen. She saw the beauty of heaven, because she saw the beauty of heaven reflected in the beauty of the vision of Our Lady that she saw. This vision of the wonder of heaven enabled her to understand, in a way that is difficult for the rest of us, to understand at an experiential level how wonderful heaven is and how worth while it is to put aside all things in the pursuit of it. We need to strive to see things as clearly as she did, with the thought of the promise of heaven.

Let us think for a moment of that rich man in the Gospel parable. He was saving for tomorrow. In our debt-ridden present economic climate, saving for tomorrow might seem like a prudent, sensible, virtuous thing to do. But there is a selfish way to save, and an unselfish way to save. Part of what can help us see the difference is whether we can look at our actions and see them as laying up more merit for ourselves in heaven than they do for us on earth. And, if we live in the HOPE of heaven then we learn to almost instinctively judge our deeds in the light of heaven.

The promise of heaven is a measure that passes judgement, either positive or negative, on everything we do. Is what I am doing gaining me treasure in heaven, or losing it?
To come back to the promise St Bernadette received from Our Lady, St Bernadette was quite clear, as she said many times[1], that this promise of happiness in heaven was only conditional on her being good on earth. And, at its most basic level, this is true of each of us too:

In our second reading from Colossians we were reminded that, as baptised Christians, we “have been brought back to life in Christ”(Col 3:1), but if this is to mean something then we must have our action oriented towards heaven: “look for the things of heaven”, St Paul added.
Our first reading, with its powerful message from the preacher Quoheleth (Ecclesiates), spoke of the vanity of so much of the activity we pursue in this world: “vanity of vanities, all is vanity... what does a man gain for all his toil under the sun”(Ecc 1:2ff).
What does a man gain for his toil? It depends what toil he is doing, and who he is doing it for, and this was the point made by the Lord in the Gospel. The rich man selfishly toiling for himself, laying up treasure in his barn –what is this worth if he dies and he has not laid up “treasure for himself”(Lk 12:21) in heaven, in the sight of God?

Every deed we do, we need to ask, Is this laying up treasure for myself in heaven?
If my action motivated entirely by the thought of happiness in this world as if there was no world to come? Or, does my faith in the world to come help me detach myself from short-term self-seeking because I have the joy of living in hope of the eternal future: “you must look for the things of heaven, where Christ is”(Col 3:2). If we had such faith and hope we’d be content to have a promise like, “I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next”.



[1] Rene Laurentin, Bernadette Speaks (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2000), p.602.

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Lk 11:1-13
We just heard Jesus speak of the importance of asking in prayer and of the heavenly Father's wish to grant our prayers. I'd like to tell you about a prayer of mine that was answered recently.

When we think about God answering prayer we often wonder why He grants some requests and not others. And, we all know the trial of an unanswered prayers, or, more precisely, we all know the trial of when the answer to our prayers is “no”. While we don't know in this life why He grants one request and not another, we do know that we will somehow understand in Heaven. But, for many of our prayers part of the reason that some are granted and some are not is whether we are praying that something that is TRULY for our good: God does not grant a request that will ultimately be to our supernatural disadvantage. St James indicates this when he says, “you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly”(Jam 4:3), and Jesus indicates something of the same when He says that the type of prayer that we can be SURE will be answered is to pray for the Holy Spirit (Lk 11:13).

But on to my prayer, and perhaps I first need to tell you where I'd been –these past few weeks: The first Sunday I was away I was on holiday, and then the next two Sundays I was helping to lead a youth pilgrimage around a great number of shrines in France.
And at the end of this, on my way home, exhausted but inspired by all that I had seen, I prayed after the example of the saints who shrines I have seen. In particular, inspired by the example of the patron saint of parish priests, the holy Cure D’Ars, I prayed that Jesus would help me bear suffering and difficulty the way that the saints did; I prayed that Jesus would give me a greater share in the cross.
I made this prayer for a greater share in the cross while at the entrance to the airport on my way home, and Jesus pomptly granted my request by cancelling my flight. I then had a 3 hour wait on a line to discover that all of other ways home were booked and that I was stuck there for the next 2 days. It wasn’t exactly how I had wanted Him to answer my request! And wiser men than myself and taught the inadvisability of praying for an increase in the cross.

However, as a consequence of my delay I was able to use those days to visit some more shrines, in Paris. I visited the shrine of Our Lady of Victories which bears great testimony to answered prayers. Many of you will know the life of St Therese of Lisieux, whose relics toured England last year, and you’ll know that as a child she lay sick and dying in a prolonged and incurable illness –her father had prayers offered to this shrine of Our Lady of Victories; Our Lady then appeared to St Therese, and she was cured. And her cure is just one of many there. The walls of this large church are lined with THOUSANDS of plaques of thanksgiving from people who have had prayers answered there. And this reminded me very powerfully that God DOES answer prayer. Earlier on the pilgrimage I had seen other churches with large walls lined with similar plaques of thanksgiving –in Ars and Lourdes.

All these plaques were a reminder to me of a very particular point: the importance of ASKING for things in our prayer. And this I had further reminder of in another additional shrine I went to: the Rue du Bac, in Paris, the shrine of the Miraculous Medal. It was there, in 1830, that Our Lady appeared to St Catherine Laboure, and in the vision Our Lady appeared with rings on her fingers; some of these rings shed light and some did not, and when St Catherine asked why Our Lady told her that this symbolised the many graces that people failed to gain because they did not ask for them.
And this is not just a point from a private revelation but is part of our Catholic teaching, as articulated by the likes of St Thomas Aquinas as part of the doctrine of merit, that there are many graces that we fail to get because we do not ask. So we SHOULD ask.

And this is the key point is today’s readings. Abraham prayed for Sodom and Gomorrah, and God granted his prayer. The parables of Jesus taught us the importance of asking in prayer. And the history and experience of the Church, down through the centuries and in the lives of many of us here, shows us that God DOES answer prayer and so we should ask, and do so with the confidence of a child who knows that his Father loves him. “Ask and you will receive”(Lk 11:9).

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Gal 5:1,13-18.
How do I know what the Holy Spirit is saying to me?
In our 2nd reading we heard St Paul talk about being “guided by the Spirit”, and people often wonder what this means in practice. I’ve been pondering this a lot recently; one very useful book I’ve read is listed in this week’s newsletter: Jacques Philippe, In the School of the Holy Spirit (Sceptre Press, 2007).

To talk a simple example from my daily life: in trying to plan what to do this Saturday afternoon, does the Lord want me to pray for an hour, or visit the sick for an hour?
Does He want me to call my Mother on the phone, or write a better sermon?
-These are all good things, but doing one means I won’t do the other. Which does the Holy Spirit want me to do?

Now, pondering these things can get taken to extremes. I’ve heard pious young ladies (in particular) ask whether God wants them to wear a red shirt or a blue dress today?
For me, that’s an easy answer. He wants me to wear a black shirt, again.
But generally speaking, it’s not really meaningful to ask what colour shirt the Holy Spirit wants you to wear.
-to ask a question like that is a misguided piety
A mis-directed piety, but basically starting with the right premise: I should want to do God’s Will, and He has a Will for every detail of my life.

However, for most details of my life, the way He speaks to me is much more mundane. He has given me a brain, the ability to reason. If He has not given me any other reason to think He has a specific answer to a question, which with many questions He hasn’t, then He just wants me to use my reason to decide which colour shirt to wear.

But there are ways we can discern what the Lord wants us to do:
First, is it a matter of sin, a matter that the Bible or the Church clearly teaches me? For example, I don’t need to pray about whether I should sleep with another’s man wife –we just know that the Bible and the Church tell us that this is the sin of adultery.
Second, it is a matter that my state of life makes clear? Like a duty as a parent or a worker or a boss?
Third, is there some other matter that indicates it is a matter of sin?
None of these cases need much sophisticated analysis, but all of them DO show me what the Holy Spirit is telling me.

And, to be open to the Holy Spirit in subtle things, I need to be in the habit of being open to Him in those more basic things.
Having that spirit of openness to His Will is what will enable me to be better able to detect His promptings in more subtle things –but that, in many ways, is a later skill.

What do I mean? Well, we heard St Paul contrast the promptings of the Holy Spirit with those of “self-indulgence”(Gal 5:17). Let’s consider the self-indulgence of laziness: If the entire goal of my day is to get to that TV show at the end of the end. If the entire goal of my afternoon is set on that cake with my tea. Then I am not going to let other things get in the way of ME, my priorities, my pleasures.
These might not be big pleasures, often they might not be sins –at least not sinful in themselves, only in how I might be attached to them.
But if my priorities are such that these things mean more to me than anything else, then I am not going to be open to the Holy Spirit’s promptings.
And so CONTRASTING within ourselves the promptings of self-indulgence with those of the Spirit, and seeking to DETACH ourselves from self-indulgence, is a key way that will led us to be in that “liberty”(Gal 5:13) that St Paul spoke of, a liberty where we are not enslaved by the desire of the flesh.
So, if I want to grow in my ability to be able to discern what the Holy Spirit is prompting me to do, that detachment from self is a key place to start.

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Gal 3:26-29
Most of us tend not to think about the Old Testament part of the Bible very much, we certainly don’t tend to read it and identify ourselves with the Israelites there. Most of us don’t think of ourselves as Israelites, or as Jewish, or as children of Abraham.
However, in our 2nd reading St Paul says that we “are the posterity of Abraham, the heirs he was promised”(Gal 3:29).

Now, this raises a few questions: Why would I WANT to be a heir of Abraham?
To answer that question we need to go back to almost the very beginning of the Bible, the beginning of the Old Testament, i.e. the Jewish, Scriptures, to encounter the person of Abraham.

Abraham wasn’t anyone special –and this is a key point.
He was no-one special and yet God chose him, chose him to bless him.
Abraham was a wandering nomad (Dt 26:5), as the great creedal statement of the Old Testament says: “My father was a wandering Aramean “(Deut 26:5)
Abraham had no land, he was no-one special, but God chose him to bless him.
And God made him three promises (Gen 12:1-7):
(1) “I will make you a great nation”(12:2); with descendants as many as the stars of the heavens (Gen 15:5)
(2) The Promised Land: “To your descendents I will give this land”(12:7)
(3) His name would be great: “all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you”(12:3).

In our modern world we are so used to think of ourselves as complete individuals that much of what was promised to Abraham may not seem very relevant.
But, for most of human history people have not just viewed themselves as individuals, but have considered the family, the tribe, the nation that they belonged to as something incredibly important –something that they depended on for their existence. Without this sense of belonging a person would be weak and vulnerable and fearful.
In such a context, to be promised a land, and be promised a great number in your tribe, and to belong to such a great body, would be a great thing.

Even today, though modern people give much less thought to their nation or group, even today we often worry about our weakness, our vulnerability and our lack of security.
And so to have the promise made to Abraham be something we share in is important.
What was true of Abraham physically is true for us spiritually.
He was promised an earthly home, a land.
We are promised a spiritual home, heaven –this is an even greater promise because unlike an earthly land it will not suffer physical ills like drought, and will be eternal not temporary.
He was promised a physical family.
As the Church, we are part of the spiritual family of all those in Christ.

To be an inheritor of the promise made to Abraham is to inherit the promise of the Promised Land.
We, as Christians, follow Christ the Jewish Messiah. And Christ was not just the Messiah but as such was THE great descendent of Abraham, THE offspring of Abraham (Gal 3:16)–the promises to Abraham were realised in Christ.
By being baptised into Christ WE were re-born as one with Him in inheriting all that He has promised as the seed of Abraham. Including the Promised Land of Heaven, the eternal security it will bring, and the glad fruits of that happy land.

And that is something that every reasonable person should want to share in, should want to be a child of Abraham.

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Shaftesbury

Lk 7:36-50; 2 Sam 12:7-10,13
Friday was feast of Sacred Heart of Jesus, this month of June is month of Sacred Heart. Our readings today pick up on SacHrt themes: love, sin, forgiveness, repentance, acts of love, acts of reparation.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart comes us to largely via visions to St Margaret Mary in 17th Century France. These visions were signs of the love God bears towards us.
SIGNS of Gods love for us are very important. We all have such signs, but we can either see them or fail to see them.

St Thomas Aquinas says that to love someone means to wish the good of that person, in particular, to wish specific goods for that person.
I fail to see the signs of God’s love for me when I focus instead on the things that seem to indicate that God does not love. I can want better health, better appearance, more money. And, if God wanted to, I could have a body like Rambo, a face like Brad Pitt, an IQ like Einstein, and I could win the lottery, tonight, and even England could win the World Cup.
God could give me all these things. He has given me none of them.

If God loves me, why has He not given me the goods I have just listed?
This is not a stupid question. It’s a question people ask in many different forms.
The reason God has not given me a good like possessing an IQ like Einstein is that He wishes to give me DIFFERENT goods, goods that FOR ME are incompatible with being Einsteinian (if that’s a word). I’m pretty sure that if I had such an IQ I would be insufferably arrogant and proud, that my pride would be an insufferable and impenetrable barrier for me loving God, that I would spend eternity in the blazing fires of Hell. So if God gave me such a gift, it would hardly be a sign that He loved me.

St Thomas Aquinas also says that the most important goods are spiritual goods. These are most important because they last forever.
But even such spiritual goods are not all equal. Some are more pivotal than others.
The greatest good is Heaven itself. I don’t possess that, but I hope to one day.
There is another good, a good we witness twice in our readings, a good that is the precondition for getting to Heaven: and that is the good of forgiveness.

I do not deserve Heaven. I often think I do. But the simple truth is that I have often sinned, and each sin makes me unworthy of Heaven.
But God has offered me that great spiritual good of forgiveness. A good that makes the possession of Heaven possible. A good, more than any other good in this life, a good that shows me He loves me.

The gift of such a good from God calls for us to give something in return.
David, after he repented of his sin, knew he needed to make amendment for his sins.
The woman with the alabaster jar, she had sinned, sinned so much that scripture simply recorded her as “a sinful woman in the city”. Yet Jesus forgave her. And she wanted to do some small thing back to Him, to anoint Him. Why? Because she loved Him.
Jesus pointed out in that parable that she loved much because she had been forgiven much. She KNEW the greatness of her NEED to be forgiven.
ALL of us NEED to be forgiven, even though our awareness of it varies. Love follows that awareness, love seeks to return the love God has shown us in the tenderness His Sacred Heart has revealed to us.
We each need to think of that woman known only as “a sinful woman in the city”, and realise that that is how the angels in Heaven could be looking at us. Unworthy wretches. It is only if we see ourselves in that woman that we can see the greatness of the gift of forgiveness.

To come back to the question of the SIGNS of His love for us. Its very easy to get distracted by thinking of other goods we’d like. But the ONE real good we need is on offer to each of us. The love of His Sacred Heart as manifested in His forgiveness.
In His vision to St Margaret Mary, Jesus said, “I will bless the home I which my heart is exposed and honoured”. The honour He calls us to pay is to love Him back.