REFLECTION FOR THE HOLY FAMILY

Traditionally, the Sunday which falls within the week of Christmas is given over to contemplating the mystery of the Holy Family of Nazareth; Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It is as though, the excitement of the birth of Jesus, the dramatic signs of star and angels surrounding it, the visits of the shepherds and Magi accomplished, we see, for the first time, this little family group, alone together at last. And these three unpretentious, humble people, quietly going about their God-given tasks, have affected and moved more people than perhaps any other family in history. For that which binds them together is not the ties of flesh, blood or emotions; the bonds by which they are indissolubly bound together, are those of Faith, Hope and Love.

It was through faith that Mary was able to accept God’s plan for her. It was through faith that Joseph was able to accept the very difficult role that God had marked out for him as Mary’s husband, foster-father to God’s Son. It was through faith, that gift of God which enables us to believe in him and to know him, that God became a powerful, living presence in their lives in the form of Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh.

But it was in the first place through love that Christ Jesus even came among us. For “God so loved the world, that he sent his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life”. Into a world where human beings are driven apart by their own evil, God sent his only Son as a sacrifice of love, to bind us together, to heal us. “God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God.” It is faith and love which bound Jesus, Mary and Joseph together into that indissoluble unity we know as the Holy Family of Nazareth, an image of unity, love and peace which offers hope to a broken world.

This is a life-giving message to all human families. It is not ties of flesh and blood that make for love, unity and peace, but faith and love. Christian marriage is itself a sacrament, and is meant to be lived within the love and faith which come from God alone as gifts to us. A Christian family, bound together in faith and love, is a powerful sign of hope.

But the greatest sign of hope for the world that God has given is his Church. For it is through that same faith and love that he brings together human beings “out of every tribe and tongue”, and makes of us one human family. In Christ there is “no Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or freedman”.

The only hope that the world has for unity, peace and love, is the healing presence of Christ among us, within us. And it is only through faith that Christ is born amongst us; it is  only when he is born amongst us that he can heal us, redeem us by his love; and only in redemption through his love that there is any hope for the world.

May God bless you on this feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Through your surrender to God in faith and love, may the Lord Jesus be born in the hearts and midst of each family here, and may he bring to each joy, unity and peace. And may he bind us all together in the unity of his own Family, the Church, that we might love and bless one another, and that through our own love and unity, the world might come to know and love him, who alone is our hope and our salvation.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR CHRISTMAS

In 2003, the British Sunday Telegraph published the following Christmas editorial. The Telegraph was reacting to two things;

1) The media-hype surrounding the pop-singer Madonna, as she arrived in Britain for her wedding, and the baptism of her “love child”;

2) The increasing attempts of secular society to stop Christians celebrating Christmas as a religious event, on the grounds that it gives offence to non-Christians especially in Britain and the Unites States.

Last week’s pages were dominated by pictures of a mother, a father and a babe in arms. We may be repelled by the global glitz that surrounds this celebrity christening and wedding. Yet the universal, primeval appeal of the image calls to mind another family, in another time and another place. When the Madonna arrived in Bethlehem 2 000 years ago, heavily pregnant, accompanied only by her husband, Joseph, there were no television cameras, no paparazzi, no reporters. Indeed, the principal witness, whose memories are preserved in the gospel accounts, must have been the mother herself. The words of St. Luke — reveal the evangelists’ human source: “But Mary kept all those sayings, and pondered them in her heart.”

Partly because of the lack of witnesses, the precise factual basis of the Nativity always has been and doubtless will always be a matter for scholarly controversy. It is, however, beyond dispute that the birth of Jesus Christ was an event that took place at a particular point in time. Had The Daily Telegraph existed then, we might have reported the whole extraordinary story. Christianity, unlike some religions, is rooted in history; and the Incarnation, unlike some Christian doctrines, stands or falls on its historicity. We can gain an inkling of the Incarnation only if we approach it as Mary did, with humility and love. Even St. John’s account of how “the Word was made flesh”, sublime as it is, serves only to remind humanity of how intellectually unequal we are to this mystery: “And the light shines in darkness, and darkness comprehended it not… He was in the world, and the world by him was made, and the world knew him not.” At a time when genetic science and technology seem to have given mankind power over life and death, it is worth reminding ourselves that God chose to demonstrate his infinitely greater power in the person of a little child. Ours is the illusion of omnipotence; His is the unassuming reality.

For many people, including some Christians, the Incarnation has been, in St. Paul’s words, a stumbling block. How is it possible, they ask, for the divine to become human, for the eternal to become temporal? It is this rupture in the seamless continuum of time that marks out Christianity from the other biblical religions, and has inspired meditations ever since the first Christmas. On Boxing Day, 1945,  C.S. Lewis replied to a query from his oldest friend, Arthur Greeves: “Something new really did happen at Bethlehem: not an interpretation but an event. God became Man…all time and all events in it, if we could see them at once and fully understand them, are a definition or a diagram of what God really is.”

Lewis contrasted Pythagoras, whose theorem has always been true even before he discovered it, with the Incarnation, which was far more than “a change in our knowledge”: “Though the union of God and Man in Christ is a timeless fact, in 50BC we hadn’t yet got to that bit of time in which it actually happened.”

Lewis’s was but one of countless attempts to express what cannot be expressed. Yet if we had to define the meaning of Christmas in order to celebrate it, then it would hardly be the most popular of festivals. What gives the story of the Nativity its own timeless allure is its tangible, concrete, visual reality. The manger, the shepherds, the wise men: all speak to us across the ages, in the angel’s words: “Glory to God on high, and peace on the earth: and unto men, rejoicing.”

[South Africans, like] the British, [from whose Sunday Telegraph this article is taken], have always rejoiced at Christmas, whether religious or not. Puritanical attempts to abolish Christmas have always foundered on our capacity to rejoice. There is nothing wrong (other than blandness) with secular formulations such as “Happy Holiday” or “Season’s Greetings”, but to impose them on Christians in the name of good manners [and “tolerance”] is gratuitous. It should not be offensive to those of other faiths, or those who have none, to be wished a Merry Christmas. That, indeed, is what we wish all our readers: a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

From the Editorial pages of the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

REFLECTION FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

The person who visits the modern city of Athens for the first time can expect a serious disappointment. Gone is the classical city of marble columns and temples, of white-robed philosophers and sculptors. Gone is the ancient cradle of civilisation, the home of all that we value most in our heritage. In its place is a great, noisy, dirty city, crammed with people, clogged with traffic. 

But there is one solitary sign of the glory which once was Athens. In its very centre, perched high on a flat-topped hill, the Acropolis, stands a magnificent Greek temple, a great structure of marble columns and friezes of perfect proportions and elegance. Alone amongst the unsightly modern sprawl, it is a reminder of the place of beauty, culture and learning which Athens once was. That building is the Parthenon. Its name comes from the Greek word for virgin, and amidst the ugliness in which it stands, it has lost none of its ancient beauty. It stands for all the world to see, a reminder of what Athens once was, and what it has long since lost.

In today's gospel we encounter the word “parthenos” as we read: “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, to a virgin...and the name of the virgin was Mary.” Like the Parthenon in Athens, Mary stood out in God's eyes above the broken wreckage of humanity, created once in the His image but marred and disfigured by sin. Because God reckoned her to be worthy, she was found to be in a relationship of grace with him. “Rejoice, you who have been filled with grace, the Lord is with you,” says the angel Gabriel to her, and “You have found grace before God.” 

Twice in quick succession Mary is referred to as being in a relationship of grace with God. God has found made her worthy for the most important task to which he has ever called a human being; to be the bearer of his only begotten Son. And she is to do this so that God can send a Saviour into the world, Jesus, whose very name means “Saviour.”

It would be easy to see the grace of the mother of Jesus in terms of itself; that is, to see her simply as a spotless human being, without any reference to God. We could then speak on endlessly about her physical beauty – inasmuch as we could, for we know nothing of her looks – her moral purity, and so on. We could make her the focus of our attention. And in doing so, we would miss the point almost entirely. For the key to Mary's grace in God's eyes lies in her faithfulness and in obedience to his will.

Her two best known statements, preserved for us in Scripture, make this clear. “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let whatever will, happen to me according to his word.” Mary chooses to see herself as a slave before her master, bound to God who has the power of life and death over her. Confronted with a demand that must have taken her breath away, her only concern is to be utterly obedient to God's will. She was also faithful to God in his call to bear witness to all that he does and is. This we see in her other recorded statement, made at the wedding at Cana, when she tells the servants to “Do whatever He tells you.” Here, she draws attention away from herself and towards Jesus, who then works the first of his miraculous signs. 

Total obedience to God, and pointing the way towards Jesus, his Son; these are the greatest things that can be asked of us. Mary is the perfect example of how we should attain this. As we conclude our Advent preparations and look forward to the joyful season of Christmas, may she be an inspiration to us to do whatever God tells us.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

As Christmas approaches, we prepare to receive into our midst the Prince of Peace, the infant Jesus the Lord. And he is preceded by John the Baptist, who proclaims his coming. 

The prophet Malachi, last prophet of the Old Testament, proclaims the coming of the great prophet of the New Testament, John the Baptist in striking terms. “See,” he says “I shall send my messenger to clear a way before me.” And then, in words which give us a dramatic perspective on the Presentation of the infant Jesus he says, “And suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his Temple.”

That is exactly how it happens. The infant Jesus appears in the Temple, lying in his mother’s arms, the very image of gentleness and peace. And out of the massive crowd in the Temple, old Simeon finds him and recognises him as the Messiah.

But Malachi’s next words turn this gentle, peaceful image on its head. “Who will be able to resist the day of his coming? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like the fuller’s alkali. And he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver.” These images are quite different. The purification of noble metals with the blazing heat of a furnace; the washing white of stained cloth with powerful bleaches. Hardly the sorts of images we associate with the gentle scene at the manger, or for that matter of the infant Jesus lying peacefully in his mother’s arms! They remind us more of Jesus driving the moneychangers and sellers of animals out of the Temple, or coming to judge us at the end of time.

But they bring home to us the wonderful truth behind the manger; because it is these images that bring real hope to our fallen world. In the war-torn world today, it is peace for which we most long. We have United Nations and peace-keeping forces and peace missions and so many other attempts to bring peace to our world. But the wars go on. How many wars are being fought even as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace?

God wants us to struggle constantly to bring about and maintain peace. But peace, unlike war, does not “break out,” as some people like to say. It is a precious, hard fought commodity, difficult to attain, even more difficult to keep. There will never be a definitive solution to the wars between nations, or within nations, or between people, until we have accepted the solution of the Prince of Peace, until it has become a reality in the hearts of the human race: “And he shall purify the sons of Levi.”

Until we have turned back to God, until he has, “like the refiner’s fire and the fuller’s alkali”, purified the sin from our hearts that sets us at war against each other, there will never be true peace on earth. All through Advent we are called to “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand,” to “prepare”, in our hearts, “a way for the Lord.” In Christmas we celebrate the birth of that hope amongst us, that living hope who died for us, that we might be purified.

Yes, if only we long for it with all our hearts, he shall “purify the sons of Levi.” And we are the sons of Levi. The child in the manger, the same child whom his mother presented in the Temple, is our only hope. But what a hope!

If we seek true peace, “a peace the world cannot give”, then we, too, will seek him out as the shepherds and the wise men did at the cradle, as Simeon did in the Temple. And the gift we will bring him is a humble and contrite heart. And we will seek his mercy, his love, his purification, that we might be true messengers of the Prince of Peace, that we too might go before him to prepare his way, that the hearts of all men might be changed. May it be so. And may his peace descend upon us all this Christmas, and may it spread out to all the earth, that he may truly be, in our hearts, the “Prince of Peace.”

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

We have all had the experience of waiting up for the late arrival of a guest. In the days before cell telephones, there was little else one could do except wait, and pray that the person concerned was all right. As the expected hour passes, still one waits, afraid to do anything else, or to go to bed, in case there is no one to welcome the guests when they arrive. There is the constant going outside to see if anyone is coming, the endless to-and-fro to make sure that the bed is turned back, the towels are fresh, the water in the kettle stays hot.

Eventually, just when everyone is nodding off, there is the sound of the vehicle stopping, the slamming of car doors, the crowding out the front door of the house to receive the travel-worn guest with cheerfulness, cups of tea or coffee, and a sympathetic ear for whatever misfortune was the cause of the delay. And relief and pleasure; the guest has finally come, the waiting is over; life can once more move forwards.

Last week we celebrated the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Church’s new year. The readings were very much concerned with watching and waiting for the Lord. In a nutshell, the message of last week’s readings is that, whatever signs we see of the Lord’s coming, God wants us always to be awake and watching, ready to receive him whenever he comes.

The Old Testament readings for this Sunday, in any year, sound rather like a civil engineering project; levelling hills, filling in valleys. One is reminded of the digging of the Panama canal or the building of the great Aswan dam. But one is also more specially reminded of the preparations which happen for a big occasion or the visit to a country of a very important foreign head of state: the building of great new highways, the clearing of unsightly messes alongside the new route, and so on. The visit of President Nixon to Moscow in 1976, the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, are two notable modern examples of whole cities being transformed for important occasions. Imagine how carefully we would prepare for a visit of Pope Francis to Bloemfontein; all of us, Church and City Fathers together.

The transformation of the wilderness spoken of in the Old Testament prophets is for them, as it is indeed for us, a preparation for the greatest visit of all; high mountains and valleys, some of them below sea level, being levelled out to make a straight road for the Coming of the Lord. God, in the words of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, “visits us like the dawn from on high…he has come to his people and set them free.”

John makes it clear to us that watching and waiting means “preparing the way of the Lord.” , making “the crooked straight and the rough places plain.” His message “Repent!” tells us that it is in the human heart that this preparation has to be made. All the hills of pride and self-righteousness have to be levelled. All the deep, dark valleys of sin have to be filled in. Each one of us needs to confront the big sins of our existence, and to bring them before God for healing.

There are mountains of pride, valleys of sin, crooked and rough places in the hearts of each one of us. Ultimately, when God comes, we will stand alone before him to be judged, and the others around us will have no part in that judgement; the responsibility is ours alone. It is our task to address, and through God’s grace, to deal with the sin and darkness within us. As we watch and wait for the Lord, let us persevere in the hard and difficult task of preparing our hearts for his coming; and when he comes, may he find hearts ready to receive him, a “straight highway through the desert” across which he may advance, to make his home with us forever.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

There is a very famous play by the British playwright Samuel Beckett called Waiting for Godot. In it, two characters spend their time sitting at the side of a road, waiting for someone called Godot to arrive. From the beginning of Act 1 to the end of Act 3, they sit there, idly and vainly, going round and round in circles in the same absurd conversation. At the end, they are left waiting as futilely as at the beginning. They have no idea who Godot is. They sometimes wonder whether they are really waiting for anyone at all. Yet there is nothing else for them to do but to sit around and wait in utter futility.

Life for an unbeliever is something very like this. Some years ago, my attention was drawn to the description, by a contemporary painter, of the message of his art: “My work attempts to express the sense of loneliness, of alienation and utter frustration felt by modern man, as he struggles to extract some kind of meaning from his apparently senseless existence.” Does this not sound just like the senselessness of the two characters in Waiting for Godot? Even the name of the person for whom they are waiting, Godot, sounds like a diminutive form of God.

There is an emptiness, an aching void, at the center of godless modern man. He is aware of this emptiness, and will go to any lengths to avoid it, or to fill it. Some find an escape in the oblivion of drugs or the brain-bashing rhythms of modern music in whichever form is current. Some seek to impose meaning on their lives through the strait-jacket of political ideology. Others seek an answer in exotic religious sects and offbeat mysticism, anything from astrology to witchcraft to worship of Gaia the earth-mother, the latest in a whole series of modern back-to-nature godlets. But the emptiness nevertheless persists. Godless modern man is waiting for something, but he knows not what. And he sees no hope, no meaning, because he does not know for whom or for what he is waiting. It is an empty waiting, dark with ignorance, bereft of hope, bleak with despair. Godless modern man is still waiting for Godot, and Godot, like tomorrow, never comes.

How different is the waiting of the Christian! The Christian inhabits the same world as godless modern man. He sees the same sorrows, the same suffering. He experiences the same evils, must watch his work corrupted and come to nothing in the same way. He knows, as surely as godless modern man, that there is something desperately wrong with this world of ours, something that urgently needs to be set right. He longs for the world to be changed, to be set right. All the ugliness, the loneliness, which besets godless modern man with such emptiness and despair, is known as surely to him. And yet, in the face of it all, the Christian is not beset with despair, but filled with an unquenchable hope. Ahead he sees not impenetrable darkness, but inextinguishable light. And the reason for this completely different response is simply explained; for the Christian is not waiting for Godot; he is waiting for God!

A Christian is not waiting for some vague manifestation of God; the Christian is waiting for God made Man amongst us. When the Christian waits for God, he waits for the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh who lived among us In the midst of sorrow, suffering, tragedy, even apparent meaninglessness in the world, the Christian has glimpsed the glory of the Lord, something of the inconceivable end he has in store for his creation. All the dark and ugly things we experience are things which the power of God overcomes, which he can even use for our good. And all of them ultimately make sense because we are waiting for a God who really is coming, a God whom we can and do know face to face. The God for whom we wait is a person, and he has come to save us.

So it is that the Christian waits with unquenchable hope for a God who comes. The darkness of this world is for us merely a shadow which will be banished forever when God sheds his glorious light upon us. It is significant that the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, is a book which practically explodes with a message of hope in the midst of disaster. And the climax of that book, in its final verse, is the cry "Come, Lord Jesus!" Let this be our hope, our message for this Advent. Let us not be a hopeless people, waiting in despair for a Godot who never comes. Rather, let us be a people brimming with hope and joy, our eyes fixed on the glorious future He has already prepared for us; let us be a people waiting - for God. Amen.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR CHRIST THE KING

“Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!” “Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!” These words begin the great Christ the King hymn we will sing at the offertory today. The feast of Christ the King was brought into being in 1934 by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas primas. Why would he do this in that particular year?

1934 was a fateful year in the world. Adolf Hitler had been in power as dictator for a year, and had established his complete authority over Germany. In the Soviet Union, Stalin had just completed the first Five-Year Plan to turn his country into a modern super-power, at the cost of uncountable lives and terrible economic and agricultural disaster, which left millions starving to death in a man-made famine. In Mexico, a terrible civil war was raging, leading to a tyranny which was hostile to the Church and persecuted and killed priests and lay people alike. Those who have read Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory will be familiar with this. 

In the East, both Japan and mainland China were likewise in chaotic situations and slipping into an authoritarianism controlled by powerful military interests. In all these cases, governments were taking on an authority and total power of an almost infallible character for themselves. The western democracies were either feeble in their response, as in Europe, or withdrawing from involvement in the world, as in the case of the United States.

Against this, Pius XII asserted the real and ultimate source of authority in the world, the Kingship of Jesus Christ, as the Irish constitution has it, “from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred.” All these dangerous movements which had arrogated such power to themselves are, in fact, subject to the Lord Jesus Christ. They rule by his authority, and are accountable to Him for all that they do, whether they acknowledge Him or not.

The readings allocated for today’s feast emphasise all this. In the first, the prophet Daniel has a vision of a “Son of Man” (a divine figure of human appearance) intervening directly from heaven in the affairs of human beings. In the second, Jesus appears, as the figure in Daniel, a heavenly being of unlimited authority and unstoppable power. Linking to this figure, who has been “pierced,” is the gospel, in which Jesus is presented as the Suffering Servant of God, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” whose authority is not of this world, but something greater and higher, despite his apparent powerlessness and helplessness in the hands of Pilate, who represented the apparently unstoppable power of the Roman Empire.

We should note that in the gospel Jesus speaks, not of his kingdom, but of his “kingship” or reign. Jesus is King, not of place or time, but wherever human beings have responded and turned to Him for salvation. Where He is loved and obeyed, where his power is uppermost in human hearts; this is his kingship. There is no earthly power, from the Roman Empire of his day to the powers-that-be and colossal economic forces in the contemporary world, that can defeat Him. And while it sometimes seems as though the victory is theirs, as long as He reigns in our hearts, the ultimate victory is his; and ours. To this hope we must all cling, no matter what comes our way; for we know that to Him belongs the victory and glory and the power, for ever and ever. “Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!”

Fr Phillip

REMEMBRANCE DAY AT CBC

The Cenotaph after the laying of wreaths.

On 11th November, St Joseph’s CBC celebrated Remembrance Day. The celebration is held in honour of all the deceased of the school. Its triple Cenotaph in front of the main building incorporates a monument to pupils, one to teachers and another to those who died serving their country in the Armed Forces. 

The celebrations included a votive Mass for All Souls, celebrated by Fr Phillip Vietri C.O., followed by a short memorial service at the school Cenotaph in which wreaths were laid and an extract from Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen read by Mr Vincent Daly, a teacher of long standing at the school. 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

REFLECTION FOR THE THIRTY THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

During the 1960s, group sharing became a common practice at conferences and “workshops”. The idea was taken up with gusto. Under the guidance of a “facilitator”, the discussion was carried out in such a way that everyone was able to contribute. Someone was chosen to “report back”, preferably with the “findings” of the group written up with multi-coloured Koki chalks on large sheets of blank newsprint specially provided for the purpose. The method generated course…after course…after course. And in the end, they all started to look exactly the same, whether the topic was the Holy Trinity or Icelandic cookery.

Why was this? It was because the method began to become more important than the actual discussion itself. When one came back one was frequently handed an “evaluation  sheet”. The questions on this “evaluation sheet” never asked what new insights or creative thoughts were produced by the group. This was presumed. In fact, the content of the discussion never seemed to matter much at all. What was important was whether everyone had had ample opportunity to express themselves, whether or not the “facilitator” had been encouraging of the quieter members, whether the discussion had been “non-judgemental” or “non-threatening”; and so on. What was important was that the method itself had been applied. Whether or not the method had engendered any meaningful discussion or conclusions seemed to be a non-question. It was all about the method, rarely about the content.

Jesus often has a similar problem with his co-religionists. For the Jewish people, with their lofty and unapproachable understanding of God, the Law was their only means of drawing near to him. Loving and obeying the Law was the bridge that drew one close to God. But the Law became so important  that it started to replace God in the religion of Israel. What was important was not whether the Law drew one closer to God so much as whether the Law in itself was applied. In fact, just as people who used the group-discussion method all too often showed signs of feeling superior simply because they were using the method, so did many of the Pharisees feel morally superior simply because they obeyed the Law.

Christians can also be guilty of this. We are privileged to live in a relationship with the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead. It is in this personal, living relationship with Jesus that our salvation lies. But how often do we try to feel superior by counting up the obligations we have fulfilled. By attending superior liturgies. By doing things rather than loving God and one another. What is important is not what we do for God, but how much we love him and offer our lives to him. He himself gave up everything for us.

It is God whom we love and serve, God as he has revealed himself to us in and through the living Lord Jesus. We need to give ourselves to him completely, to offer up our lives to him in service. But mostly, to let all things be paths to him, not ends in themselves. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION ON THE THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

ON BEING “THERE” FOR GOD

One of the problematic symptoms of modern Christianity is how often we unthinkingly and uncritically absorb the clichés of the modern secular world into our faith, even when these clichés are at odds with what we believe.

The first of these is “being there for us.” How many school pupils I have taught speak of their parents as “being there for us” whenever they want or need those parents. It is used of God, too. “God is always there for us.” The mind-set of this, if you think about it for even a moment, is that we get on with our busy lives while God sits around waiting for us to call on him when we have need of his services, rather like a love-sick boy or girl sitting next to the telephone, waiting for their significant other to call. Gone is the idea of living a life of service to God; gone, the idea of his constant presence in our lives, making us holy, guiding, protecting. God is merely there to fill in the gaps we can’t fill in for ourselves.

It would be truer to say that we need to be “there” for God. We need him rather than the other way round. We need to be aware of him, to await his presence in our lives. As Elijah the prophet said, “O rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him, and he will give thee thy heart’s desire. Commit thyself unto him and trust in him.” Seen in this light, nothing could be less true than that God is “there for us” in the modern meaning. Only in the sense that he loves us and is ever-present in our lives is this true. But it must not obscure the essential fact that it is we who must constantly seek his presence in our hearts.

Another cliché that we often absorb uncritically is the desire that other should “accept me for who I am.” This suggests that I am a static person who does not grow or change, and especially someone who does develop, “become,” so to speak. “Take me or leave me as I am; I’m not going to change,” is the eventual outcome of this. The fact that we have potentiality that must develop, sins that must be forgiven, is pretty much excluded by this line. But we are in a process of becoming what God wants us to become, not remaining trapped in what we are now. To accept this secular idea is in effect to refuse to change, to grow into God’s plan for us.

Finally, we are taught to “believe in ourselves”. However we may qualify this, it always ends up making us the centre of our own little universes. “We believe in one God,” begins the Creed. And in God alone we believe; to believe in anything less is to worship a false God. We should certainly have confidence that the gifts God has given us are real, and that with his help, they can be developed into the fullness of their promise. This preserves the link between us and God. The modern clichés separate us from Him, and isolate us within our own little worlds. But this is not what God wants. That is why he sent the Lord Jesus into the world, that we might know Him and love Him, that we might be drawn into a deep relationship with God, who alone can unlock our full potential, who alone can make us become what we were created to become.

And so: let us be there for God. Let us accept that we need to become what He wants us to become. And let us believe in him, who has revealed himself to us through Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to take away our sins, and rose from the dead to give us life, with all our hearts and minds.

Fr. Phillip

REFLECTION FOR ALL SAINTS

“Judge not, that you will not be judged.” How often do we hear people saying that we must never judge others.” And how we misunderstand the meaning of this particular saying of Jesus! Jesus is talking to the leaders of his time, who were strict observers of the very complex Law of God, who regarded themselves as morally superior for keeping it in its entirety, and who looked down upon people who did not follow their very strict interpretation, Jesus included. In fact, they were not judging, but condemning their fellows.

Judgement is something quite different. The Greek word for a judge is dikaios, which comes from the word for righteousness. In English, the word judge means someone who justifies. When someone has committed a crime, he is brought before a judge, who decides on a penalty which will make peace between the offender and the society he has offended. In the language of an earlier era, when a man, say, had served six months in prison for burglary, he was said to have “paid his debt to society”. The purpose of legal judgement, then, is not to condemn, but to make peace, to reform, to save a man from himself.

This is the sense in which judgement is to be found in Christianity. We have all fallen short of the glory of God; we have all offended Him by sinning against Him. But God does not desire our punishment or destruction. He loves us, and wants us to come back to him with all our heart, in sorrow for sin. With God, judgement is for the purpose of salvation. As the old translation of the Second Preface for weekdays has it, “In love you created man, in justice you condemned him, but in mercy you redeemed him.” Notice the two terms surrounding justice: love and mercy. And there is not even any debt to be paid; the Lord Jesus paid the debt for all sins of all people in all times when he died on the cross as a sacrifice for sin. God’s purpose is summed up beautifully in the story of the women caught in adultery as told in John’s gospel: “Woman, has no-one condemned you?” “No-one, sir.” “Then neither to I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

The same applies to us. Paul warns us about condemning in Romans 8. But judging? If God did not judge us, then his mercy and forgiveness would be meaningless, since there would be nothing to forgive. Judgement is for the purpose of love and forgiveness. Do parents not judge their children when they do wrong? But they do not condemn their children; rather, it is a step on the path to goodness, to healing a broken relationship. We have to recognise when someone has gone wrong, if we are to be a means of their finding the right path. We often condemn without forgiveness, because we want to be rid of a person or institution in our lives. To repeat; judgement is not condemnation, but a step on the road to peace and forgiveness. And it is not the first step, either. It is merely the middle step. We begin with love; we end with mercy. In between, whether about ourselves or another, judgement is merely a recognition that something is wrong, joined to a desire to put things right. And the first person we should judge is – ourselves! God loves us, and wants to show mercy towards us. This is how we should be, too. Let us put aside condemnation, and seek the good of each other in love. Then everything else will fall into place.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE 30TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Some years ago now, a famous actor, who seemed to have everything, fame, looks, popularity, p

ublicity, wealth, friends and charm, quite unexpectedly committed suicide. His reason? As he put it in his suicide note: “I was so bored.” What does it mean, to be so bored that life is not worth living? To have the world at one’s feet, and to find it bland and tasteless?

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus’ tells us in Matthew’s gospel. Consider first what salt means in our lives. Anyone who has been put on a low-salt diet will understand! Despite all the inventive substitutes science has offered, there is nothing to compare with good old-fashioned salt for bringing life and taste to food. Food without salt is about the most boring and bland thing one can imagine! Advertising agencies and business know well that it is one of the ingredients most responsible for the massive turnover and profit of the big fast food chains. Salt, literally, brings flavour and thus variety to life.

“You are the salt of the earth.” The disciple of Jesus has the same function in the world as salt has in food. Just salt brings out the fullness of flavour in food, so the disciple of Jesus is to bring out the fullness of meaning in the God’s creation. The world was created by God, and human beings can only really learn to understand, to love, to care for it if we become aware of the meaning and purpose with which God has invested it. When we grasp God’s plan for his creation, the world ceases to be a bland or indifferent place, and comes alive with colour, meaning and excitement. In the words of Gerald Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” This is at the heart of Jesus’ message.

“You are the salt of the earth.” It is God’s plan to reveal the purpose his creation through the person of Jesus Christ. And in founding his Church, Jesus is calls us to be members of his very own Body. We are to be his presence in the world, through which he reveals God’s presence to everyone. God wants us to be the means by which all men to see the glory, his glory, which shines out through creation, leading us beyond that which we see to the Creator himself. 

Do you see yourself as one through whom the “grandeur of God” is revealed to the world? One has the uncomfortable feeling that we can be our own worst enemy in this task. Another British poet, Swinburne, wrote of Jesus: “Thou hast conquered, o Pale Galilean, and the world has grown grey with thy breath.”

If this is the image the Church really projects, then we have much to answer for. For we have been given everything that God could possibly give us. We know the great Creator of all, who saw that all he had made was good; we have been shown how any ugliness, any dullness in the world is not part of the nature of the creation itself, but of the grey and dull ugliness of sin, which we have brought upon it; and we have been entrusted with the glorious news of its redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ “for us men and for our salvation.” We know that God’s plan is for a renewal of creation, a restoration beyond even its initial beauty and goodness, to something unimaginably beautiful and holy.

If we are to be the “salt of the earth,” we must fulfil our God-given task of communicating the “grandeur of God” to those around us. For we know that it is Hopkins’ glorious vision, rather than Swinburne’s grey and colourless one, that is the truth. If we fail in our vocation as bearers of this vision, if we do not become the means through which God reveals his purpose and plan, then we, too, have become less than useless, like salt which has lost its taste. May God bless each one of us, and may he truly make us, in word and deed, the “salt of the earth,” so that all men, in the words of the psalmist, might “taste and see that the Lord is good.” 

Amen.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE 29TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Paul is for a large number of Catholics a closed book. We are used to the Jesus of the Gospels, which are usually the Scripture of choice for Sunday homilies. But the dense, almost indigestible chunks of Paul that form the main content of the Sunday Second Reading? What does he really have to say to us?

It is hard for us to conceive that Paul’s letters predate even the earliest of the Gospels, Mark, by at least five years. Paul was the great missionary, the one who spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, throughout the known world of his time. The Church, which wrote the Gospels between about 60-95 AD, had already been brought to faith in Jesus Christ by Paul’s missions and, his missionary letters which date from about 51 AD, which is when his earliest one, 1 Thessalonians, was probably written. When the Gospels, which we rightly reverence specially amongst the books of the New Testament, were written, they were received into a Church which had already been formed and won over to Jesus Christ by the great missionary work of Paul.

Paul’s language is dense, often difficult. Like the rabbi he once was, he thinks and argues in circles, coming back to the same ideas over and over in the course of a single passage. Yet it is Paul who holds so many of the keys to our faith. The Protestant churches are far more at home with Paul than we are, and very often, when Paul is preached in the Catholic Church, it is a Protestant convert who does so.

For Paul, Faith and the Holy Spirit are closely linked, since it is the Holy Spirit who convinces us in faith, and gives us an understanding of the Scriptures. But this power and wisdom also brings us into salvation. By being convinced of the truth in Scripture through the Holy Spirit, we are saved. And for Paul, faith is not some vague kind of belief, like the modern idea of “believing in yourself”. It is faith in “Christ Jesus”. This faith, as we have described it, is what brings us to bear fruit, the fruit of “every kind of good work”. This is important: it is this profound conviction of faith in Jesus Christ that brings us to bear the fruit of good works, not the other way round.

Paul calls us, in the same way, to stand firm in our faith, to believe in the truths of faith we have been taught from our youth. He calls us to allow the Holy Spirit to empower us with utter conviction that Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, is Lord, and to be his unflinching witnesses in and out of season. He calls us to attend to the Scriptures that can teach us, refute error, correct us and discipline us.

If we are ever to the convince the world that Jesus is Lord, we have to believe it ourselves, and witness to it at all times. The world, though it might hate us, must be able to say of us, “they really believe in something” – or rather, “someone”. In the world in which we live today, it is time for us all to put aside the easy compromises we so often make, to lay down the exceptions to the Church’s teaching about faith in Jesus Christ which we reserve to ourselves. We all, lay people and priests, have to turn from our often half-baked faith and the indifferent, lukewarm witness it gives, and become, like Paul, utterly convinced. God will give us that gift of faith through the Holy Spirit, if we really ask him because we truly want this superlative gift he gives.

Let us all stand firm in that which have been taught, of which we are convinced. In the world in which we live, in the era in which we are called to witness, one which is not so different to Paul’s, that is our only hope.

Fr. Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE 28TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Today’s second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews, gives us a clear picture of the nature of the word of God. For God’s word is not just sounds with meaning, as is the language we use. When God speaks, things happen; the power of his words carry out what they promise.

This is one of the first lessons of Genesis: “God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light.” God creates through his all-powerful word. This is explained in some detail in Isaiah 55: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that for which I sent it.” In Hebrews, it becomes “sharper than a two-edged sword.” In other words, it becomes a word of judgement, by which truth and falsehood are separated and falsehood condemned.

Finally, “the Word became flesh, lived among us.” God’s word becomes a person, so that, in the words of Jesus to Philip, “he who has seen me has seen the Father.” Words communicate knowledge, and the Word of God which he reveals to us in Jesus is the fullness of his revelation to us. Beyond Jesus, God has nothing more to say to us, because in Jesus, he has said it all. The deeper our relationship with Jesus, the closer we will be to the Father and the more intimately we will know him.

Jesus, too is a the Word of Judgement. John tells us, in chapter 3 of his Gospel, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

This, in turn, tells us something about our response in faith to Jesus Christ. Faith leads to a judgement of salvation; unbelief to a judgement of damnation. Peter confirms this in his sermon on the first Pentecost Sunday, which is also the very first Christian sermon (Acts 2): “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved.” Pope Benedict XVI expressed this very powerfully in his instruction Dominus Iesus (The Lord Jesus). So important is salvation in Jesus Christ, he teaches, that even if someone who has never heard of Jesus Christ dies and gets to heaven, it is not because he is good or virtuous, but because the Lord Jesus died to take away his sins.

We are saved through faith in Jesus Christ. By this, the Word of God, Jesus, purifies us of all our sins and makes us fit to live with God forever. May we learn to know him more closely every day that in seeing him, we might see the Father, and live for all eternity with him.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE 26TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

In the Book of Numbers, from which we read today, the elders of Israel are given the gift of prophecy when summoned before the Tent of Meeting in the desert. When God gives the same gift to two men left behind in the camp, the elders’ immediate reaction is indignation: “Who do these fellows think they are to usurp what is our exclusive right?” It is left to Moses to give the divine answer. Firstly, if God has given these two men the gift, who are mere human beings to deny it? Secondly, far from limiting the gift of prophecy and making it something small and exclusive, Moses expresses the wish that it were given to everyone. Moses’ longing, which reflects God’s action, is for universality rather than exclusivity.

There is a similar, even stronger message in today’s gospel reading. Jesus has called the Twelve and given them certain powers, including that of exorcism, the casting out of demons. When they find a man who is not a disciple doing the same, they are outraged, and want to put a stop to his activities; they, after all, are Jesus’ appointed disciples. He immediately redirects their thinking; the important issue is not who is “in,” but who is doing Jesus’ work. The fact that this man is not one of Jesus’ disciples does not prevent him serving Jesus. Jesus goes further to explain that the smallest service done for him, or in his name, is still truly an act of service to him.

Once again, the divine call is not to exclusivity and division, but to universality and solidarity. It is no accident that the incident around which this story is based is an exorcism; the clear message is that Satan will not be defeated if those who claim to serve God spend more time fighting and vying with each other than in fighting against the evil one. By stopping the outsider from performing his exorcism, the disciples are preventing the war against Satan from being fought!

This is a vital lesson for us today. In an increasingly secular world, which more and more is coming out into an open contempt for God and his kingdom, it is vital for Christians to stand together against the foe, and to stand united. We cannot allow the Church to be fragmented into little exclusive groups, each claiming to represent the real truth. We cannot refuse to work together with other Christians who stand as squarely against the foe as we. No-one who truly does the will of God can be against him. In Jesus’ own words: “He who is not against me is with me.” As long as we allow ourselves to be divided by our little human exclusivities, Satan’s kingdom will triumph over us.

But we must stand fast, and stand together. Within and without the Church, we must seek to co-operate with all who love the Lord Jesus and serve in his name. We need to work together; we need especially to pray together. May God, who loves us, who died for our sins and rose from the dead to give us life, free us from all evil and unite us in Christ for his own kind purposes. Amen.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE 25TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Have you ever noticed how we commit the same sins over and over again, rather than different ones all the time? There is a reason for this. Sin leaves its mark upon us, rather as red wine does when spilled on a white tablecloth. The cloth can be washed clean, but the stain remains. It takes a lot of rubbing and stain remover to get the cloth white again. In the same way, the stain that sin leaves on us has to be scrubbed away, or it will cause us to commit the same old sins over… and over… and over…

The Church has traditionally identified seven of these “stains” of sin. Three have to do with love of others’ harm: pride, where we push ourselves up at others’ expense; envy, where we hate another for having something we want but do not possess; and wrath, uncontrolled anger directed towards another, which can be active or passive (sulking). There are three in which we turn our love away from God himself and towards the objects he has created; lust, gluttony and covetousness, which is longing for the possessions or gifts that others possess. Between these comes sloth in which, though we don’t actually do something bad, we somehow never get around to doing what we should. As Philip Neri put it, “When shall we begin to do good?”

How can we deal with these sins? From earliest times, Israel had three practices which the Church has accepted into its life; fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Fasting means taking control of our bodies’ incessant demands for comfort and indulgence. By saying “No!” to our physical side, we take control of our lives. In prayer, we turn away from self and allow our relationship with God to be restored. In almsgiving, we turn away from self to restoring our relationship with those around us. All of these are aimed at turning us away from turning our lives inwards on ourselves, and outwards towards self-forgetfulness, love of God and love of neighbour. And in doing this, we are making it possible for God to enter our lives and to scrub away at the stain of sin within us.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus draws his disciples away from envy and pride towards humility and self-forgetfulness. He sets the relative unimportance of a small child against the desire for self-importance among his disciples. He calls us to do the same. We should be able to rejoice in the gifts God has given us, and at the same time to rejoice in those of others, even when their gifts are greater than ours. But we need, too, to live out those familiar but forgotten old practices of fasting, prayer and almsgiving as a path to holiness. In the words of David, “O purify me, then I shall be clean. O wash me until I am whiter than snow.” May David’s longing become a reality in the lives of each one of us.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE 24TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

This Sunday’s First Reading is from the Prophet Isaiah. But it is a rather special reading for Christians. To understand this, we need to take a brief look at what is the longest book of prophecy in the Old Testament. Isaiah falls quite neatly into three sections: Chapters 1-39, chapters 40-55 and 56-66. These are often, for convenience, referred to as First, Second and Third Isaiah.

First Isaiah contains the famous prophecies of the Messiah’s birth, of “Emmanuel; a name that means ‘God-with us’”. We all recognise passages such as “A maiden is with child…for unto us a child is born, a son is given…and they shall call him ‘Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’” We hear these words every year at Christmas time. Third Isaiah contains some of the glorious readings we hear after Christmas on feasts such as the Epiphany, with the visit of the Magi, in passages that remind us of the Star of Bethlehem: “Arise! Shine out! For your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!”

But Second Isaiah is quite different. It contains, amongst much else, four Songs of the Servant of the Lord, which increasingly reveal him as a Suffering Servant. The fourth of these we always read on Good Friday, and its Christian application is unmistakable: “A man of sorrows and familiar with suffering…so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human…on him lies a punishment that brings him peace, and through his wounds we are healed…”

Today’s first reading is the third of these Songs of the Servant of God. It presents him as being falsely accused before the authorities of his people, despised, insulted and humiliated, but nevertheless confident that whatever he has to suffer, God will ultimately vindicate him.

Take up your Missal when you have a quiet moment, and read through this passage slowly. For a Christian it resembles so much the trial of Jesus before the Council of his own people; for he was not tried by foreigners, but by those who should most have understood whom he is, who should have recognised him when he came, but did not do so; his own people, and their leaders at that, who really should have known better.

But we should also look to ourselves. When taxed that he had portrayed the Jews as Christ-killers in his film The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson replied, “If I were to say who crucified Jesus, I’d begin with these,” and held up his own hands. In the film it is, in fact, his own hands that hammer the nails into Jesus’. The leaders of Israel may have been instrumental in securing Jesus’ crucifixion, but we must never forget that he is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And that means our sins; all of them.

Yes; it is our sins that nailed him to the cross. But God does not hold this against us. He wants us to come to repentance for sin, to turn back to him and seek the forgiveness that Jesus alone has won for us by his death and resurrection. Failure to do this empties the cross of Christ of meaning in our lives. “Seek the Lord while he is still to be found!” counsels the same prophet Isaiah. There is nothing more important in our lives. In the prayer of Jesus to be found in the lines of poetry affixed by the composer Gustav Mahler to the beginning of the last movement of his Third Symphony, “Father, look upon these wounds of mine. Let not one of your creatures be lost to you!” May it be so.

Fr Phillip.