Lent 4 - 14th March, 2010
Although this sounds like a rather tall story, it is in fact true. An Anglican bishop in a country diocese in this country inaugurated a series of parish visitations. Each weekend he would go to what were mainly small villages and try to get to know the parishioners. After one of these visitations, which he felt had gone very constructively, he was surprised to receive a letter of complaint. Immediately he had left the village those who had heard him preach had called a meeting and passed a motion of censure on the bishop. When he had stood in their pulpit he had said that they were all sinners and this was quite unacceptable. St John says: “If we say that we have no sin in us we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth”.
Those burghers of middle England who wanted to censure their bishop were not perhaps as unrepresentative as we might think. All too easily, sin can become something other people do. The organs of society today, the media, lawyers, medics, police social services, government itself, all seem to combine to analyse and find fault, in such a way, that they are exonerated from responsibility. It is always others’ fault. We are surrounded by a blame culture which is as insidious as it is widespread. Look only this past week at the combined failure of the so-called care agencies to protect a vulnerable family in Sheffield over a 30 year period. A whole panel of executive officers were turned out before the press to explain that the mistakes were systemic and that no individuals would be taking responsibility for what had happened. “If we say that we have no sin in us we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth”.
The whole point of the parable Jesus offers in today’s Gospel is that someone – the Prodigal Son – is prepared finally to take responsibility for his own actions. He has behaved atrociously – he has traded on his father’s love - he has squandered everything he has on a questionable lifestyle – he has fallen to the margins of society – and it is there, in the midst of rejection and starvation, that he comes to his senses – he takes a long, hard look at himself and, instead of blaming others, he recognises where he has failed – he admits to himself his own selfishness, his bad judgement, his wrong choices. There is genuine contrition. No excuse – no pretence. Having faced up to himself squarely and honestly, he now determines to do something about it – to seek reconciliation, to own up to his sin, to apologise, to try to make amends. The acceptance and admission of the truth leads to new life. “It is right that we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life: he was lost and is found”.
Of course, Jesus’ parable is only a parable, but as with all the great stories of the Gospel it is timeless in its application. The original context was a challenge to the self-righteousness of the religious establishment of the time. Jesus is criticised for keeping company with the riff-raff, those who had obviously fallen below the mark, with sinners. It is no accident that we are faced with the Prodigal Son at this halfway point through Lent. These 40 days and 40 nights are supposed to be for us, as they were for Jesus, a time for facing up to ourselves, an honest and sincere looking into the mirror, and recognising how far we have come on the human and Christian journey and how much further we have to go. This is not introspection, or an exercise in self-improvement – we should be measuring ourselves against the standards, not of this world, with all its therapies and techniques for self-help, but of Christ and his Gospel. And in so doing, the sacrament of reconciliation is of inestimable value: the objectivity of grace is crucial.
We know, as Catholics, that if we fall into serious sin we must seek the way of penitence, we must go to confession. But most of our sin does not fall into that category – it is lower level, more difficult to identity, not as apparently destructive of who we are – too easily excused. As one of the early Fathers says: “When there is rust on a mirror, our face cannot be seen in it: so also where there is sin in us, we cannot see God”. We should go to confession regularly and frequently with the desire to form a Christian conscience and that we may have increasingly in us “that mind that is in Christ Jesus”. Cardinal Newman says “return to your conscience, question it ... turn inward, brethren, and in everything you do, see God as your witness”.
Forgiveness has been won for us at such a high price. In St Paul’s incredible phrase: “For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God”. The arms of mercy are ever open. With the Prodigal Son, all we have to say is: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you”, and absolution is ours. This absolution, in its turn, sets off a chain of reactions, as Pope John Paul II reminds us: “Reconciliation with God leads to other reconciliations, which repair the other breaches caused by sin. The forgiven penitent is reconciled with himself in his inmost being, where he regains his innermost truth. He is reconciled with his brethren whom he has in some way offended and wounded. He is reconciled with the Church, he is reconciled with all creation”.
Let none of us neglect this sacrament of reconciliation, the sacrament of penance, the sacrament of healing, this Easter. “If we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth – but if we acknowledge our sins then God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and purify us from everything that is wrong”. May it be so …
Lent 3 - 7th March , 2010
“You are great O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power, and your wisdom is without measure. And man, so small a part of your creation, wants to praise you”. In those words, St Augustine sums up the human desire to understand something of God, and to worship him. The Catechism of the Catholic Church builds on that desire when it says: “By natural reason we can know God with certainty on the basis of his works. But there is another order of knowledge, which we cannot possibly arrive at by our own powers, the order of divine Revelation. Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to us. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ”.
The first reading we heard records one of those supreme moments of Divine self-revelation after which we can say truly that things can never again be the same. Moses is in exile, far from the traditions of his own people, when he is attracted by the phenomenon of a burning bush, or rather by something which is on fire, but not being consumed. It is Moses’ moment of annunciation. God is about to reveal the vocation which has been prepared for him. He is being called away from shepherding flocks of animals to lead the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt towards a land of their own.
Moses is called by name. And that is significant. For people in the East, to know someone’s name is to establish a relationship, to give a certain influence and power, to understand their identity, who they are, where they come from. God already has this relationship with Moses, but now Moses in his turn wants to know who it is who is calling to him. In offering the expression “I Am who I Am”, or to put it another way “He who Is”, the Creator is making himself intelligible to his creature, allowing himself to be approached, holding out the potential for a genuine dialogue.
What is revealed in the Burning Bush is a God who is prepared to intervene – who is not prepared to stand at a distance and watch. God shows himself as someone who can be named and who is intimately concerned in the circumstances of the lives he has made. But there is a downside to all this. While God remains at a distance, while he is utterly unknowable and intangible, while the mystery surrounding him cannot be pierced, he can be held at arm’s length: he can be viewed with a certain indifference. But once he reveals himself, once his nature ceases to be complete mystery, once a relationship is begun, then demands are made on human beings – if God is a Person then he must be respected as such. “Ignorance is bliss”, we say, but understanding involves potential discomfort and challenge. To know God is, necessarily, to have to conform one’s way of behaving to what is commensurate with that Being. “I Am who I Am”. As Moses soon found out, an inescapable moral dimension has been introduced. The Burning Bush is the precursor to the Ten Commandments.
Israel may have been the chosen nation, but its relationship to God was never easy. There were times of faithfulness and there were also long periods of alienation summed up in the words from the second reading (St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians): “most of them failed to please God and their corpses littered the desert”. It is a theme taken up by Jesus in the Gospel reading. Like any good teacher, he earths his message in contemporary events. He talks of two recent tragedies and then goes on to communicate, as he did so often, through a parable. The meaning is crystal clear. Its first audience would have been left in no doubt what was being said. “By their fruit you will know them”. Where there is no fruit there is, literally, a waste of space. Destroy the fig tree, cut it down, dig it out. But no, a gentler, more merciful judgement prevails; give it another chance, spare it for another season, treat it tenderly, and perhaps, just perhaps, fruit will appear at last.
It is so important that we recognise Scripture as being a living Word. Yes, of course, what Jesus says is designed to convict the people of his own day, to challenge them to offer to God the fruit which their ancestors failed to produce, to fulfil their destiny and to become a holy people, but, as St Paul reminds us: “All this happened to them as a warning, and it was written down to be a lesson for us who are living at the end of the age”. Old Israel was given so much – but the New Israel has been given so much more. Much was asked of them; so much more is being asked of us. God revealed himself to Moses in the Burning Bush: he reveals himself to us in the life of the sacraments, most particularly in the Mass, in an intensity of incarnated love, which past ages could never have imagined. “O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, inapprehensible, we clutch thee”. (Francis Thompson)
The problem being addressed by today’s readings is one of complacency. Because we achieve the minimum we think we have become righteous. It was on that rock that the Old Covenant was broken. We come to church, we fulfil our obligations, we are conscious of the assurance of being within the Catholic fold – but where is the generosity, where is the yearning, where is the love that speaks heart to heart, where are the fruits of the Spirit? The words written to the Christians at Corinth 2,000 years ago are as much for us as they ever were for them: “The man who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does not fall”. We must never take God for granted. We can never afford to assume our salvation. The call to conversion will not go away: let us heed that call in these Lenten days.
Lent 2 - 28th February, 2010
Abraham was a dinosaur. By that, obviously, I do not mean that he was one of those creatures we see rampaging across our TV screens – but he was a primeval figure, tough, uneducated, the sort who would kill his own son because he thought God demanded this sacrifice of him – and yet this is the one human being to whom the three major world religions, Judaism Christianity and Islam all trace themselves. Abraham, “our father in faith” – the one to whom God reveals himself in a radically new way. Abraham’s act of faith – his “yes” to God – sets in motion a long process which leads gradually, through the centuries, towards the birth of Jesus. Starting with Abraham, bit by bit, God tells us more and more about himself, until that final moment of self-revelation when his Son enters human history.
In a very real way, the 12 disciples called by Jesus are the natural successors to Abraham. They, too, are marked out and asked to make their own act of faith. It is significant that, having called the disciples to give up everything to follow him, Jesus never explains who he is – he keeps them close to him – they share his daily life – but they are left to draw their own conclusions. Only towards the end of the three years of his public life does Jesus ask his friends whether they yet understand his true identity. It is Peter, speaking in the name of the others, who declares for the very first time – you are “the Christ of God”. Once the words have been spoken, Jesus is free to reveal more of himself and his mission to the Twelve.
First he talks to them of what will happen in Holy Week – of how he knows great suffering awaits him – he will be rejected and killed. His disciples cannot accept what is being said, but, as if to prepare them for the trials ahead, as if to reassure them that their act of faith is well-founded, Jesus takes Peter and James and John onto a mountainside, and there something of incredible power and overwhelming beauty takes place.
Jesus, their friend, the one with whom they eat and talk on a daily basis, the man they have come to know so well, is changed, transfigured, before their eyes. It is the Jesus they know, but now he radiates glory – they witness a reality which they will recognise again on Easter Day – humanity transformed by the light and power of Divinity. There are no words to express what is happening. The three of them are taken out of themselves – they are, literally, overcome with fear. They have never seen anything like this before. Their instinct is to bow down and worship. Like Abraham all those years before, Peter and James and John are awe-struck in the presence of God.
What does this have to say to us? For Abraham as for Peter, James and John, the ground on which God chose to reveal himself was holy ground. Our place of meeting, our holy ground, is this building, this altar, this tabernacle. Is this truly holy ground for us? Do we sense something special when we come inside this building? Can we feel that God is here, waiting to reveal himself to us? There used to be a time when if you went inside a Catholic church you felt immediately a sense of the holy. Generations of Catholics were formed not so much by what was said to them, but by what they experienced, what they imbibed, from the devotion of others around them. It is a cliché, perhaps, but it happens to be true, that “faith is caught, not taught". I am not sure that this is true any longer of our own generation. We seem to have lost much of the reverence of previous times.
Here at Spanish Place, thank God, we are fortunate that good priests and faithful lay people have held onto a sense of awe – the realisation of the holiness and wonder and beauty of God. It is that sense we need to preserve and enhance. In doing so, it is the simple things that matter. Genuflecting to the tabernacle when we come into church and when we leave. Dipping our finger into the holy water to remind us of our Baptism. Praying quietly before and after Mass. Doing all that we can by our own example to preserve the stillness of the church. Recognising that the atmosphere of this building matters. All this adds up to a culture of worship. Let us pray that this building will continue to provide a context where people can feel, instinctively, that they want to worship: where, on this particular piece of holy ground, here in the centre of London, they can join with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven.
If the Transfiguration speaks to us of holy ground, it also demonstrates how, in a moment, the ordinary can be transformed – that the things of heaven and earth have only a hair’s breadth separating them, that glory is only just below the surface of our daily living. There are some lines from Francis Thompson’s poem "In No Strange Land" which encapsulate this understanding: "The angels keep their ancient places, turn but a stone and start a wing! ‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces, that miss the many-splendour’d thing”. When Peter and James and John were invited to join Jesus for a time of prayer, it must have been an experience they had shared many times before – nothing out of the ordinary here – but in a moment the veil separating earth from heaven had been lifted, they were witnesses to dialogue where their Friend was talking on equal terms with the greatest figures of their history, Moses and Elijah. “Master, it is wonderful for us to be here”.
As those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the creative Word through whom all things have being, the Transfiguration demonstrates that we should live each day expecting the unexpected – prepared to be surprised by God in the ordinary events of our existence. What happened to Peter and James and John shows just how close to the things of heaven we really are. “Turn but a stone and start a wing”. The sadness is that we have so little sense of all this – that our sensitivity to the things of God is dulled, our perception coarsened, our vision limited, by the secular environment which permeates all that we are. That is why our Lenten exercises are so important: in these six weeks we have the chance to raise our eyes, to comprehend the ordinary as the potential for the extraordinary. Let us pray for ourselves, and for one another, that this Lent will help us to perceive “the many-splendour’d thing”.
Lent 1 - 21st February, 2010
The number forty occupied a unique hold over the imagination of the people of Israel. That was the number of years they had spent on the journey from slavery in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. The Exodus and its aftermath was the formative experience for the Jews – during their long and difficult pilgrimage their understanding of God was refined, and from a number of disparate tribes they were welded together into a single nation. The first reading, from the Book of Deuteronomy, acted as a sort of Creed which would be recited as the people gave thanks for the harvest and called to mind all that God had provided for them throughout their history. “A chosen race, holy nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God”.
It is a common experience to view one’s personal history through rose-tinted spectacles. As we look back we tend to highlight the good bits and airbrush those which were unpleasant. It was the same with the Israelites. The forty years in the wilderness had had an incredibly positive outcome, but the journey had, also, been very painful. Not only did they have to overcome the opposition of the other tribes and nations they were supplanting, but time and time again they were tempted to apostasise - to follow other gods – to assimilate the religious practises of those they met on the journey. The wilderness was a place of temptation – and, again and again, Israel opted for short-term gain, for immediate indulgence, and reaped the bitter consequences.
When the Gospel writers record Jesus immediately after his Baptism, retreating into the desert, the length of his stay there is no accident. “Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted here by the devil for forty days”. Just as the forty years had formed Israel, so these forty days and forty nights will form the human consciousness of Jesus and prepare him for what has to be. But, as with Israel, so with Jesus: this was to be a time of hardship and struggle. Truly formative experiences are rarely comfortable.
As presented to us in the Gospels, the temptations which Jesus endured had an objective reality – they were not just demons of his own imagining. There is a truth being demonstrated here which is of fundamental importance to us. In a world where analysis and forms of therapy can address the healing of the human psyche we are tempted to play down the naked and brutal reality of evil. But there are forces at work in us and around us which are destructive: the ancient Serpent still roams the earth, beguiling, dressing sin in the cloak of human freedom - something the Catechism describes as “a seductive voice opposed to God”. That this power is limited, that nothing can, ultimately, separate us from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus is our act of faith - in the end, the strongest force at work in the universe will be shown to be love, the Divine love, and everything contrary to that love has only a limited life span. We know that – but our future hope must not blind us to present reality. Evil exists – it is corrosive and corrupting. If it rarely presents itself in other than an ambiguous way, then it is the more dangerous in its subtlety - undermining truth, presenting compromise as the only response for mature people.
Jesus knew it all. The three temptations recorded for us in Scripture are only headings, summing up an enervating and confusing time with the voices battering him. “Do it your own way – be yourself – follow your own logic – you know it makes sense – why look for answers outside yourself”. On and on it went day and night. But the power of evil is finite and, in that telling phrase, “having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time”. Jesus had withstood all that was thrown at him. He had come to a new dependence on his Father - to the understanding that the only agenda for the coming three years had to be that already set by Heaven. His was not to be a kingdom of this world – glory would only be achieved through a cross.
The point being made by St Luke is that Jesus did withstand the tactics of the devil, that he did not give in to the tempter. The English form of the Lord’s Prayer which we use sometimes raises difficulty: “and lead us not into temptation”. St James makes it clear that: “God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no-one”. A more accurate translation should be “do not allow us to enter into temptation" or “do not let us yield to temptation”. Jesus demonstrates that we do not have to surrender to evil – where there is temptation there is also an increase of grace. The First letter to the Corinthians says: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it”. But grace always perfects nature, nature cannot be overthrown by it. The strength we need is never absent, but God does not force himself upon us – we have to ask for his help, to put ourselves in the way of grace. That is why our penitential practices during Lent are so important. By prayer, fasting and almsgiving we are to strengthen our inner resolve to opt for the things of God. Like Jesus, with Jesus, in facing up to our human choices we are to be confirmed in the path of life. Let us be truly generous with God in these 40 days and 40 nights and let us pray for one another, and for this parish, that, together, we will make a good Lent and become, as never before, his holy people.
“Deliver us, O Lord, from every evil and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety, as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and for ever. Amen”.
