REFLECTION FOR EASTER SUNDAY

“He is risen! He is Lord!” For those two simple statements, the Christians of the early Church were prepared to die. They summarise, as nothing else can, the reason that for those first martyrs, death was preferable to denying Jesus Christ. What is it that made these words so important to them?

First, the Resurrection. We have grown used, even in our religion, of thinking of human beings as souls inhabiting bodies. We think of ourselves as really being the soul, and of the body as being almost something disposable. The Jews thought very differently. For them, “…the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2) In other words, we are not a soul in a body, but a living body. We cannot exist without a body. The Jews recognised this in death, where God, as they expressed it, took back the breath of life, and man returned to the dust from which he came. This is precisely what happens in the grave.

As such, in order for us to live for ever, there has to be a resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead ended the power of death over us. But we will enjoy eternal life in the body, though it will not be a perishable body as we know it now, but an incorruptible, glorious body. Paul has much to say about this in chapter 15 of his first letter to the Corinthians. The resurrection is a sine qua non for us, for, as Paul puts it, “…if Christ has not risen from the dead, then we are the most unfortunate of all people.” Literally, without the resurrection, there is nothing.

But the resurrection has done something more. In rising from the dead, Jesus has become all powerful, and creation has become subject to him. In the language of scripture, God has “put all things under his feet.” He is therefore the Lord of our lives, who can free us from sin and make us fit to live forever with God. In the words of Peter, “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved.” (Acts 2)

The Jewish understanding of human life, which is also the Christian’s, means that we depend upon God for our very existence at every moment of our lives. In order to live with him forever, we need to experience a bodily resurrection. This is only possible because Jesus Christ himself died for our sins and rose from the dead to destroy death and win eternal life for us. And because the ultimate power over us is death, by destroying death he has become the Lord of all creation, for there is nothing over which he does not have authority by virtue of the power of his resurrection. If we acknowledge his as our Risen Lord, and live our lives for him alone, we are promised a share in that glorious eternal life. May this be the future of us all. We wish each and every one of our parishioners a very blessed Easter.

The Fathers and Brothers of the Oratory.

MASS TIMES FOR EASTER 2016

REFLECTION FOR PALM SUNDAY

After all the fasting, prayer and almsgiving; after all the preparations of Lent; after forty days of denial, as we participate in Jesus’ sojourn in the desert, we come, at last, to the great saving events of Holy Week, with which Jesus ended his earthly life and mission. We see him proceeding triumphantly into Jerusalem. We see him disputing with the leaders of his people. He keeps his place of residence secret and uses a series of James Bond-like passwords and hidden locations, so that he can celebrate the Passover with his disciples before his Passion. He washes their feet. He prays alone during his Agony in the garden. He is arrested, tried, scourged, crowned with thorns; and then crucified. He dies on the cross, and like any other human, is buried.

Jesus carried an immeasurable burden on his shoulders. But he did not do this without support. All through his earthly ministry, his terrible suffering and death, his Father was close to him. And throughout that ministry, he was sustained by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit within him. The vestments for Palm Sunday are red, and red is the colour of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who sustains those who bear witness to Christ, frequently at the cost of their lives. They are called martyrs, and the word martyr means “witness”. All this is why we call this particular day Passion Sunday as well as Palm Sunday.

Passion comes from the Latin word for suffering. It carries the implication that things happen to us or control us, rather than the other way round. We become passive in the face of feelings or events. When we feel strong emotions that sometimes lead us to lose control of our actions, we speak of being in the grip of passions. We speak of passionate love, a love so great that it consumes us - that it dominates and controls our lives. We suffer these things, meaning that they happen to us rather than that we control them.

The Passion of Jesus was something that happened to him. He surrendered control of his life to the earthly powers who brought him to his terrible suffering and death. He did this willingly, knowing that it was the will of his Father, that it was the only option for the human race that he should die, taking our sins on his shoulders. The Creed puts it like this: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate.” But we must recall that it was his choice, and the will of his Father: “You would have no power over me were it not given to you from above,” he tells the same Pontius Pilate. But Jesus does not allow earthly powers to triumph. He surrenders his life to them so that he may defeat them by rising from the dead. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

There are times when earthly powers seem to triumph, when we appear powerless in the face of them, when we seem to have no choice but to yield to them. But we must never believe them to have the final say. Not only did Jesus have the ultimate victory over them by rising from the dead, but in the very act of defying God by killing his Son, they were actually carrying out God’s will. We can never grasp the fullness of God’s plan for his creation. But we can be assured of one thing: “He that doth endure to the end shall be saved,” as Paul expresses it. If we remain faithful to him despite all, we will share in his ultimate victory over sin and death.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

An Irish professor who taught me at St John Vianney seminary in Pretoria, loved referring to Mrs Thatcher as “Margherita speciosa.” This phrase, which is Latin for “the pearl of great price,” refers to the parable found in Luke’s Gospel about the merchant who finds a pearl so precious that he is prepared to sell everything that he owns in order to possess it. It echoes strongly Jesus’ saying, “Store up treasures for yourself in heaven…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be.”

It is in such terms that Paul refers to Jesus Christ. Take a careful look at the language he uses in today’s Second Reading from his letter to the Church at Philippi: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things (how like the merchant this sounds), and count them as refuse (literally, dung) in order that I may gain Christ…” In Paul, even the pearl of great price pales into insignificance next to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Paul, before his conversion, was a rabbi, and the strictest of rabbis. “As far as the Law is concerned, I was perfect,” he says of the punctilious way in which he observed every one of its decrees. But the Law was a series of regulations. Its aim, according to the Book of Leviticus, was, in God’s words, for his people to “be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

But Paul became convinced that, while the Law could say what was right and what was wrong, it did not have the power to make us holy. This had to be done by the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who “takes away the sin of the world.” And Paul speaks very much, not of knowing about, but of knowing personally, the Lord Jesus. He speaks of being “in Christ,” a personal relationship of the closest kind. We are reminded of Peter’s first sermon, when he says of Jesus, “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved.” For Paul, Jesus is everything, and as in the case of the merchant and the pearl of great price, there is nothing more precious than Jesus, for whom Paul has “accepted the loss of everything.”

How precious is Jesus to you? If, as Peter tells us, “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved,” then are you able to accept the loss of everything if only you can have Christ? Is there anything you would not be prepared to lose if only you can have Jesus Christ? These are big and important questions to be answered as we draw close to our celebration of his suffering and death during Holy Week and Easter. For us, Jesus accepted the loss of everything on the cross. Are we prepared to do the same in order to gain him – for ever?

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

One of the great ancient Greek stories is that of Orestes. He was the son of Agamemnon, the King of Argos, an ancient Greek city. While Agamemnon is away at war, he sacrifices his oldest daughter to the gods in order to assure victory. After his return in triumph, the queen slaughters Agamemnon in his bathtub. She sends Orestes far away to prevent him taking revenge. The only child left is his daughter Elektra, nursing an unquenchable thirst to avenge her father’s death.

While all this has been happening, the gods have punished the city of Argos by allowing its inhabitants to be tormented by the Furies, bloodthirsty creatures with long teeth and nails. For fifteen years, the city suffers at their hands, until Orestes returns to avenge his father’s death. Helped by his crazy sister, he manages to kill Clytemnestra and her lover.

But at the end of it all, a strange thing happens. The Furies leave the citizens of Argos and attach themselves to Orestes. As he flees, he takes them with him, thus freeing the city from the terrible nightmare they have suffered. Orestes has finally liberated them from the curse they have suffered for so long.

It is a grim and bloodthirsty story of treachery and revenge. But it is also a story of fall and redemption. Yet despite the fact that we feel a need to see justice done, we are appalled to see it inflicted as revenge on a mother at the hands of her own son. Though Orestes is innocent of all the terrible deeds done by the others, and though he takes the suffering of the citizens on his own shoulders, we cannot help feeling that he has lost his innocence through the murder of his own mother. Even as the saviour of his people, Orestes is hardly like them in all things but sin.

Orestes certainly takes the sufferings and sins of his people on himself; but he does it by revenge and the shedding of blood. How different is our Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world, “a man like us in all things but sin!” His means of redemption is not retribution, but forgiveness. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” is his prayer, even as he hangs dying on the cross.

Orestes redeems his people by accident; his drawing off the Furies from Argos is a mere side-effect, the unintended consequence of his retribution. Jesus, from the beginning, has intended to redeem his people, and has done it by voluntarily taking their sins on himself, and of paying the price for their sins himself. Orestes achieves his unintended redemption of his people through a crime of blood. Jesus’ act of redemption is completely free of any such bloodletting; it is his own blood, rather than that of his enemies, which is shed. And he remains silent, like “a sheep dumb before its shearers, never opening its mouth,” rather than lift his hand or voice in the slightest way against those who were responsible for his suffering, and for whom he was suffering. He is truly the spotless “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

If we cannot see the uniqueness and the necessity of the salvation offered us by God through Jesus Christ, how will we ever convince others that they must believe in Him? In an age when, more than ever, people are coming to believe that “we’re all basically just the same” and that “there’s no real difference between religions; we all believe in the same God,” is it not more than ever incumbent upon us to show that we are not all the same, and that any other religion is indeed very different to redemption in Christ?

For there really is no other name by which we can be saved. And if we can only see it and believe it, we will become the instruments by which many others will come to believe in his name. 

Amen.

Fr. Phillip