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.

REFLECTION FOR THE 23RD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Some years ago it was fashionable to seek human explanations for the miracles of Jesus. For example, according to this kind of thinking, there was not really a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes when Jesus fed the five thousand. What happened was that Jesus persuaded the crowd to be unselfish and to share what they had already brought with them.

But this hardly squares with the reactions of Jesus’ disciples, or of the crowd. The people recognised the Messianic power of Jesus to provide in plenty and wanted to make him king by force, so that Jesus had to escape from them. Clearly, the crowd’s strong reaction is not the consequence of a mere exhortation to share on Jesus’ part; it is the response to something tremendous which actually happened, something so tremendous as to provoke their extreme reaction.

These expectations of the Messianic age are to be found in the Old Testament long before Jesus’ time. The people of Israel expected that, when the Messiah came, there would not be only miracles, but a complete transformation of the earth as they knew it: “…waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

This is something far more than the human miracles with which today’s Old Testament reading begins. It is nothing less than the restoration of Paradise, the Garden of Eden, replacing the hot, sandy deserts which were are still the  familiar surroundings of the Middle East. It is the vision of a new earth, a new creation. God does not just restore to Israel its kingdom; he returns earth to the condition in which it was before the Fall.

In Jesus, this becomes a new heaven as well as a new earth. John, in the book of Revelation, sees this in a glorious new Jerusalem; he sees it, in fact, as a wedding, with the new Jerusalem as the Bride and the Lamb, Jesus himself, as the bridegroom. Heaven is joined to earth in Jesus, and God lives permanently amongst men, their light in place of sun and moon, their Temple in place of stone buildings.

In Jesus, the miraculous cannot be limited to the kind of little human gestures described in the first paragraph of this reflection. God has as his vision the transformation of the whole creation into something new. He will transform our hearts, too, making us fit to live in this new creation. Let us take heart, then. God is not about to make a few little adjustments in order to make our present world a better or nicer place; he plans a new world, a transformed world, a world so beautiful and good that it is beyond our powers to imagine it.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE 22ND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

In the Old Testament, the Law is everything. God calls Israel to be his chosen people, his Light to the World. But God is so holy that for a sinful human to look upon him means death. He manifests himself in thunder, lightning, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. The reaction of his people is to throw themselves upon their faces on the ground for fear of looking upon him. How, then, did this totally holy God communicate with his people?

He did it by giving them a Law. “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy,” is its essence. By obeying this Law, his people become pleasing to him. He made his presence felt in the Tent of Meeting in the middle of the Israelite camp, where the leaders and elders could consult with him. God intended his Law to bring his people to holiness. By living its provisions, their hearts could be changed, they could achieve the sanctity he desired for them.

But the Law, unfortunately, degenerated into an outward observance. People did what it said, but did not allow it to change their hearts or their lives. And gradually it became less and less influential amongst God’s people. The prophets at first thought to bring Israel back to God’s Law, his Covenant with them. Later, they came to realise that the Old Covenant had broken down irretrievably, and that their only hope was a New Covenant. Of this New Covenant, Jeremiah said, “Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts.” And Ezekiel: “I will take out of your chest your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and cause you to walk in my commandments.”

The New Covenant, which Christians know as the one sealed with the Blood of Christ, who died to take away our sins and rose from the dead to bring us eternal life, is one signalled by repentance and baptism. It is inside us from the very beginning of our Christian lives. A change of heart; that is what Jesus requires of us. He has strong words for his contemporaries in today’s gospel: “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…you leave the commandments of God, but hold fast to the commandments of men.”

Jesus wanted the actions of humans in their religious observances to lead to a change of heart, not mere external observances. For a Christian to do this is even worse than for Jesus’ contemporaries, the Pharisees, because we know better. For a Christian, the most fundamental act of worship is a turning to God from sin, a change of heart. Our religious observances count for nothing if they do not lead to this.

As we worship God in this cathedral today, let our minds turn to this powerful reality; that he really can and wants to change us, that he can place his laws, his commandments into our hearts if we invite him into our lives. Let us do this, and leave this place today as changed persons, filled with his love, seeking holiness and ready to do his will in all things.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE 21ST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Do you remember, as a young schoolchild, being given an assignment for the following week; how far away it seemed? There was so much time before the task had to be handed in; there was no hurry. And then, suddenly, it was the evening of Wednesday and the assignment was due on Thursday morning, and there just was not enough time to do it justice. So, either you had to make a lame excuse as to why it was not done and face the consequences, or face the equally unappetising consequence of a poor mark for a rushed job. Did you ever wish, in such a situation, that you had not wasted the time of the previous week when you could have been preparing thoroughly for the due date of that task?

In the letters of Paul to the communities of the early Church, there is always a sense of this urgency. The day of the Lord could come at any moment; are you ready to meet him when he comes? In Paul’s era, the expectation really was that the Lord could come again at any moment, and he was, in fact, expected to return quite soon after his Ascension. As time passed, they realised that this was not the case, that Jesus’ return might be quite some time later than originally expected.

But this did not alter the urgency with which they regarded his return. We do not know when or how Jesus will return, only the fact that he will, that it will be unexpected; as the Lord himself put it, “It is not for you to know the times or places”. Paul is quite clear, as is Jesus himself in the Gospels, that we must be ready to receive the returning Lord whenever he might appear. Whether there will be a great judgement of all human beings at the end of time, or whether each one of us will pass through individual judgement at the time of our own death, we do not know, and there is evidence for both in Scripture. But the only way to be ready to receive the Lord Jesus when he comes again is to be ready to receive him at all times. A half-baked, rapid prayer at the last moment may not be enough if our hearts are not prepared to receive him.

So it is, in today’s second reading from the letter to the Ephesians, that Paul encourages us to be prepared through our love and attention to prayer, our care for one another, our dedication to supporting and encouraging one another in preparing for his coming. He urges us to sobriety and constant prayer “with all our hearts.” If we want Jesus to place us amongst the saints in his kingdom, then we must give him pride of place in our own hearts. There is no such thing as a “basic minimum” to get into heaven; we are either all for Jesus, or not at all. In our daily lives let us heed Paul’s wise words today, and in everything that we do, let us keep ourselves ready to receive Jesus, whenever he might return.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION

The Scriptures have much to tell of the Mother of Jesus, and indeed, much more to tell us when we study her very few words to us and the events surrounding her life.

The angel tells her, “Hail, full of grace”. This literally means “You who are already filled with grace,” for the Greek perfect tense in which it is expressed implies a present situation arising from something that has happened in the past. If Mary is “filled with grace,” there is no room for any sin within her. Mary’s flesh is already sinless when Jesus is conceived, so that he might truly be “One like us in all things but sin.”

From this follows the teaching that Mary never bore another child but Jesus. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time claimed membership of God’s holy chosen people by virtue of their genetic descent. John the Baptist tells them that this means nothing, that “God can raise up sons of Abraham from these very stones.” Our only claim to a relationship with Jesus is through baptism, by which we are reborn as adopted sons and daughters of God.

Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth her cousin, six months pregnant with John the Baptist, has a profound message to us as well. When Mary arrives and greets Elizabeth, Elizabeth says, “The moment I heard your voice, the child in my womb leapt for joy. How blessed am I to receive a visit from the mother of my Saviour!” The unborn John the Baptist recognises the presence of the barely conceived Saviour, Jesus. This should certainly make clear to us the preciousness of human life, and the evil of abortion.

Finally, there are Mary’s words to us. “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let what you have said be done to me.” An engaged fourteen-year-old girl accepting a pregnancy by no human agency; who would believe her? And facing a penalty of death by stoning? What faith to accept God’s call in the face of such a situation! Yet she did, and placed her faith , her life and her future completely in God’s hands.

The other, at the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turns water into wine, applies these words to our own lives. What an embarrassing situation at a Jewish wedding, to run out of wine! Mary knows that Jesus will act despite his reluctance, and tells the steward, “Do whatever he tells you!” — “…whatever he tells you!” A strong command, but one which saves the honour of the groom and allows the guests to continue to rejoice.

How often do we complain that God doesn’t help us, that he seems to leave us high and dry? But do we do whatever he tells us? Or only something of it, just in case God messes up  and we have to take things into our own hands? Mary placed her all in God’s hands, and as a result her words “All generations shall call me blessed!” have become true in a way she could never have imagined. Like Mary, doing whatever God tells us might lead us to things we might never have imagined. And like Mary, we, too, will be blessed in ways beyond our imagination if only we would do “whatever he tells us.”

Fr Phillip

POPE FRANCIS' GENERAL AUDIENCE 5 AUGUST 2015

With this catechesis we take up again our reflection on the family. After speaking last time of wounded families caused by the misunderstanding of spouses, today I would like to focus our attention on another reality: how to take care of those that, following the irreversible failure of their marital bond, have undertaken a new union.

The Church knows well that such a situation contradicts the Christian Sacrament. However, her look of teacher draws always from her heart of mother; a heart that, animated by the Holy Spirit, always seeks the good and salvation of persons. See why she feels the duty, “for the sake of truth,” to “exercise careful discernment.” Saint John Paul II expressed himself thus in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio (n. 84), pointing out, for instance, the difference between one who has suffered the separation and one who has caused it. This discernment must be made.

If, then, we look at these new bonds with the eyes of little ones - and the little ones are looking - with the eyes of children, we see even more the urgency to develop in our communities a real acceptance of persons that live such situations.  Therefore, it is important that the style of the community, its language, its attitudes are always attentive to persons, beginning with the little ones. They are the ones who suffer the most, in these situations. Otherwise, how will we be able to recommend to these parents to do their utmost to educate the children in the Christian life, giving them the example of a convinced and practiced faith, if we hold them at a distance from the life of the community, as if they were excommunicated? We must proceed in such a way as not to add other weights beyond those that the children, in these situations, already have to bear! Unfortunately, the number of these children and youngsters is truly great. It is important that they feel the Church as a mother attentive to all, always willing to listen and to come together.

In these decades, in truth, the Church has not been either insensitive or slow. Thanks to the reflection carried out by Pastors, guided and confirmed by my Predecessors, the awareness has greatly grown that a fraternal and attentive acceptance is necessary, in love and in truth, of the baptized that have established a new coexistence after the failure of their sacramental marriage; in fact, these people are not at all excommunicated, they are not excommunicated! And they are absolutely not treated as such: they are always part of the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI intervened on this question, soliciting careful discernment and wise pastoral support, knowing that “simple recipes” do not exist (Address to the 7th World Meeting of Families, Milan, June 2, 2012, answer n. 5).

Hence the repeated invitations of Pastors to manifest openly and consistently the community’s willingness to receive and encourage them, so that they live and develop increasingly their belonging to Christ and to the Church with prayer, with listening to the Word of God, with frequenting of the liturgy, with the Christian education of the children, with charity and service to the poor, with commitment to justice and peace.

The biblical icon of the Good Shepherd (John 10:11-18) summarizes the mission that Jesus received from the Father: to give his life for the sheep. This attitude is also a model for the Church, which receives her children as a mother that gives her life for them. “The Church is called to be the House of the Father, with doors always wide open [...]” No closed doors! No closed doors! “Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community. The Church [...] is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, n. 47).

In the same way all Christians are called to imitate the Good Shepherd. Above all Christian families can collaborate with Him by taking care of wounded families, supporting them in the community’s life of faith. May each one do his part in assuming the attitude of the Good Shepherd, who knows each one of his sheep and excludes no one from his infinite love!