ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: CORPUS CHRISTI - 2017

From our earliest days as Catholics, whether from the cradle or as adult converts, we have been taught that the Body and Blood of Christ which we receive from the altar are but shadows and sign of the heavenly reality that we one day hope to experience. The Eucharist is without doubt the most powerful of all realities for a devout Catholic. But how closely in fact do we relate our faith in the Real Presence with the actual person of Jesus?

            The Eucharist brings us face to face in an encounter with a living person; the person of Jesus Christ. He once walked the earth amongst us. He taught with authority. He healed. He drove out demons from the possessed. He showed power and authority over nature when he multiplied the loaves and fishes or calmed the storm at sea. He even, incredibly, had the power to raise people from the dead. Most wonderfully of all, he, the Son of almighty God, was able to empty himself of all his power and authority, become a humble human being like ourselves. He was able to place himself in our power, to suffer at our hands and die on our behalf and to rise from the dead, breaking the power of the one thing that humans fear above all and cannot avoid; the inescapable power of death over us, which before him was the one certainty of our human existence.

            All this was done by someone to whom we could reach out, whom we could touch as surely as we could reach out and touch the person sitting beside us in this church; someone with whom we could speak, whom we could know and love as surely as we can know and love anyone on this earth. But how can we encounter someone who lived so long ago, who as a being of flesh and blood has so long passed from our existence, beyond our knowing him as his contemporaries know him? That is the question to which Corpus Christi supplies an answer.

            When Jesus passed through death and was raised in the Spirit, he passed beyond mere mortal existence. He moved into a realm of eternity which we can scarcely grasp. His glorified risen body was no longer bound by time and space so that, through the same Spirit who raised him from the dead, he is able to make himself present to us, to live amongst us, at any time and at any place in the reality of our existence. He is always near to us, wherever we are and whenever.

            One of the ways in which he comes to us is in the Eucharist. In it, he gives himself to us as he gave himself to his disciples at the Last Supper. In the Eucharist, we sit at table with him as surely as the Twelve did in Jerusalem two millennia ago. That event is as alive to us now as it was then; and it is made possible because his risen, glorious body is no longer bound by time and space. In our hearts, we understand this when we receive Holy Communion at Mass.

            But the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus are not ends in themselves. We worship a person, a living Lord. And it is he for whom we must earnestly search, whom we must discern in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a living link that brings us face to face with Jesus, and encounter between us and the living Lord who has destroyed for us death, the greatest of all our enemies, and who makes us fit for eternal life with God. He is waiting for us in that encounter. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” he says. “If anyone opens to me, I will enter and sit down to table with him.” That is exactly he wants to do in the Eucharist. And the door that we must open is that of our hearts. Let us welcome him thus into our lives; today and henceforth.

Fr Phillip

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: TRINITY SUNDAY - 2017

This beautiful image of the Holy Trinity is to be seen in the Trinity Dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C., USA.

We read in the 11th chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, the following words:

            "O the depth

            of the riches

            and wisdom

            and knowledge

            of God;

            how impossible to understand his judgements and

            how difficult to follow his ways.

            For who knows the mind of the Lord?

            Or who could be his counsellor?

            Or who could give him anything,

            and have to be paid back by Him?

            For from him

            and through him

            and in him

            exist all things;

            To him be glory through the ages, Amen."

Trinity Sunday is by tradition one of the days on which Christians of the various churches come together to pray for Christian unity.  "God is three, yet God is one," so the ancient formula goes. Surely, many ask,  this is a sign of unity in diversity for the many different denominations of the Christian Church?

Would that it were that simple! for the division of Christianity is a countersign, a sad reminder that we are sinners. But three-ness-in-oneness is an unfathomable mystery of God. There must be thousands of ways through which this three-ness-in-oneness has been explained. Even musicians have tried. When the organist strikes a chord, it consists of many single notes played together.  But there is still only one chord, so that that chord, a single sound, is both one and many. So is the three-in-one God, sublime and serene in his majesty. In Church music there are often many groups of voices, male and female,  high and low,  singing together at once. But there is only one choir, so that many voices, interplaying and combining the same melody in many ingenious and varied ways, speak in vigorous concord and perfect unity. Thus is God in his creation, the Father, Son and Spirit ceaselessly at work, never in repose, yet one in purpose and nature.

But whatever the model we use to explain the Trinity, or three-in-oneness of God, its nature remains eons beyond our grasp. The very word "Trinity" is an absurdity, for what is a "Tri-unity"?  Though we are called to know God, who reveals himself to us, His three-ness-in-oneness will remain forever beyond our grasp. The divine mathematics of 1+1+1=1 is a reality which bursts asunder the reality within the grasp of our senses. It lives intangibly as an article of faith at the very borders of our intuition.

Paul the Apostle speaks truly when he refers to the "depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of the Father." For the Jewish mind depths were the bottom of the sea, and the seas were the remnants of the chaos which preceded the creation, and the only being who controlled the depths was God himself, who had populated then with great sea monsters with which He could "play." The Greek word for depths, bathos, calls to our mind a picture which is remarkably similar though seen through a different window; the window of the bathyscaphe, one of the earliest deep sea diving vehicles, through which we saw visions of the incomprehensible creatures living at those tremendous depths, surviving under vast pressures in the inky darkness at the very bottom of the oceans. It is a world beyond our reach, unless it is somehow made open to us.

But our faith must start with the single most important fact of God's Revelation, the crux without which the Old Testament, indeed the whole Bible, falls apart; that God is One. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one," says the creed of Israel in the book of Deuteronomy. "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might and with all your understanding." We do not worship a multiplicity of gods; we worship One God. However we might encounter God, in whatever form, he is the One God, the Only God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Redeemer, the One who brings all things to fulfilment. He is the Lord. Before all other articles of Faith, we confess in our worship, "I believe in One God." There can be no other foundation for our Faith.

Yet we encounter God in a threefold way. We are aware of him as One who not only creates, but who cares for and sustains his creation, who is intimately involved with it. This protecting, providing God has revealed himself as a Father. It is an image of God within our grasp. But the God who identified himself to Israel as a Father was still a remote, other God even to look upon whom meant death. He manifested himself in earthquake, fire, thunder, lightning and smoke. He inspired terror. Israel's link with him was his Law, which he gave to them.

But God wanted to reveal himself to us more intimately, more approachably. He did this through the person of Jesus, the "radiance of his glory and the exact likeness of his nature." He did this so that we "might see and know in him what we see and know in Christ." Jesus was revealed to us as the Son, and in Jesus' sharing of the Father's nature, authority and purpose, his son-ship is made clear to us. But the Son is not revealed as merely a human person with some of the attributes of God. He is revealed as partaking in the very nature of God the Father. "Know that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me." "The Father and I are one." The Son is God after the nature of the Father, yet he is distinct from the Father.

When Jesus in turn speaks of sending the Spirit, he affirms the distinctness of Father and Son; he then speaks of the Spirit as a distinct from both of them. The language he uses leaves us in no doubt that in speaking of the Spirit he is speaking of a person, not merely some vague active force of God.

The language of John in particular confronts us with Father, Son and Spirit as distinct persons. It is the Spirit, blowing where he wills throughout time and space, the life and breath of God's Church, who makes the historical Jesus present to us here and now. And it is the Lord Jesus, living within us, who shows us the Father. In another context, we speak of the Father as Creator; the Son as Redeemer; the Spirit as Fulfiller.  We are confronted with three distinctive experiences of God, through three distinct Persons. And yet we are to believe that God is one. How are we to grasp this mystery which none can explain?

It was just this mystery which caused the Fathers of our ancient faith to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity. "God is Three in Person, yet God is One in nature," they said, throwing up their hands in despair of ever comprehending. This is the clue to our own understanding. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an ending, not a beginning. Having encountered the One God as Father, Son and Spirit, what else is there to say? But the fact that we cannot hold the two teachings together without diminishing either the oneness of God or the distinctness of the Father, Son and Spirit, does not mean that God cannot. It is at this point that well known cry of our old Irish seminary professors, "'Tis a mystery!" acquires its deepest meaning. We can grasp the Oneness of God, since our Faith depends on it. We can grasp the distinctness and equality of Father, Son and Spirit, since this is the experience of our Christian lives. Having grasped them, we need to hold them as individual truths, affirming the fullness of both, without troubling ourselves as to how they fit together, since we will not harmonise the two truths without diminishing one of them.

We need to be like a blindfolded tightrope walker, crossing the Niagara Falls on a single-wheeled bicycle, juggling one large ball in the left hand and three smaller ones in the right. As long as he moves forwards and keeps all the balls in perfect motion, he will not lose his balance. Let him drop just one, and he will overbalance and plunge to his death. The doctrine of the Trinity is something like this.

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul..." There is a depth of wisdom in that ancient Hebrew creed. God is One, and He is the Only God, and he is the God we worship. Whether we understand his deepest mysteries or not, we are called to love him with all that is within us, and to keep his word. In this way, he will make his home within us, and bring us ultimately to make our home within him. Our end is to live with him forever, to exist for all eternity within his depths, to gaze upon him and to contemplate his impenetrable riches and wisdom and knowledge. Then his three-ness-in-oneness will no longer matter, for we shall simply know him as he is, and that knowledge will be beyond anything we can imagine now. Let us then praise the Living God, the one and only God whom we adore; for "from him and through him and in him exist all things. To him be glory through the ages.  Amen."

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: PENTECOST - 2017

Have you ever wondered about the shape of the bishop’s mitre? Why should he wear such an odd headdress when he leads us in worship? This, and many other things, go to making up and reflecting the meaning of the Solemnity of Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit descended, two tongues of flames descended upon the head of each Apostle. The two points and red lining of the mitre remind us of this. They also remind us (and the bishops!) that they are the successors of the Apostles, tasked in the world with being first and foremost, witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in all times and places.

            The events of Pentecost also bring to mind those of the Tower of Babel. There, human beings tried to climb to heaven without God. They were so affected that each group or tribe spoke a different language and could not understand the others. They scattered over the earth in order to avoid warring against each other. This great parable from Genesis reminds us in unequivocal terms that without God as the centre of all things, there can never be unity or peace amongst men. Pentecost, when all those present heard the Apostles as though they were speaking their own language (with Galilean accents!) is a reversal of Babel. By destroying sin and restoring life, Jesus destroys the separation of Babel and restores that peace and unity – something that He alone can do.

            The Preface for Pentecost, which we hear at Mass today, expresses it like this: “…you bestowed the Holy Spirit today on those you made your adopted children by uniting them to your Only Begotten Son. This same Spirit, as the Church came to birth, opened to all peoples the knowledge of God and brought together the many languages of the earth in profession of the one faith.” Could it be any clearer that real unity comes through the work of the Holy Trinity, not that of the United Nations or the scattering of modern secular “peacemakers.”

            But perhaps the most miraculous event of Pentecost was the crowds themselves, who listened to Peter. They were Jews from every corner of the Roman Empire, who had come to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. For many of them, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Passover was a celebration that lasted “a week of weeks” or fifty days. This was, literally, the last day of the feast, and no doubt many who heard Peter’s sermon were having a final look around at all the famous sights of Jerusalem. If you were to draw arrows on a map from Jerusalem to the places from which they came which are listed in Acts 2, those arrows would point away in every direction. And we are told that on that day, two thousand were added to the number of Christians, mostly people who would be returning to their widespread, far-flung homes.

            Two thousand baptised Christians moving out into the known world in every direction, within twenty-four hours of the coming of the Holy Spirit, many of whom had seen the death of the Saviour!  One cannot but think of Jesus’ words to his apostles, “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News…” and of the words of the prophet Malachi, that “…in every time and in every place, incense may be offered up unto my Name, says the Lord.” The proclamation of the Good News by Peter, and thus by those two thousand converts, that “He is risen…He is Lord…He has ascended…He will return…repent and be baptised,” is still Jesus’ commission to us today. It is through us that Jesus must be made known. As the Holy Spirit sent those first converts and Apostles out in every direction, so may he send us out today to proclaim the same Good News “to the whole world.”

Fr Phillip

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION 2017

When a beloved relative departs after a visit, they might travel by aircraft to their destination. We watch the plane taxi to the runway, take off and lift into the sky. How quickly it becomes just a small dot in the heavens, before it passes beyond the clouds and vanishes from our sight. We know that the same plane, flying away from us, exists beyond our sight, and that the person we have seen off is still flying in it, even though we see it no longer. And we know that if that person visit us again by air, we will see the plane reappear out of the sky in very much the same way as it departed.

Jesus’ Ascension is very much like this. When he leaves his disciples on earth, he makes two comforting promises: that he will prepare a place for them in heaven, his home, and that he will return to take them back with him, never to be separated from him again. The separation caused by his Ascension will be temporary; and while they wait for him, they are charged with spreading the Good News of his death, Resurrection and Return to the whole world, so that when he does return, there will be many whom he will take with him into his eternal kingdom.

This promise is for us as well. If we love him and long for him, he will prepare a place for us. But as with his Apostles, he expects us to share the Good News with those around us. How we speak, how we live; how our witness draws others to Jesus; all this is part of the way that we prepare for eternal life with him. Salvation, heaven, are not gifts given to us for ourselves alone; we are to be the means by which others are brought to God. As we go about our busy daily lives, let us keep this thought in mind. Through our actions may many others be brought to Jesus, that he may prepare a place for them as well as us.

Fr Phillip.