Pentecost Sunday

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23 (alternative second reading and gospel reading: Galatians 5:16-24; John 15:26-27, 16:12-15)

The Holy Spirit is about speech. In the Creed we say of the Spirit that 'he has spoken through the prophets' and we read that the Spirit of the Lord 'fell on [Ezekiel, for example] saying ...'. Jesus taught his disciples that they were not to worry about what they should say when called to bear witness to their faith, for the Spirit would give them the words they needed. We read today in Acts 2 that the gift of speech was given to the disciples so that each person listening heard them in his own dialect telling about the mighty works of God. So the Holy Spirit is about speech.

But the Holy Spirit is also about depth. (So many of our words are superficial and glib.) St Paul says that the Spirit searches the depths of everything, even the depths of God. So the Spirit is radical. As one of the psalms puts it, 'the foundations of the world are laid bare at the blast of the breath of your nostrils'. The foundations of our lives are laid bare and so Jesus, in breathing the Holy Spirit on his disciples, says 'the sins you forgive are forgiven and the sins you retain are retained'. The Spirit reaches the place from which words come and in which they originate. He has to do with motivation, intention and the conception of words and deeds. He has to do with the thoughts that lie beneath words and deeds and omissions, and even with what lies beneath thoughts. We are given the Spirit to drink and so, just as we are immersed in the Spirit in baptism, the Spirit is immersed in us. Thus Paul says that 'the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God'.

The Holy Spirit is about speech and depth, and so He builds a new community. Communities are established on speech. In his commentary on Aristotle's Politics St Thomas Aquinas says communicatio facit civitatem, 'communication makes the city'.  Political work and community building are largely about this: getting people to talk, finding words on which parties in dispute can agree, publishing communiques and agreed statements, articulating laws to structure society and the relationships that hold it together. (I once managed to find a form of words on which a very conservative friar and a very liberal one could agree: 'things have not been the same since Vatican II'!)

The gift of the Spirit at Pentecost reverses the disunity and fragmentation of Babel. We read in Genesis 11 about the Tower of Babel, a story to explain the multiplicity of languages. Trying to reach heaven on the strength of human pride, the races of the earth fall into disunity and the human race fragments. Pentecost reverses this and undoes the effects of human pride. The language of the Spirit is a language everybody understands because it expresses the goal to which everybody aspires, for the language of the Spirit is the language of love.

So the new community is centred on 'the Word that breathes Love', Verbum spirans Amorem. Love is the depth of this Word. The people of Israel saw in the law given to Moses the formula of words that would one day unite all the peoples of the earth so that they would live together according to the wisdom and holiness of God. The 'new law' foretold by Jeremiah and other prophets is given on Pentecost Sunday to the new Israel, the Christian Church, and so the prophetic promise finds its fulfillment. The community of those who believe in Christ is the community of those who have received the Spirit. They live (or at least ought to live) by this new law written not on stone or paper but on human hearts, a law that searches the depths of everything, reaching not just to external behaviour but to motivation and intention and conception, to what lies at the root of deeds and omissions, words and thoughts.

Christ is the Spirit-filled One, the Anointed from the Father, our Messiah, 'the breath of our life' (Lamentations 4:20). A word needs breath if it is to be a living word. Breath needs a word if it is to have form and meaning. So the wonderful works of God which the Church preaches tell of a Father who has embraced the world and taken it to His heart by sending the Son and the Spirit. The Word of God unites all who come into the light of truth. The Spirit of God heals and strengthens so that even our human words become means by which God strengthens the civilization of love. It is often hidden, even in the Church, but we believe that this 'City of God' is under construction and that even now there are people who breathe its language.

Ministries, Charisms and Fruits - 13 Interpretation

Our last post spoke of the gift of tongues as a charismatic gift, which manifested itself in the early Church at the time of St. Paul, and was seen as an important way in which the Holy Spirit worked in the Church. Indeed, there are signs that this gift is still given in the Church today, especially amongst those who are part of the charismatic movements. It is a gift that is often regarded with much suspicion by onlookers. It expresses itself as people speaking a series of words that to our ears seem to make no sense. What possible use could this be?

This question is one which was very important also in the time of St Paul. The First Letter to the Corinthians, in speaking of the many gifts, names 'the interpretation of tongues' as an important part of the whole range of gifts (1 Cor 12:10). We see how the gift of tongues is of no use unless the words spoken can be interpreted. Words should never be empty and meaningless, because this is a misuse of language. After all, words are only of use as a way of communicating, and, as such, an individual who speaks in a way that cannot be understood is not communicating at all. The tongues must be interpreted, and this is a gift in itself. This is just one of many ways in which we see how firmly Paul believes that the Christian life is not simply about the individual, but individuals united in a common belief in Jesus Christ, and living a life shaped by that belief.

There are different opinions about the charismatic gifts in today's Church. Nevertheless, there is much that all of us can learn from Paul's writings on the subject. After naming the charismatic gifts, he goes on to show how important it is that, whatever our gifts are, they are used for the building up of the Church. All the members of the Church have a range of gifts, and no two individuals are the same. This reality shows both how important and valued each and every individual is to God and to the Church, yet also how the individual forms part of the whole, and is dependent on the others. As part of the whole which is the body of Christ, the Church, we find both our dignity as individuals and a way of self-transcendence which makes us capable of more than we could ever imagine.

Holy Saturday - The Stillness of the Tomb

Today is a day of strange quietness.  We have lived through the sorrowful passion of Our Lord, walked with him the Way of the Cross, and stood at its foot with Our Lady and St. John, hardly daring to believe that God incarnate could be so treated.  But at last, his terrible suffering is over. Those who condemned him, mocked him and tortured him can do no more to hurt him now: he has passed beyond their reach. 

In the silence of this day when Christ is present in the tomb we have a chance to reflect on the depth of the love that brought him to give his life for us, to see his death both as an atoning sacrifice and as a victory over death and the powers of hell.  Now he has descended to the dead to free those who died in the peace of God and reside in Abraham’s bosom, and to take them to his heavenly kingdom.  Those who have awaited him for so long, from our first parents Adam and Eve, to the last God-fearing people to die before him, are finally taken from this place of waiting into paradise. 

And yet, this day feels strange because it is so in-between.  We mourn the death of Our Lord and saviour; yet still await his triumphant resurrection.  We feel sorrowful and yet we are filled with a joyful hope, for we know that his death is not the end.  This mysterious, liturgical time of waiting is a powerful way in which to understand the situation of the Church militant – the Church on earth, for we believe in a God who has already come to us and made his home among us, revealed himself to us as the God who is love, and yet we await his glorious return when he will make all things new. 

On this day of liturgical anticipation, let our hearts be made ready to celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord and saviour, so that we may face him without fear when he comes again to judge the living and the dead.

  

Good Friday - Humbled for a Season

Readings: Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12; Psalm 31; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

The Good Friday liturgy begins with a dramatic gesture that hearkens to the words with which we began our Lenten journey. Just as we were told "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return", so the priest recalls this by falling prostrate, humbling himself to the dust of the earth. For the word humilitas comes from humus, meaning earth or ground. The act of prostration is, according to the Nine Ways of Prayer of St Dominic, an expression of humility on account of our sinfulness and St Dominic could be heard saying, as he lay flat on the ground, "God, be merciful to me a sinner". Our Lenten journey, then, has been about this: coming back down to earth, having exalted ourselves; humbling ourselves before God and seeking His mercy.

In Blackfriars we follow the medieval practice of creeping to the Cross which involves three prostrations as we approach the Cross to venerate it. Again, St Dominic's Nine Ways tells us that he would perform the prostration "to teach the brethren with what reverence they ought to pray", for this was the posture of adoration. This, then, is the posture befitting a creature before God, and so, the prostration shows justice restored, making right what humankind, by their sinfulness and rebellious pride, had done wrong. Thus we express now, before the Tree of Life, the humility and obedience that our ancestors, Adam and Eve, had not shown before that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden. And so, creation is restored to its proper order.

However, it is not sinful humankind that restores justice and puts right its relationship with God. It is not we who have humbled ourselves before God and merited His forgiveness. None of this is our doing. As the liturgy proclaims in these days, Christus factus est pro nobis..., 'Christ for our sake became obedient unto death, even death on a Cross'. And this is what the Good Friday liturgy recounts. The prostrations symbolise the humbling of Jesus Christ, our God who became Man because of His love for us, and who suffered and died for our sake. Through His profound humility and obedience shown on the Cross, He has restored order to His creation and won for us and for all people, God's forgiveness and salvation. And so, this Friday is called Good, for on this day all is made good again.

And the antiphon continues: Propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum..., 'Therefore God has exalted Him'. We are wont to exalt ourselves but Christ is exalted by God and raised high on the Cross, his Throne of Glory, to draw all humanity to himself. And so, we creep to the Cross, humbly approaching our humble King enthroned on the Cross, the suffering High Priest at His Cruciform Altar, and we kiss the Cross as a sign, not of betrayal (as Judas did), but of embrace, acceptance and love. Through this kiss, we signal our desire to be one with Jesus Christ, to share His humility, and so, to share the exaltation and glory of Him who is "the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him" (Hebrews 5:9).

Maundy Thursday - Do this in remembrance of me

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 116:12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

It may surprise us that the Church has chosen as the gospel for the liturgy of this Holy Thursday not one of the accounts of the Last Supper according to Matthew, Mark or Luke. They describe, in a direct way, the meal Jesus held with his disciples. But the gospel of John does not give such an account. There are no “words of institution” and nothing is said about bread and wine which are given as the body and blood of Christ. So, why do we hear instead about the washing of the feet on this feast day on which we remember the institution of the Eucharist in the cenacle?

The Gospel of John is often called the “spiritual gospel”. It describes the same reality – the life and death of the God-man Jesus Christ – from a different perspective and in a different language compared with the other three Evangelists. And so we can discover in the report of the foot-washing a spiritual reflection on the meaning of the Eucharist. Indeed, all four accounts of the Last Supper are about the forgiveness of sins, friendship, love and unity.

Where the synoptic gospels report the Last Supper, John shows us the foot-washing; where they show the Eucharist, he shows a washing with water; where they reveal a drink that brings forgiveness, he presents a washing which brings about unity, communion with Christ. It is such a remarkable dialogue between Jesus and Peter: “He came to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’ Jesus answered him, ‘What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand.’ Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ Jesus said to him, ‘He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you’” (John 13:6-10).

Jesus refers to another bath which has already taken place which is why he has only to wash the feet of the disciples. When we recognize therein the sacrament of Baptism, and interpret Jesus’ foot-washing as the Eucharist, we find exactly this idea. The bath of Baptism has made us clean from original sin and all sins. But nevertheless the washing of the feet, the Eucharist, is necessary to wash away the “everyday sin”. Jesus says: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” We cannot reject this washing saying that we have not sinned and do not need it. Day by day we get dirty; Christ wants to wash our feet from the dust of the street. We should not refuse his humble service.

John reflects on the deep meaning of the Last Supper. It is an act of humility out of love. The washing of the feet is an act of humility out of love. And both the Eucharist and the symbolic foot-washing bring about unity – unity with Christ and with our neighbours. Christ washes the feet of his disciples in order that they may have part in him. And he asks them to wash each other’s feet: “I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15). This is his new commandment: “Love one another; even as I have loved you, you also must love one another” (John 13:34). This is his “do this in remembrance of me”.

Lent Week 5 Friday - Speaking Truth

Readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13, Psalm 17:2-7, John 10:31-42

Today’s readings focus on conflict, misunderstanding and the desire to silence those whom we disagree with or do not understand. To be in a situation where you are misunderstood or where what you say, true though it may be, is rejected is a very difficult situation to be in. To use a modern phrase “people don’t get you”. To be in a situation where people reject you because of what you believe and know to be true can be emotionally, and in drastic cases, physically painful. This is the situation that the prophet Jeremiah is in, in today’s readings.

“Terror from every side! Denounce him, Let us denounce him!” People are baying for his blood and trying to trip him up, so that they may condemn him, “perhaps we will seduce him into error. Then we will master him and take our revenge!”

In today’s Gospel passage Our Lord is not faring much better, he too is experiencing the force of an angry mob. We are told in the opening line that they were fetching stones with which to stone him. Why was this? Jesus had affirmed a truth about himself, about his identity. In the situation of today’s Gospel, Jesus is being rejected for claiming to be God, for being God among us. Jesus asks his detractors “I have done many good works for you to see, works from my Father; for which of these are you stoning me?” Those who wished to stone him answered “we are not stoning you for doing good work but for blasphemy: you are only a man and you claim to be God”. They do not disagree or even deny that he is indeed doing good works. This is not the issue. What they wish to stone Jesus for is proclaiming a truth, the truth of his identity. This truth is so unpalatable to them that, despite the good they see him do, they wish to destroy him. The uncomfortable truth of Jesus identity has so blinded his hearers that they cannot even bear to allow him to live, lest they should have to hear it again and again.

In society nowadays to claim that something is a “truth” may cause you trouble. You may find yourself labelled as intolerant, closed minded, exclusive, or heaven forbid, politically incorrect. How many times have we heard it said that a Christian education inhibits children from being socially integrated, and may lead to a fragmented and intolerant viewpoint. As Christians we must fearlessly witness to our faith, fearlessly, kindly and lovingly. This may cause us to be “stoned” by the labels of misunderstanding. However Our Lord has walked the path before us and cleared the way. These are painful experiences, but as Christians we must trust in our Saviour and rely on his aid. As the psalm today says “My God is the rock where I take refuge”.

When we face misunderstanding or hostility because of our faith let us take refuge in the arms of our loving Saviour and respond with his love.

Lent Week 5 Wednesday - The Truth will set you free

Readings: Daniel 3: 14-20, 91-92, 95; Daniel 3: 52-56; John 8: 31-42

Freedom is much prized in contemporary Western secular thought: at the political level, wars are fought to bring ‘freedom’ to the population of various countries, while at the level of the individual, the freedom to do whatever you want (perhaps with the proviso that it shouldn’t harm anyone else) appears to be the basics of popular ethics. Of course, the pursuit of freedom independent from God is not a new thing: we find it in the book of Genesis, in the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9) and, indeed, in the sin of Adam and Eve (Gen 3:1-7).

And yet in today’s readings we are reminded that autonomy is not true freedom. In the book of Daniel, the three young men choose death rather than worshipping false gods (though that would have preserved their life and autonomy), because they understand that sin is a more radical rejection of their God-given freedom even than loss of life. This is because true human freedom is the freedom to flourish as human beings. Sin does thus indeed, as Our Lord says, enslave us (Jn 8: 34), since it prevents us from sharing in the life of God: that sharing in his life is the purpose for which he made us, and so only in him can our human nature fully flourish.

But how, sinners that we are, can we escape that slavery? Our Lord tells us in today’s Gospel: it is the truth that will set us free (Jn 8: 32). How, though, do we come to share in that truth? By being disciples of him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life and who, by his free choice, suffered death and rose again that we might share in his life.

Lent Week 5 Monday – Go away and do not sin again

Readings: Daniel 13:1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62; Psalm 23; John 8:1-11

In today’s Gospel passage from John, Jesus returns from the Mount of Olives to the Temple in order to teach and is almost at once embroiled in a most dramatic episode. The scribes and Pharisees bring before him for judgement a woman who has been ‘caught in the very act of committing adultery’. But the case is far from clear cut; a trap has been laid for Jesus. Is he to advise condemning the woman under Jewish Law and sanction death by stoning, disobeying the Roman authorities who had forbidden the Jews to exercise such power over their own people, or is he seemingly  to  condone her actions and do nothing?

The trap is, however, a little crude, for those assembled surely know a little more than they let on. Where for instance is the man they must also have caught ‘in the very act’ for he too is surely liable for the same judgement under Jewish law? That the woman is indeed sinful is not disputed but that there is much more to the case clearly impresses itself upon Jesus. He declares, 'if there is any one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her'. This is often misquoted and taken by some as a licence to sin, or as a sign that no one can take up a moral issue and censure sinful behaviour since none of us is without sin. This is a sad corruption of Jesus’ words in which he wishes to chastise severely those present in the Temple for their part in this distasteful affair. They are not without sin in this regard because they are in some way complicit in the adulterous actions that have been committed.

We, therefore, often miss the most important aspect of this passage, that of the unrestrained mercy of Christ. The woman has sinned, she makes no effort to deny or conceal this, and stands humbly before him. Subsequently Jesus extends to her the Divine forgiveness that we are all in need of in our lives. It is right that we are not too quick to judge and it is certainly right that we do not put God to the test as the Pharisees tried to do to Jesus, but neither is it a matter of condoning wrongful behaviour, turning a blind eye to sin (especially in our own lives). It is a matter of recognising our sinfulness and placing our humble trust in Christ before whom we must all be judged. Let us then hide nothing from him but turn towards him with all our hearts for forgiveness and by our example encourage others to do the same.

Lent Week 4 Saturday - When Trust is Difficult

Readings: Jer: 11:1-20, Ps 7, Jn 7:40-52

Just before the passage that we read in today’s Gospel, Jesus had been preaching during the Jewish festival of booths which commemorated the wandering of the Jewish people in the wilderness for forty years. Jerusalem is packed with pilgrims so Jesus has a large audience. We see that many Jews were deeply impressed by the substance of Jesus’ words. They recognised at once that what he said came from God for they felt that he was at least a prophet if not indeed the long awaited Christ, or anointed one. But others could not see this at all. Jesus did not fit into their fixed notion about what the Christ would be. He obviously does not fit into their expectations or categories.

So often in life we do not want to hear the message of Jesus or acknowledge his authority, compelling though it may be. Perhaps it just makes us too uncomfortable or makes demands on our lifestyle choices that we just find inconvenient. Perhaps we feel that we have met him half way or that we are doing just fine being nice and at least not hurting others. Then we realize what the extraordinary claims of Jesus require. Often one of our responses to this challenge is to try and poke holes in Jesus' right to ask anything of us. This is what the chief priests and the Pharisees do when they make the claim that this man cannot be a prophet for “prophets do not come out of Galilee”. If they bothered to investigate the truth about Jesus instead of rushing to cut him down and therefore enforce their own positions, they could have discovered that he was born in Bethlehem which is not in Galilee! 

Another temptation when challenged by Jesus' message is to shoot the messenger which can often be the Church, bishops or perhaps someone who dares to speak the truth to us. Rather than listen and enter into dialogue we can hit out as the Pharisees do to Nicodemus: “Are you a Galilean too?”

But to all who try to take up the challenge of Christ, who take the risk of moving out of their comfort zones by following him with all their struggles, weaknesses and shortcomings, Jesus offers something extraordinary: new joy, new strength, and hope that wells up to eternal life. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (Jn 7:37-38).

Lent Week 4 Friday - Is this the Christ?

Readings: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22; Psalm 34:17-18, 19-20, 21, 22; John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah? Yet we know where this man is from (John 7:26f)

How arduous it is for Jesus' contemporaries to accept the messianic pretension in his words and deeds. They cannot believe that this man from Nazareth, the son of the carpenter, should be the Messiah. Jesus is too well known, too ordinary, too human. What they expected was a mighty leader, one on whose shoulders authority rests (cf. Isaiah 9:6), who would free his people from oppression and foreign rule. Jesus seemed unsuitable to fulfill these expectations. But while his parentage was too earthly, his appearance and behaviour was too heavenly. He scandalised with his teaching, his healings, his disciples and his self-reliant manner. This was even more than messianic. It was divine. And therefore, it was blasphemy.

We can find in today's Gospel a foretelling of the Church's difficulties in defending Christ's perfect divinity and his perfect humanity. In the first centuries and throughout the ages we have been challenged to hold together both truths, that Christ is truly God and truly Human. If he were merely a good man and not God, how should we be redeemed? And if he were really God but not a man like us, how could his death bring us salvation? But it is the constant faith of the Church that he, the eternal Son of God the Father, became man "for us and for our salvation". The Christian faith stands and falls with it.

This is, of course, difficult to follow and impossible to understand fully. It can only be grasped in faith. Let us therefore in this season of Lent meditate on what God has done for us in Jesus. Let us consider that he whom we know to be from God is the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

Lent Week 4 Thursday - Knowing and Not Knowing the Scriptures

Readings: Ex 32: 7-14; Ps 106: 19-20,21-22, 23; John 5:31-47.

There are interesting links to be made between the first reading and the Gospel. In the first reading we see Moses pleading, interceding for the people of Israel, that God might show them mercy. Today's psalm also speaks of Moses standing 'in the breach' between the people and God, so that God might 'turn back his destructive wrath'. It is then interesting to find Jesus saying in the Gospel that the people will be accused by Moses. What is going on? So often we read how the people doubted the message that Jesus brought, a message that was preached not only by what he said, but by what he did, through his works of healing, and of ministering forgiveness. All these things point towards who Jesus is, and to the Father whom he reveals. But the people just don't get it ...

There is a lesson for us all in today's readings. The people to whom Jesus is speaking seem to know the content of the Scriptures but at a more fundamental level are completely blind to their message. There is a deeper meaning to the story of Moses, one that points towards Christ, the very man who is stood before them. But this is something that is only revealed to those who sincerely search. The crowd 'know' the Scriptures but actually don't really 'know' them at all. So also there is a depth and meaning to the message of Christ for us. Let us make sure that we do not fall into the trap of thinking that we know the message and its richness, but rather seek to turn back to that message in humility each day, and allow its meaning to open us up to more fully receiving from God.

Saints This Month - 5 March St Piran of Cornwall

Saint Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall. Until the English reformation Cornwall was a distinct nation under the Crown of England with its own language, customs and traditions. Since the beginning of the 20th century Cornwall has begun to rediscover its Celtic heritage. One of the major focus points has be the devotion to Saint Piran and his symbols, most obviously his flag which is said to have been flown at Agincourt and the Crusades. Very little is known about his life apart from the fact that he was an Irish abbot who came to spread the gospel to the pagan Cornish and his mission was blessed with great success. His remains lie at Exeter Cathedral. His flag should be of interest, especially to Dominicans, as it is black and white. Whilst it is similar to the Flag of St. David and the Kroaz Du of Brittany it is said to represent the truth of Christianity against the darkness and falsehood of paganism. An alternative origin suggests that St. Piran adopted these colours when he saw molten tin spilling out of the black ore in his fire. This occurred during his supposed discovery of tin in the sixth century and so he became the patron saint of tin miners. We should pray for the Duchy of Cornwall and remember that it has a firm and solid Christian foundation or rydhsys rag Kernow lemmyn as the Cornish say.

19 March - Sons of St Joseph

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:4-5, 12-14, 16; Psalm 88; Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22; Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24 or Luke 2:41-51.

I attended a secondary school which had St Joseph as its patron, and every morning we would sing the school song, declaring our desire to be "sons of St Joseph, valiant and true". There is arguably no better patron for teenage boys than St Joseph who was foster-father and guardian of the teenage Jesus, and this phrase from my school song indicates two virtues in St Joseph that we would do well to develop and pray for: courage and righteousness.

The virtue of courage, or fortitude, is evident in St Joseph's life. As St Thomas Aquinas tells us, fortitude is a spiritual bravery that fortifies the person to endure all things, even martyrdom. We see this kind of courage in St Joseph, who was told by the angel "Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife" (Matthew 1:20), even if society thought him to be a cuckold. How often we are swayed from doing the right thing because we fear what others think. Without the virtue of fortitude, we lack the valour to endure humiliation, the cross of society's scorn and rejection.

However, courage is not foolhardiness or rashness: something to which youth is prone. For St Joseph did not stand up to Herod's murderous wrath but fled with Mary and Jesus into the safety of Egypt, and they remained there until it was safe to return. To be sure, this kind of action took courage and wisdom, but above all it took prudence. Prudence is a key virtue in the Christian moral tradition because it shapes human actions in the concrete situations of human life so that we know how to act well. Prudence, then, is the ability to decide and do what is right and inclined towards God. In the language of the Scriptures, this is righteousness, and St Joseph is thus described in Matthew 1:19.

These virtues can be acquired through practice, but to be a saint they have to be infused, which is to say that they are given by God through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, to be truly sons of St Joseph, we have to seek that divine foster-son of St Joseph, who was busy with his heavenly Father's affairs (Luke 2:49). For it is from Jesus Christ that we receive the grace and virtues that fashion us in the image of Christ, so that we become not just sons of his earthly father St Joseph, but adopted as sons of our Father in heaven.

Saints This Month - 2 March St Nicholas Owen

Nicholas Owen was a man of very short stature, possibly suffering from what we would diagnose as skeletal dysplasia or dwarfism. He was known as little John or little Michael. He was however a giant with regards to his faith. During the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics he constructed a vast number of “priest-holes” for priests to hide in. The number of hiding places he created is unknown but his skill and genius in concealing his work mean it is possible that some have still to be discovered. He entered the Jesuit Order as a lay-brother and was in the service of the Jesuit priest Henry Garnet (who would be executed for his involvement in the gunpowder plot) for many years. It is though that for over thirty-years he wandered from house to house offering his services in return from just the necessities of life. He worked at night to avoid detection.

He was first arrested for publically defending St. Edmund Campion in 1582 but was later released. He was arrested again in 1594 and tortured, yet revealed nothing of the Catholic mission in England. The authorities however assumed he was the insignificant friend of some priests and he was released after a Wealthy Catholic family paid the fine. He went straight back to work and it is believed that he engineered the escape of the Jesuit John Gerald from the Tower of London.

Nicholas was arrested for the final time in 1606. He gave himself up voluntarily to distract the authorities form some Priests hiding in the area. He was sent to the Tower and subjected to the Topcliffe rack. He was dangled from a wall with both wrists held fast in iron gauntlets and his body hanging. When this proved insufficient to make him talk, heavy weights were added to his feet. He died as a result of his torture.

St. Nicholas Owen has been adopted as the patron Saint of illusionists because of his great skill in using the Trompe-l'œil in his work but his courage and faith are a serious example to all Christians. As Henry Gerard S.J. said:

"I verily think no man can be said to have done more good of all those who laboured in the English vineyard. He was the immediate occasion of saving the lives of many hundreds of persons, both ecclesiastical and secular."

17 March - Saint Patrick's Hope

Readings: Jeremiah 1:4-9; Psalm 116; Acts 13:46-49; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

One of the regrettable features of the modern version of the celebration of St Patrick's Day is a complete divorce from its true meaning and foundation. It seems to have gone the way of many of our most beautiful Christian feasts such as Christmas and Easter and been reduced to merely a cultural celebration, an excuse to party. Just as Christmas and Easter can seem to have been reduced to Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, St Patrick's Day for many is solely about a day off work, a street parade, and a party. St Patrick himself has been reduced to the figure we find in the legends about him mostly, banishing snakes and having magic contests with ancient druids.

Yet from the Confession of St Patrick we can get some sense of the real man and what motivated him. Here was a man who had been torn from his family and all that he loved by Irish pirates and sold into slavery to work as a sheep herder on a cold, desolate mountain. Having escaped from bondage, he had every logical reason to hate the Irish and to immerse himself in the life of a Roman citizen. Yet the Christ he encountered and found his strength in on that lonely mountain had utterly transformed his heart with love. And one of the greatest acts of love for a Christian is the sharing of the hope we have in Christ with others. This is the voice Patrick heard and never forgot as he returned to the land of his former captivity to preach the hope of Christ.

"I give thanks to my God tirelessly who kept me faithful in the day of trial, so that I offer sacrifice to him confidently, the living sacrifice of my life to Christ, my Lord, who preserved me in all my troubles. I can say therefore, who am I, Lord, and what is my calling that you should co-operate with me with such divine power?" Today's second reading speaks of our call as Christians to be a "light for the nations". Jeremiah in the first reading was helped to overcome his doubts and fears about his call and was assured that the Lord would give him the words, the strength and protection to fulfill the extraordinary mission with which he had been entrusted. And in the Gospel we hear Christ sending out the seventy two to preach and rejoicing on their return. All of these people overcame fear and gave their lives completely to preaching the hope and joy of God which they had in their hearts and which would not stay silent. All of them found true joy and peace in giving their lives to the mission.

Christ continues to call Christians to be missionaries for the faith. Christ still calls many men and women to the religious life to bear witness to him. Christ is still calling many men to be his priests. Beyond the fears and worries that can come with answering this call, there is the sure knowledge shown from the life of St Patrick and found in today's readings - if we follow the call of Christ, entrust our lives to him and cling to him as our hope and strength then we will find our true treasure and joy to the full, even in the midst of trial and difficulty.

Lent Week 3 Sunday - A spring of water welling up to eternal life

Readings: Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42

As human beings we all want to find happiness and to rejoice in it. This might mean for some to have a nice house, for others to own an expensive car or to go on exciting holidays. But whatever we have or achieve we can often feel that it is never enough. There is always something better, something more desirable. We can be happy having achieved one thing but then quickly grow disillusioned and feel that we have to achieve something more, something else.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: Trust me, come to me! What I have to give, nobody can give you. He does not use these exact words instead he talks about water, about the mysterious “living water” and makes clear that everyone who drinks of it will never thirst. This is perhaps a good image for our lives for we are always thirsting but we are often misguided in our choices and so it does not take too long before the thirst is back, sometimes even stronger than before. But Christ tells us that if we attain our goal in him we will not have to keep on searching for new waters all the time. The Samaritan woman, like us, would be fully satisfied if she had this water, she would not have to go out to the well every day.

What are our wellsprings to which we go again and again? For many people it is simply the material things in life. For many others the source is a beloved person, somebody whom they can absolutely trust, a partner or a good friend. This is good and important; we need such relationships and they can truly be our oases in the desert. At the same time, however, we must realise that no human relationship is inexhaustible. There are limitations and failures to be endured. As sinners we tend to be self-serving, to take more care of ourselves than of others. Indeed, we might have been one of the “others” and experienced a bitter disappointment from somebody close, somebody in whom we trusted.

But more than any human friendship, we can trust in the friendship which Jesus offers us. We can trust in him without any reservation, for we know what his love for us is. As Christians we know that he lived his life for us and died for us. And we know that he rose from the dead and lives, so that we can, like the Samaritans, confess: “We know that this is indeed the saviour of the world”.

Let us in this season of Lent try to cultivate a living friendship with him. He is the wellspring of our life, of our love and of our happiness. We should not settle for the waters that do not quench our inner thirst, but embrace the water which he offers us, the water of his love. When we drink this water, it will become in us a living spring. We will flow over with love towards God and towards our neighbour.

This reflection is on the alternative Year A readings for the Third Sunday of Lent. For reflections on the readings of Year B see here and here.

Lent Week 2 Thursday - Thirsting for God

Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Ps 1; Luke 16:19-31

At the core of human nature is a fundamental dis-ease, a nagging loneliness, an incessant desire for more. St Augustine summed it up beautifully when he said: "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you". The soul's restless longing for love, for goodness, beauty, and truth, is due to humanity's fundamental longing for God. That is how we are made, and that God-shaped lack can only be satisfied by God, and ultimately we will only find rest "in the bosom of Abraham", in heaven.

As Jesus' reference to the rich man's costly "purple garments and fine linen" suggests, some people hope that wealth and 'retail therapy', drugs, drink, fancy holidays and the latest gadget, will alleviate the soul's ache. Others turn to sexual gratification. Jeremiah's reference to the one who "seeks his strength in flesh" suggests that some use sex and power as means to escape from the soul's angst. None of these work, of course, and one is eventually left feeling like "a salt and empty earth": empty, life-less and drained. For only God, who alone understands the human heart, can slake the soul's thirst. The psalmist perceived this essential truth when he said: "O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water" (Psalm 62:1-2).

Many of us may already know this, but nevertheless, we still repeatedly reach out for lesser goods, deluded into thinking that many of those will fill the God-shaped hole in our lives; but only living water, Goodness itself, can quench the thirsty, parched soul. At our Baptism, and again in Confirmation, Christ poured out his loving Spirit into our souls to quench and refresh us. Thus, we have been rooted in the living water of the Spirit who gives us strength to endure all things, as Lazarus did. When we feel restless and long for more, it is really more of God that we want and need: let us reach out, then, for the God who unfailingly desires us.

This Easter, many catechumens, having emerged from the barren desert of Lent and their lives, will be plunged into the waters of Baptism, and the rest of us will renew our baptismal vows. To prepare for that, let us recall how at our own Baptism we first placed our hope in God, becoming "like a tree planted beside the waters, that stretches out its roots to the stream". Let us return to God, place our trust in Him, and ask the Holy Spirit to fill our lives and "water that which is dry" in our lives, so that we may be fruitful and savour the sweetness of eternal life.

Youth 2000 Christmas Retreat in Newbridge

Our Irish students were involved in the Youth 2000 retreat, in Newbridge, last Christmas. The video below, created by the Irish Province, show highlights of this wonderful event.

A new Dominican blog

If you like Godzdogz the chances are you will also enjoy My Way God's Way, a new blog being published by twin Dominican brothers frs Peter and Isidore Clarke. fr Peter is prior at Rosary Priory, Grenada (pictured below) while fr Isidore is a member of the community in Leicester. To stay with the Domini canes analogy, it looks like it is possible to teach old dogs new tricks!

Second Sunday of Lent - Possession

Readings: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Ps 116; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

Our readings today give us much food for thought. Abraham's sacrifice is a story which should disturb us very deeply. God seems to be asking him for that which he holds dearest - his only son Isaac. How could a father even contemplate sacrificing him? It seems absurd, complete madness that he is even willing to go that far. Why? Perhaps the answer is that Abraham recognises that his son is a gift from God. This opens our eyes to a truth that we all know, yet so rarely live by - everything that we have comes from God, and so everything that we have comes as a gift. But how much do we tend to feel that the things that we are given are rightfully ours? As the main character in C.S. Lewis' 'Screwtape Letters' says: “All the time the joke is that the word ‘Mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything.” And yet we utter it so often. What Abraham succeeds in doing is abandoning his sense of possession over his son, for love of God, and he is rewarded greatly. God promises him as many descendants as stars in the sky. Abraham’s legacy will live on, because he understood Isaac was a gift of God and responded with the ultimate sign of love, of his own love for God.

At the Transfiguration we see a similar struggle for possession. The disciples want to possess that wonderful moment of the manifestation of the glory of God. They want to capture it and live in it forever. We see that Screwtape also understands the disciples' folly well: “Man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift”. We cannot possess the glory of God. We can only enjoy those fleeting glimpses when they come, then continue on our journey, just as the disciples had to do. After the transfiguration, Jesus journeys on to the cross. His death on the cross is also a manifestation of the glory of God, but one which the disciples are not prepared to accept. It too is a gift, in the same form that God had requested but in his mercy not accepted from Abraham.

We must be careful in our own lives that we do not strive to take possession of God's glory, to hold on to those moments of joy in our lives to the extent that we are unwilling to accept the cross when it comes our way. And it surely will come our way in moments of personal loss, illness, desolation. Just as the cross could also manifest the glory and love of God, so the moments of difficulty in our lives can also be moments of transfiguration for us. Often, it is in suffering that we feel his presence more powerfully than ever. This paradox is at the heart of the mystery of Jesus, and at the heart of the mystery of our own lives. Let us not cling to whatever it is we hold dear in such a way that we prevent ourselves from embracing this life-giving mystery with faith, hope and love.

Lent Week 1 Saturday - Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect

Readings: Deuteronomy 26: 16-19; Psalm 119: 1-8; Matthew 5: 43-48

Today’s Gospel passage, in which Jesus tells us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us, is perhaps one of the most daunting in the whole Gospel. How are we meant to manage that? And why should we? The answer to the first question can be found, to some extent, in the answer to the second.

During this season of Lent, we prepare ourselves by prayer, self-denial and charitable deeds to celebrate the mysteries of the Cross and Resurrection, in which we see revealed God’s love for us, for whose sake while we were at enmity with Him through sin, he sent his Son to die on the Cross, and thus to consecrate us to himself. It is in response to the boundless love revealed in Christ that we are called to imitate the Father’s perfection: just as, in the reading from Deuteronomy, we hear that the people of the Old Covenant are called to obey the commandments because God has made them a people sacred to himself, so we, who have been incorporated into the New Covenant by baptism, must try as best we can to live up to the great gift that has been given us. But how? On our own, we cannot: we must allow God’s grace, which is that same gift of his love working in us, to guide us.

This Lent, then, as we try through self-denial to become more responsive to God’s will and through almsgiving to follow his example of love, let us pray that he will grant us the grace to grow towards the perfection which he shows us and to which he calls us all.

Lent Week 1 Friday - Not Just Following the Rules

Readings: Ezekiel 18:21-28; Ps 130; Matthew 5:20-26

As naturally social creatures we need laws and regulations but these are only ways of coping with the fallen nature of humanity: they are not the solution. The true life of virtue or the “practice of integrity” must come from within. It is not enough to have the skin-deep morality of the Scribes and Pharisees and to adhere to every rule blindly. We must exceed it! Our Lord shows that the crime of murder stems from the interior state of anger. We must combat the interior causes of our sins; not just anger but greed, lust, vanity and all the other emotions and feelings that prevent us from truly flourishing in friendship with God. It is not enough to keep these attributes “in-check”, to limit their consequences by laws and penalties. We must go to the source. During this season of Lent, we need to purify and refine our spirits, through prayer, fasting and alms-giving. We need to have a “spiritual health-check” and begin afresh.

As we follow Jesus to Calvary, the ultimate altar of sacrifice, we must make peace with our neighbours, ourselves and God. Then we may stand in front of the Cross in good conscience and through the Cross, those “who renounce all previous sins, shall certainly live”.

Lent Week 1 Tuesday - How are you going to pray?

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 34; Matthew 6:7-15

Lent is a time for prayer and fasting. A very common question around this time of year is ‘What are you giving up for Lent?’ A far less common question is ‘How are you going to pray?’

Today’s Gospel is a reminder that Lent is a wonderful opportunity to renew our prayer life. In prayer, we express our desires before God. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus not only teaches us what we should desire, but also the order in which we should desire. God is our final end, so it is fitting that we should first seek His glory. We express our love by affectionately calling Him ‘Our Father’. We should also love ourselves in God, so we pray for the coming of His kingdom so that we can enjoy participating in His glory. Then we pray for the means by which we can share in His glory, that God’s will be done in us so that we might merit eternal life with Him. We also pray for the basic sustenance which enables His will to be done in us. Finally, we pray for the removal of all those obstacles which stop us attaining our end with God, such as our sinfulness, our false desires and our hardness of heart.

Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew’s Gospel comes between his teaching on almsgiving and on fasting, a sure indication that all these activities are intimately related. So this Lent, whatever acts of almsgiving or fasting we undertake, let us do them prayerfully.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 58:9-14; Ps 85; Luke 5:27-32

One of the most appealing images for me in the bible occurs in the Book of Genesis. There, at the very beginning of humanity’s relationship with God, disobedience and sin have been chosen by Adam and Eve. They are filled with shame and are utterly self conscious of their nakedness, of how exposed they are before their Maker. So they hide, thinking that the trees of the garden could shield them from the gaze of the all-knowing God. Yet God walks in the garden seeking out the man and the woman, calling out to them “where are you?”. To my mind this seems to be a major feature of our salvation story. Sin, disobedience, human shame and yet God is always seeking us out, calling to us in so many different ways.

The readings for today’s Mass speak so beautifully of this. In the prophet Isaiah God calls to us and reasons with us telling us to do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, and the wicked word. God yearns for us to be truly free and liberated from hardness of heart and pettiness. How do we achieve this freedom? By loving service of our neighbours before ourselves and of God. Through this service our light will rise in the darkness, we will find strength for our bones, and we will be like a spring that will never run dry. In serving others and respecting the Sabbath as a day of rest, we will find true happiness in the Lord.

The Gospel is another powerful statement of how God constantly seeks us out. Jesus goes in search of the sinners and outcasts, in this case Levi (also called Matthew in the Gospels) a tax collector. These men were known as collaborators with the hated Roman occupiers, traitors and exploiters of their fellow Jews. They were despised. Yet Jesus goes to call even Levi and not only to call him but to eat with him, an important sign of fellowship. God’s longing for all of us sinners is clear for he says “it is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance.” Jesus’ message is clear. This Lent let us turn toward the Lord therefore with hope and confidence in his loving search for us so that we may raise the voice of our hearts in joyful response to him as he calls out “where are you?”

Friday after Ash Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 18-19; Matthew 9:14-15

As we stand at the beginning of Lent, the Church gives us in today’s readings some directions for our fasting in this time of penance. Just like the people of the Old Covenant, we may also be tempted to regard fasting and all sacrifices which we offer in these days as a merely outward exercise. We fast and expect God to see it; we humble ourselves and demand a reward of God.

But the prophet Isaiah tells us today that this kind of fasting will not make our voice heard on high (cf. Is 58:4). Our fasting must rather merely be the external expression of our invisible repentance. In this sense it is a sign of something we already have: sorrow for our sins. But at the same time it is a help and a means for a bigger purpose. It helps us, as Benedict XVI writes in his message for Lent, “to restore friendship with God”.

It does not matter what we abstain from. This is, of course, something which everybody has to decide individually for himself. It could be food, meat or sweets, smoking or alcohol, television or the internet, and so on. But it is important to see that we do not fast for the sake of fasting. This would be ridiculous, for some of the things we cut down are actually good in themselves. We refrain from things which are important – perhaps too important – for us in order to become free for greater love towards God and our brothers and sisters.

We must therefore see fasting in its proper context: it forms a unity together with prayer and almsgiving. We grow in love towards God in prayer and towards our fellow men, especially the poor, in sharing our goods with them. They deserve more than a superfluous fraction of our abundance, as it were, the crumbs from our table. Isaiah challenges us to share our bread with the hungry.

Let us therefore in these holy forty days “mortify our egoism and open our heart to love of God and neighbour” (Benedict XVI). Let us give through prayer and almsgiving what we set aside through our fasting. We can give the time we save to God and the people around us and money and other material goods to the poor. “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am” (Is 58:9).

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Ps 1:1-2,3,4,6; Luke 9:22-25.

Throughout the ages, Christians have often been accused of being masochists. After all, at the centre of our faith is an instrument of cruel torture - the cross. Some people find our attitude to difficulty and suffering very bizarre indeed, and it seems that our faith requires that we wallow, even enjoy, the suffering that comes our way in life. Even as Christians, the business of taking up our cross does not sit easily with us. In my room when I was a novice, there was a slightly moth eaten piece of cross stitch mounted on the wall. The piece had flowers arranged around a few words which read 'no cross, no crown'. I must admit that in the more challenging times, it was tempting to take it down and put it in a drawer, or at the very least turn it around so that its truth could not remind me that I needed to be more patient and more accepting of the more difficult aspects of life.

In our lives many trials come our way. We do not have to go looking for them, because they seem to be able to find us all on their own! By accepting our trials, from the little daily irritations to the bigger, more challenging moments of crisis and loss in our lives, we seem to have so much to lose. And today's Gospel confirms our suspicion. The way of the cross means we lose our lives. But the dramatic events that Jesus foretells - his own death and resurrection - should always remind us that if we unite our trials and sufferings with him, we will find meaning in them, a meaning which will bring with it new life.

It is perhaps helpful to reflect on our daily struggles at this special time of Lent. What are the greatest difficulties that I face in my daily life? How do I respond to them? Do I seek the grace to bear my trials with patience and humility, uniting them with the suffering of Christ? Do I allow God to change in me that which needs to change? In a special way, Lent provides us with an ideal opportunity to expose our weaknesses, because we enter the desert with Christ. The stories of the Desert Fathers give us examples of those who followed Christ into the desert, and came out transformed. For us, just as was the case for them, by identifying what holds us back in our imitation of Christ, we can die a little more each day to ourselves, so that we might open the door and welcome the risen Christ this Easter. Let us not be afraid to enter the desert of Lent, so that we may drink deeply from the life giving streams that Christ's death and resurrection pour out for us.

On the Areopagus - 13 The Basis of our Hope

One of the factors a lot of people speak about as characteristic of many in society today, especially young people, is a pervading sense of hopelessness, a sense that there isn’t much to look forward to and often, sadly, not much to live for. The sense of purpose and of deep inner value is often hard to find. Pessimism and cynicism seem to prevail in many areas of the media. Yet the Christian is called to a life that is extraordinarily different from these things. The First Letter of Peter exhorts the Christian to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 1:15). Christians have received the gift of hope that comes from that most trustworthy and unfailing source - God our Father, revealed through Jesus Christ. Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians states firmly that before they came to know Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Believing in Christ means coming into possession of a great hope.

What is this hope based on? Pious sentiment? Mad daydreams? Self delusion? No. St Paul is clear in his letter to the Thessalonians. He exhorts them not to grieve over the dead as do those without hope: “we believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again, and so believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep with him” (1 Thess 4:14). It is a hope based on the knowledge of the immense love which God has for us and which he revealed in the death of his only-begotten Son on the Cross. The tortured figure of Christ on the Cross, arms outstretched before the world, as it were to gather us all to himself, reveals the depths of his love and of how far God will go in his effort to save each human being. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Pope Benedict explains in his letter on hope, Spe Salvi, that “the dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who has hope has been granted the gift of a new life.”

This firm hope in the promise of the resurrection occupies a large part of Paul’s thinking. For him the second coming is a glorious occasion. Not only will the bodies of human beings be transformed but all creation will be renewed: “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Therefore we are children of the light, the light of the knowledge that Christ has revealed to us in his life, death and resurrection. We have put on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet. All Christians are called to be beacons of hope in a world too often darkened by fear, pessimism and hopelessness. Whatever our place in life, whatever our difficulties or sufferings, each of us is of incalculable value to God. For he has spoken to us through his Son and therefore we are comforted by our sure hope in Christ’s saving power and by the firm knowledge that “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

On the Areopagus - 3 Reflections on Hope

Pope Benedict XVI, in a greeting to young people in 2008, challenged them as Christ’s disciples to “show the world the reason for the hope that resonates within you. Tell others about the truth that sets you free.”

One of the pastoral roles undertaken by Dominican students in Oxford is to guide a youth group in the Oxford Priory known as 'Catholics Anonymous'. In Advent 2008 the young people of this group took up the Holy Father's challenge and they shared their reflections on the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary during the course of a service of prayer in Blackfriars priory church. The service consisted of readings from the scriptures for each mystery, followed by a reflection, and the praying of the mystery itself accompanied by appropriate musical accompaniment that was conducive to prayer and meditation.



The youth group shared their reflections on the mysteries of our faith which were a fruit of their contemplation. These reflections were insightful and thought-provoking, often concentrating on the theme of the hope which our faith in the new-born Christ gives us. One reflection spoke of “the very fragility of this hope, of this state of life, the fact that hope, and patience is often all we have”. Going on to wonder about how the great saints appear so secure in their faith and knowledge despite their human limitations, the reflection went on to say: “But these ultra-pious Saints lived in Advent too, they didn’t know either. Perhaps theirs was an example of astonishing hope, or astonishing trust, but it was not a sign of divinity… Hope then, is the only true compass and our need to live in hope, rather than doubt, seems to lie at the centre of both the Christian life and, when I look again, the Joyful Mysteries”.

Looking at the Visitation, another reflection spoke about the audacity of Mary’s hope: “Doing and proclaiming true good in a society which may frown upon it would make politicians and princes shrink, but filled with the Holy Spirit, Mary proclaims it with fervour, conviction and joy, sure in the hope that all generations will call her blessed”.


We thank our young people for their generosity in giving their time and efforts into organising such a wonderful and prayerful service, which was an inspiration to the friars and laity who attended and which helped us to look afresh at the mystery of the Incarnation.

fr David Barrins OP who has guided the youth group since it began in 2007

St Paul concludes his letter to the Philippians - the community he seemed to love more than any of the others - encouraging them as follows: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:4-7).

On the Areopagus - 2 We have a Gospel to proclaim!

On 6 January 2009, the British Humanist Association launched its 'atheist bus advertising campaign'. Originally intended for just a few buses, with a budget of just £5,500, the Association rapidly received over £130,000, enabling 800 buses around the country to carry the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". 

What has prompted this campaign? Ariane Sherine, who created the campaign, said that she was moved to respond in this way by certain high-profile Christian campaigns that declared that "failing to believe in Jesus will condemn you to hell". She added: "There's no doubt that advertising can be effective, and religious advertising works particularly well on those who are vulnerable, frightening them into believing."

Much has been made of the slogan's lack of certitude, that there is probably no God, which some say is, technically, agnosticism rather than atheism. However, what bothers me is the second half of the slogan, for it is based on the premise that belief in God, or even the existence of God (however probable), gives rise to anxiety and fear, and is a barrier to enjoying life. If this is true, then the Gospel is bad news rather than good news, and I am in the wrong place! 

On the contrary, those of us who have just celebrated Christmas - the feast of Love incarnate - know that our God is a God of unconditional love and it is He who causes us to enjoy life even more. Ironically, the atheist bus campaign began on the feast of the Epiphany, the day when the Gentile wise men came in search of Love incarnate and found him in the babe of Bethlehem, cradled in the arms of his mother. Those magi who scanned the heavens looking for portents and signs recognized Jesus as the Sign, the sacrament of divine Love. Those who would be wise, who sought meaning and happiness in life, discerned that our humanity was graciously elevated by the coming of Christ, who by his incarnation has joined us to divinity and so assured us eternal life, happiness and peace with God. 

Like those magi, all humanity still seeks to love and be loved. We seek happiness, the enjoyment of life, goodness, truth and beauty. In this we are in agreement with Ms Sherine. And why not? For all human beings are born with this longing for love. However, where we may differ from Ms Sherine is where we find this life-fulfilling love. St Augustine said, "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you". So, we Christians find love in God. It is He who holds us in being and brings us to perfection, fulfilling our deepest desires. 

In Jesus Christ who is God incarnate, "perfect love made flesh and blood", the wise men sought and found what all humankind seeks. Others who refused to see this truth sought to kill Him or to deny His existence. Why? Rowan Williams says that "in a world of blocked choices, wrong turnings and drastically false accounts of who and what we are, love of this sort is not going to look obvious or natural. It will seem to be against the grain." And so, frightened by such perfect love and goodness, some seek to kill it while others deny it.

The reality of our human condition is that we live in a world of fear, uncertainty and worry. In a time of war and terrorism, famine and drought, climate change and economic volatility, it is somewhat naive and blase to say, 'stop worrying and enjoy your life'. Clearly, we all live with suffering and hardship, human wickedness and fear. In a sense, we already live in 'hell', that is to say, a world where God is absent because sinful humanity excludes Him. The atheist campaign seems to take the proverbial ostrich-like approach in answer to our woes: pretend it is not so, live it up, take refuge in fleeting pleasures and enjoyment. The Christian approach is to acknowledge the reality of God-given life which is essentially good but because of sin is lacking in truth, goodness and beauty. The reality of our estranged human condition is called original sin, and God Himself has come to free us from sin and give us a share in his divine life: this is good news! 

Christians down the ages have all lived in times of upheaval and been persecuted for their faith. It is not so much failure to believe in Christ that condemns one to hell, but often Christians who have faith have suffered 'hell' on account of their faith; many still die for following the Gospel. In doing so, they imitate Jesus Himself who "descended into hell" for our sakes. Moreover, they remained steadfast in faith and knew a deep unshakeable joy that overcame all temporal worries because they knew the love of God for them. St Paul thus said: "I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38f). Therefore, as Herbert McCabe OP puts it, "Christianity is a wisdom concerned with how to love oneself, and how to rejoice in being". We rejoice in being alive and we learn to love ourselves because we recognise that we are first loved into being by God. I repeatedly experienced this joy in the lives of destitute Filipino Catholics living in the most terrible slums of Manila, and their example of love, peace and happiness amazed me and deepened my faith. 

We believe that Christ has come to give us fullness of life. Life itself and all enjoyment, pleasure and the goodness of creation are held in being by God and come from God. Faith in Jesus Christ and knowing Him as our Saviour, our Brother, and our Friend does not threaten our enjoyment of life. On the contrary, Jesus brings our life to perfection, gives us lasting happiness, and fills us with God's goodness. Hence, Aquinas said that the pleasures we experience on earth will be even more pleasureable in heaven: with God, we enjoy life more! 

This, surely, is the Gospel that we believe, and we need to proclaim it. The atheist bus campaign suggests that all too often some Christians have not been preaching good news but scare-mongering. Let us stop doing that, and proclaim a gospel that liberates us from fear, makes us more fully human, offers certain hope and brings true peace and happiness. 

January 25 - Saul to Paul

For the first half of his life he was Saul and for the second part Paul. He became the apostle to the Gentiles, the founder of Churches, a travelling preacher and a writer of letters. At the end he witnessed to Christ by shedding his blood as a martyr for the faith at Rome. January 25th is the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, the moment he ceased to be Saul and became Paul. By God’s grace he was destined to be one of the greatest saints of the Church, a man whose life and writings continue to nourish the faith of millions. Paul describes himself as ‘one untimely born’ (1 Corinthians 15), brought to birth as ‘the last and least’ of the apostles, those privileged to encounter the risen Lord. His life before that moment – his life as ‘Saul’, culminating in his persecution of the Church of God – does not count any more.

It is true that in 2 Corinthians 11, Philippians 3, and Romans 11 Paul gives us a lot of information about his life and times, about his ancestry and education, and about the events of his life before and after his conversion. The Acts of the Apostles fills in many gaps and there is more to be gleaned from other letters of the New Testament. But if we are to take his own words seriously, then the significant life of Paul the Apostle is his preaching of the gospel and his establishment of churches. His life in Christ is the life that counts. There is nothing before or around that that is worthy of much attention. This is because for him ‘to live is Christ’ (Philippians 1.21) so that ‘it is no longer Paul who lives but Christ who lives in him’ (Galatians 2.20). The fate of Paul is now completely entwined with the fate of Christ and of his Body, the Church.

Paul belongs to the line of Israel’s prophets for whom a vision and vocation inaugurate a new life. Isaiah, for example, saw God’s glory in the temple at Jerusalem, felt his own unworthiness, had his lips burned clean with fire, and then entrusted himself to the grace that made him the bearer of God’s word (Isaiah 6). Amos the keeper of sycamore trees is also turned into a prophet (Amos 7). Jeremiah is called in spite of his feeling that he is too young for the responsibilities involved (Jeremiah 1).

We can use the words of Isaiah, describing the effects of God’s presence in the temple, to say that Paul’s experience of untimely birth meant the shaking of his foundations and the filling of his house with smoke. He was confused and blinded for some time until a representative of the Church, Ananias, came as the instrument of God’s Spirit and guided him to his new birth (Acts 9). Then in baptism, as he has taught the whole Church, Paul became a new creation (2 Corinthians 5.17).

And so his life begins. We cannot doubt that Paul’s personal experience of Jesus on the road to Damascus and in the days that followed deserves all the attention that has been lavished on it. The Acts of the Apostles tells the story three times. (Artists tend to paint the scene with Paul falling from a horse but in none of these accounts is there any reference to a horse!) His teaching and the energy with which he travelled back and forth across the Roman Empire were the result of that moment in which Paul met Jesus and was forever overwhelmed.

What did Saint Paul then do all day? He tells us that he burned himself out in his anxiety and care for the churches. There are hints that he continued to earn a living through his trade of tent making (1 Corinthians 9). But this would have been a tedious distraction from his heart’s passion, which was to preach the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord, to become all things to all people that he might somehow win some of them. He preached to Jews and Greeks, to tradesmen and philosophers, to prison guards and political leaders, to men and women.

As an instrument of the Spirit he achieved remarkable things. He established and strengthened Christian communities in many places. He brought the gospel to Europe. He ended his life by dying a martyr’s death in Rome. He was privileged to follow Christ in more than a figurative sense. With his physical blood Paul completed the outpouring of his heart’s passion, his love for Christ, that love from God that had been poured into his heart by the Holy Spirit. He lived always in faith and love, never for a moment forgetting the grace of God working in him in spite of many difficulties and personal weaknesses.

Saint Paul is one of the best-known personalities of the ancient world who continues to teach and inspire millions of disciples of Jesus. On January 25 we recall the wonderful things God did through him. Let us, in Paul’s own words, ‘give thanks to God who gave him (and gives us) the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ’ (1 Corinthians 15.57).

26 December - St Stephen, Protomartyr

A homily for St Stephen's Day by Fr Vivian Boland, the master of students, may be found here

Verbum Abbreviatum

Below the sanctuary of the ancient Roman Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, or St Mary Major, in Rome is the Crypt of the Nativity. Here several pieces of wooden board are preserved which traditionally are held to be relics of the Nativity Crib. Each year on Christmas Eve they are placed on the High Altar of the Church to be publically venerated. For most of the year, however, these rather ordinary pieces of wood, slightly hidden in their elaborate reliquary, can so easily go unnoticed by the many visitors who come to this Church to observe the splendour of its magnificent interior. And yet these simple relics conceal something of great depth, for they point to that momentous event which we celebrate each Christmas when God, by taking our humanity, came into the world to dwell among us.

When thinking about the nativity of Jesus in Bethlehem Christian thinkers of the past have often been struck at the way in which something seemingly so commonplace and everyday as a new-born baby in its crib could, at the same time, conceal such a profound meaning and significance for the world. Commenting on this paradox, a medieval Cistercian Abbot named Guerric, a student of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote: ‘is it not astonishing that the Word of God should have abbreviated all his words to us when it willed to be abbreviated itself and made insignificant, so to speak, that it somehow contracted its immeasurable greatness and entered the confines of a mother’s womb, and that he who holds the world in his hands allowed himself to be laid in a crib?’

This medieval writer draws our attention to the way in which all those many words that God had spoken in various ways and at different times to his people in the past (Hebrews 1:1) are now summarised in this one incarnate Word of God, this Verbum Abbreviatum or Abridged Word, who lies as a new-born child in the crib at Bethlehem. For Christians Jesus is not the first word spoken to the world by God, but he is God’s word to the world expressed definitively and in all its fullness, the culminating point of the salvation history of Israel. For in the person of Jesus Christ, God has now made it possible for us to experience him as he really is. Jesus is God’s self-expression to the world, his presence among us.

The joy of this discovery by the first Christians, and their eagerness to share their encounter with God in the person of Jesus Christ, is recorded for us in the New Testament: ‘that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete’ (1 John 1:3-4). The biblical writer clearly perceives that our relationship with God has a clear ecclesial dimension - it is only in the fellowship of the Church that our spiritual growth towards God can properly take place.

One of the reasons for Christian joy comes from the knowledge that Christ is able to provide the answer to the deepest questions about the meaning and direction of our lives and can thus satisfy that yearning for happiness and fulfilment deep within each of us. The journey of the Magi to Bethlehem in search of the infant king of the Jews has been seen as emblematic of the persistent human search for the answer to the deepest longings of the heart. The Magi found their answer in the fragile form of an ordinary human child, seemingly so ordinary and humble, lying in the manger at Bethlehem. Saint Peter Chrysologus, one of the Church Fathers, wrote about this event: ‘The Magi are filled with awe by what they see; heaven on earth and earth in heaven; man in God and God in man; they see enclosed in a tiny body the One whom the entire world cannot contain’.

This reflection is by Brother Thomas Skeats OP, a student of the English Province who is currently studying at the Angelicum University in Rome

Third Sunday of Advent - The One Who Is Coming

On this, the third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday, we sense a definite mood change. The austerity of what can be a sombre though hope-filled penitential season is replaced by a shift of emphasis. We see a burst of colour appearing at the Mass today as rose coloured vestments replace the violet and we are enjoined at the Introit to: Rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice or Gaudete in Domino semper, hence Gaudete Sunday. But why this shift in emphasis? We are edging that bit nearer to celebrating the coming of Our Lord at Christmas, that is undeniably true, but looking at today’s Gospel we also see that we have built upon last week’s message of preparation in Mark’s Gospel and now we see John the Baptist actively proclaiming the Coming. ‘There stands among you – unknown to you – the one who is coming’. John the Baptist’s proclamation is sure and certain, filled with hope and, one must assume, wholly joyful. Can we also feel in the depths of our hearts such joy as we hear this news? Amidst the tumult of our everyday lives - the rush to find the right presents, get the cards away on time, and attend the obligatory functions – are we allowing ourselves to find the time to truly prepare and more dauntingly perhaps, truly proclaim, this wonderful news? That Christ is in us, each and every one, and that, in little over a week, we will celebrate the most astonishing and fantastic event that is Christ’s birth here in our midst should truly fill us with such joy and peace. However, it can only do so if we allow ourselves the time to reflect, to pray and to prepare. Only then will we, like John the Baptist, be so moved by the Spirit that we will also wish to proclaim this blessed coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in a world that greatly needs to hear His message.

The Immaculate Conception - Wonderful Gift of God’s Grace

“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). This greeting of the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation tells us so much about Mary’s deep and wonderful relationship with God. Mary was chosen from before her birth. Mary, from her first moment of conception, was preserved free from all stain of original sin. This was done through a unique grace granted her by Almighty God through the merits of Christ. While the act of grace performed for Mary that we celebrate today is unique, we are all called to live the life of grace which helps each person, made in the image and likeness of our Creator, to participate fully in God’s life.

Mary shows us what being fully open to that life of grace can do for us. So joyful is she because of God’s extraordinary love that she cries out in Luke’s Gospel : “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Each of us is warmly invited into that deep and loving relationship with God. We are called to be full of grace and to glorify God with our lives. Later in Luke Jesus tells us : “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). We are called to celebrate what God has done in Mary, a human being, and to imitate her in our lives so we can share forever in the transforming love of God. As St Augustine said: "Mary is blessed because she ‘heard the word of God and kept it’. Her mind was filled more fully with Truth than her womb by his flesh".

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee

Second Sunday of Advent- A Voice Cries

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

Different kinds of landscape evoke different responses in us, perhaps even shape different kinds of people: the rugged coastlines of Scotland or Ireland contrast with the green hills of Tipperary or Derbyshire. In Palestine too there are contrasting landscapes, in the north the rich and fertile valleys and hillsides of Galilee running down to the sparkling waters of the Lake, in the south the parched and merciless hills of Judea ending in a sea of salt, the Dead Sea. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness and not in the rich pasturelands of Galilee. He cut a strange figure, as rugged and austere as the countryside through which he moved. Close to nature in one sense—dressed in camel skin, eating locusts and wild honey—he seemed to be quite detached from it in another—focussed exclusively on his ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’.

The wilderness already had an honoured place in the history and consciousness of Israel. The great trek to freedom saw the people following Moses and wandering in that wilderness for forty years, before Joshua finally led them across the river Jordan into the promised land. The prophets often recalled those years as the years of Israel’s first love, when she was a young bride being betrothed to her Lord in integrity and faithfulness.

Times of power, settlement and comfort led, as they must, to corruption and compromise, to betrayal and the loss of integrity. Only the profoundly shocking experience of the exile made Israel sit up and take notice. But by then all was lost: the people were exiled from the land, the political leadership was overthrown, cities and towns were pillaged, it seemed that God’s promises were torn up, the covenant dissolved, the glory of the Lord left the Temple—the relationship forged in the wilderness years had, it seemed, irretrievably broken down.

At this lowest point in Israel’s history the prophet we call Second Isaiah raised a voice of encouragement and hope: ‘Comfort my people’, he cried out, ‘the time of trial is over. Speak a word of comfort to the heart of Jerusalem.’ The voice in the wilderness says to prepare a way for the Lord, a highway through the desert, filling in valleys, lowering hills, levelling out the rough and straightening the crooked. The people are to be led back—chastened, wounded, still hurting perhaps—but renewed, restored, revitalised.

It is a wonderful vision and it is the one to which the gospel writers spontaneously turned when they set out to record the story of Jesus. This good news began, says Mark, in the wilderness. The voice of comfort, encouragement and hope is the voice of this strange man John the Baptist. He is the voice crying in the wilderness, announcing an imminent visitation from God. ‘Someone more powerful than I is coming after me’, he says, ‘who will baptise you not just externally with water but internally with the Holy Spirit’, not just in the strength of our human longing but in the strength of God’s own love.

The wilderness of our hearts, the dead and dry places of our lives, these are to be visited by God—by God’s truthful and caring love—so that the renewal, restoration and revitalisation will be radical in us, happening deep within, in the darkness of our most intimate thoughts, desires, fears and longings.

This is not just a Sunday afternoon outing to the banks of the river to see a strange and eccentric street entertainer. The Second Letter of Peter makes that very clear. Radical upheaval is to be expected if there is to be the kind of change that is promised. The dramatic picture painted there (2 Pet 3.8-14), of the entire structure and landscape of the planet being thrown into disarray, recalls Israel’s experience of the exile, of complete disintegration.

How prepared can we be for the kind of radical change in our lives which the coming of God’s love might bring about? The comfort of Galilee with its gentle landscape and beautiful sunsets must give way at some point to the austerity and bitterness of Judea. Only by passing through the wilderness—for Jesus, the wilderness of Gethsemane and Calvary—do we have access to the real comfort of God, the place of rest, the salvation Jesus brings, the glory revealed in Him and promised to us.

Quodlibet 12 - How much do Dominicans study?

People who know only a few things about the Dominicans are likely to know that the Order places greater importance on study than almost anything else, besides the vocation to preach. In the English Province, most students will study for a minimum of five years before ordination to the priesthood, and many will study for higher degrees after ordination, either immediately or following a few years of pastoral and preaching experience. However, for the Dominican, being engaged in theological study at some level is a life-long occupation, and does not merely end with formal studies during preparation for the priesthood. It is important that all Dominicans have a good knowledge of theology, because it is needed to preach the Gospel, to shape and influence our entire ministry. We might say that a certain intellectual curiosity is one of the signs of a Dominican vocation.

Despite our reputation for a love of learning, it is important to stress that not all Dominicans are academic high flyers: the call is, after all, to be preachers. Some may study and teach full time, others may spend much less time on the intellectual life. Our ongoing studies need not necessarily be high level academic research. But we need nevertheless to cultivate and use our intellectual gifts in whatever way we can to serve the mission in which we are engaged. This means that we also study a wide range of things, and try always to broaden our horizons. Being a good preacher means being able to speak to a wide range of people, people from different backgrounds, with their hopes and fears. Our study should have as its aim to improve our knowledge of the mysteries of salvation, but also, say, an awareness of the realities faced by the people to whom we preach. The skill is to unite the two aspects in such a way that the Gospel is being communicated to people in a way which they understand, and is true to their circumstances and experiences. So whether a brother is engaged in full time research and writing in Cambridge, teaches moral theology in the Studium here at Oxford, or is a hospital chaplain in Leicester, study of theology and its application to the work being carried out is essential, because it nourishes and sustains the individual, and gives shape, content and depth to his preaching and ministry.

The picture shows St Albert the Great, Doctor of the Church, patron saint of scientists, and teacher of St Thomas Aquinas. His feast is celebrated on 15th November. For an account of his life and work click here.

Called to be Saints - 1/2 November

Human beings choose because there is something good and desirable already there, we encounter it and we decide we want it. God’s choice however creates things. Because God chooses, something good and desirable comes into being.

We can therefore say that creation itself is God’s original choosing. God is completely free in his decision to create the world. Nothing obliges God to make a world. He simply says ‘let there be light’ and light is. He simply chooses to create human beings, and so it is. Our being, and the being of all the world, originates in a love beyond anything we can imagine or experience. God’s love calls something out of nothing and this is God’s absolutely free choice.

‘God saw all he had made and found it very good’ (Genesis 1.31). This applies to everything God had made: the moon and the stars, oak trees and tulips, cows and sharks. But among the creatures God has made, the human being has a special place. There is plenty of evidence that the human being has powers and abilities way beyond anything other animals have. On top of that, all the great religious traditions regard the human being as a spiritual being. We have capacities for knowledge, for love, for language, for social life, for creative and artistic work, for religion – all this is special to humanity.

For Jews, Christians and Muslims these capacities and powers are evidence that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1.26). Humans are created to represent God in creation. They are to use their intelligence and freedom as God’s stewards or delegates in the management of the world.

For Christians there is a further dimension. We believe that the image of God in us has been damaged and distorted by sin. But we believe that Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, who bears the very stamp of God’s nature (Hebrews 1.3), heals us and restores that image of God in us. We believe that he is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. We believe that in Christ we are called to a level of living that God always wanted us to have. We are adopted as God’s children, chosen to share in the love that is God’s own nature. This is the fullness of life that Jesus says he has come to bring (John 10.10).

‘Before the world was made, he chose us in Christ’, the letter to the Ephesians says (Ephesians 1.4). And the beginning of the gospel of Saint John teaches us that ‘through him all things came to be … they all had life in him … a life that enlightens all human beings coming into the world’ (John 1.3-4).

What we believe about ourselves and the dignity of all other human beings can seem incredible, especially when we see our own selfishness and the evil things human beings do to each other. But in spite of so many weaknesses and failures, we believe that we are created in God’s image and have been chosen to share God’s life. ‘To all who did accept him’ – who accepted the call – ‘he gave power to become children of God … and from his fullness we have all received’ (John 1.12,16).

The letter to the Ephesians seems to realize that we will need help to accept this extraordinary teaching, that God chose us in Christ before the world was made and predestined us for eternal life. Paul there prays that 'our minds may be enlightened so that we see what hope God’s call holds for us, what rich glories God has promised the saints will inherit’ (Ephesians 1.18). The ‘saints’ are you and I (believe it or not), individual and ordinary human beings, whose lives fade like passing shadows but who have been chosen and called to share God’s eternal life of love.

Ministry to those in prison.... some thoughts

During the summer months just like many of the other students, I spent some time carrying out a pastoral placement. For me this involved extending my term-time pastoral work in a prison into a month of greater engagement at the same prison.

Chaplaincy work in a prison is challenging and multi-faceted. It asks many different things of the individual. One must be prepared to work with challenging people with complex histories who live in circumstances which place restrictions on their ability to make their own decisions, to communicate, and to interact with others. Prisoners come from a wide range of backgrounds. Often their home life and upbringing will have been problematic, or they may have a history of drug abuse, alcohol dependency, be the victims of abuse, or suffer from mental illness. For most people, living in a prison is an unpleasant and stressful experience, and it is often difficult to adjust and make the best of the opportunities offered. Prison is also a place with a wide range of ethnic groups and different religions.

All these things together make for an interesting and diverse group which the Chaplaincy team has to minister to. Although as a Friar it is possible to have meaningful interaction with Catholic prisoners, helping with their spiritual and emotional needs, much of the chaplaincy work involves dealing with people who are not Catholics. The task is to listen to them, and help them as much as possible. From a Christian perspective, I believe that being available and present to all the prisoners is a way of witnessing to the loving mercy of God, made known to us through Christ. Matthew's Gospel reminds us of the need to treat each person we encounter as we would treat Christ himself, and that prisoners are no exception (see Matthew 25:36 onwards).

I have also discovered that Prison offers possibilities for evangelisation. Many prisoners lose much of what they hold dear when they are sent to prison, and are broken and humiliated. They may lose property, family and friends. As such, they have a great longing for Christ, and a thirst for the Gospel and its message of healing and forgiveness. Many rediscover their faith, or hear of the Catholic faith for the first time during their sentence. The openness of the prisoners about their sins and faults, and their determination to change and live a Christ-centered life is so often a truly wonderful thing to see, and is an example to us all. At such moments, the words of the Psalmist come to mind: 'The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit' (Ps. 34).

Whilst there are many programs to help prisoners to deal with their offending behaviour, perhaps one of the most valuable things I can do as a Dominican is to help a prisoner to put what has happened to them into the context of faith, and help them to look forward to a new life in Christ, a life of faith, strengthened by hope, making Christ present in the prison, and upon release, to the wider world, through love.

September 14 - Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 77; Philippians 2:6-11; John 3:13-17
Fr Herbert McCabe OP once wondered why we have this feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14th September when, as he put it, 'we already have a perfectly good feast of the cross on Good Friday'. One reason may be that the realities we celebrate in the great Easter liturgies are so powerful and central to our faith that we have to return to them at other times of the year, to have another think about them.

The feast of Corpus Christi, for example, is another chance to meditate on the events of Holy Thursday. The feast of Christ the King is another chance to celebrate Christ's return to the Father in his Ascension and his enthronement in heavenly glory. Easter itself happens every Sunday, every day even, whenever we celebrate Mass.

Today's feast of the exaltation of the Cross allows us to meditate again on the wise foolishness and vulnerable power of God that we see in the crucifixion and death of Jesus.

Part of the deal with capital punishment was that it happened publicly so that as many people as possible could see it being carried out. It happened very often on a gallows or a platform, high above the heads of the crowd. As many people as possible could then see what happened to those who broke the law - they were hanged, beheaded, shot, stoned, garroted, crucified, or whatever. People were lifted up, exalted we might say, so that their death could be more easily seen.

Because the cross of Christ has such a secure place among religious symbols it does not seem strange, weird, shocking or scandalous any more. We can forget that the cross was one of these platforms of torture and death. We can forget that the crucifix shows a dying human body fixed to wooden beams.

St Paul very quickly pointed out that the language of the cross is illogical and paradoxical, a sign of God's foolish wisdom and vulnerable power. It is a madness, Paul says, and an obstacle that some people cannot get over. But to those who have been called it is the power and wisdom of God.

We venerate the wood of the cross - exalt it and lift it up - because it was instrumental in the salvation of the world. Of course it is not a piece of wood as such that redeems the world but the love in Christ's heart. But the physical cross was the platform on which the great drama of the Divine Love was exposed, lifted up and shown to all who cared to look. More than a platform, this tree of death has become the tree of life for us. Through the death for love of the One who died on this tree, death itself has been defeated.

In a tiny way we experience something of the power of the crucified Christ in our experiences of love. Love always means opening up to the suffering of the one who is loved, sharing it with him or her, and so becoming vulnerable to suffering and pain that is not our own. It is a kind of exposure, it means taking some kind of risk, we leave ourselves open to rejection, perhaps to accusations of not really understanding, to being hurt in one way or another.

But this is the glory of love, this strength to be vulnerable on behalf of others. It is the strength of the Lamb of God whose blood seeping into the wood of the cross became the seed of new life for the world. It is the power and the wisdom of God that look like weakness and foolishness to us.

The cross of Jesus Christ rises above the mess humans continue to make of their world. Today's feast invites us to look to the cross and pray: Ave crux, spes unica (Hail O Cross, our only hope).

A-Z of Paul: Timothy and Titus

The Letters of Paul to both Timothy and Titus are know as the 'Pastoral Epistles'. If we read them carefully, we can notice several things about them. The first is that they are addressed to individuals who seem to have responsibility for local Churches. It seems likely that both Timothy and Titus are early bishops, episkopoi, who, if we take the literal meaning of the Greek word, 'oversaw' the affairs of the local Churches. We also notice that the tone and the content of the letters is quite different to, say the Letter to the Romans or the Corinthian Epistles. Many scholars are of the opinion that the different style of these letters is a sign that they are not in fact from Paul - the tone and language are, after all, very different. On the other hand, it can be argued that the letters addressed to both Timothy and Titus have a very different aim in mind. A leader such as Paul would, after all, write quite a different letter to other Church leaders than the kind that he might write for instructing and encouraging all the members of a Church in a particular place. The arguments for and against Pauline authorship will no doubt continue, and we must be careful not to be too drawn in, lest we lose sight of their value to all Christians.

The letters to Timothy and Titus are above all letters of support and encouragement. The First Letter to Timothy emphasises strongly the importance of prayer and of peace in the local Church. His instructions concerning those who are to be Bishops and Deacons show how clearly Paul thinks that holiness in Church leaders is fundamental in leading the faithful to Christ. Good leaders have a duty to ensure good teaching in the Church, and safeguard the wellbeing of the whole community, young and old (1 Tim 5:1-2). In the Second Letter to Timothy, it is clear that Paul believes his life to be coming to an end. This time, Paul encourages Timothy, and sets himself up as a model to be imitated, reminding him of the ways in which the Lord worked for him and through him throughout his life. 'Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching' (2 Tim 4:2). The letter to Titus, the shortest of the Pastoral Epistles, emphasises good teaching and good deeds.

So we can see how there are common threads running through all the Pastoral epistles. The Church needs leadership and authority to maintain its unity. But the effectiveness of that leadership will be compromised unless the lives of the leaders is upright and blameless. And this message goes out to all of us of course: if we are to show Christ effectively to the world, we must all be people of holiness, ready to do all we can to help and serve others. We must strive to be icons of Christ, for there is no more powerful way to draw people to faith than to make his face visible to the world in which we live.

August 15 - The Assumption of Our Lady

Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

There is great interest today in fantasy literature, in magical and enchanted stories, whether about Harry Potter or Narnia or the Lord of the Rings. Bookshops are full of material like this as well as science fiction and other kinds of imaginative writing. The desire for enchantment is a desire for other levels of life, that there might be other possibilities for humanity.

Today's feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, her being taken up body and soul to the glory of Her Son's kingdom, meets this desire in us for a level of life that transcends the ordinary realities, a thirst for something beyond, or beneath, or within the things immediately seen, the things easily comprehended and manipulated by us. Fantasy speaks, however faintly, to our sense of wonder about hidden mysteries.

The first reading for example, from the Book of Revelation, presents us with a dramatic story full of symbols, perfect for nourishing the artistic and poetic imagination. The newborn child is Christ and the woman who gives birth is Mary. But she is also the Church, the community of the followers of Christ, destined to follow a difficult road in this world. How the imagination thrills at an adventure, a quest, a search for hidden treasure. The road is rich with possibilities but it is also dangerous and there are many obstacles to be overcome. It is a work of the apocalyptic imagination but it is a true fantasy, if we can put it like that, an accurate diagnosis of the situation of the Christian in the world, of the promise which is our treasure, of the dangerous adventures of the way.

In the second reading Saint Paul teaches us that the new life, the life of the resurrection, already established in Jesus Christ in the moment of his resurrection - this new world and new creation is not just for Jesus but has been won by him for us. The great grace of the Christian faith is this, to accept the promise of a level of living which reaches beyond our imagination. The assumption of Mary is the guarantee of this: the new creation is not just for Christ but is for all who belong to him, in the first place Mary who is next to him in all things, but eventually to all Christ's people. Mary, according to the preface of today's Mass, is thus 'a sign of hope and comfort for God's people on their pilgrim way'.

The gospel includes Mary's great prayer, the Magnificat, praising God for all His graces. Mary, an historical and particular woman, is a unique individual with a unique role in the drama. But she is 'full of grace' and so also a symbolic figure, representing the Church and all who are with her in the Church. The preface speaks of her as 'the beginning and pattern of the Church in its perfection'. Symbolizing and realizing this perfection she is fittingly called 'Mother of the Church'.

Already during this pilgrimage to the land sought by the Christian imagination, we see signs of the new creation, sparks of the glory that is to come, premonitions of the dawn. Wherever there is compassion, work for justice, care of the poor, unexpected generosity, faithful love, spontaneous and creative benevolence - in all of this we detect the presence of the Spirit for these are the effects of His life-giving love. Mary, whose following of her Son was marked by all these things, is the most beautiful creation of the Spirit, the highest honour of our race.

For the moment these signs and sparks encourage us to continue and to persevere on our pilgrimage. The full and clear revelation is yet to come. We continue to thirst, to desire and to imagine, living in the hope of the resurrection that is still to come. We are comforted and strengthened beyond measure by the prayers and example of Mary, already assumed into heaven, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

August 9th - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was proclaimed a patron saint of Europe in 1999. Along with Catherine of Siena and Bridget of Sweden, she was chosen by Pope John Paul II "to emphasize the important role that women have had and have in the ecclesial and civil history of the continent down to our days." Each of these women was "connected in a special way with the Continent's history" and St Teresa in particular was described by John Paul II as "a symbol of the dramas in Europe in our time".

Born in 1891 to a Jewish family in Breslau, Edith Stein was a suffragette in university, a philosopher and teacher, and a nurse in the First World War. Although she had given up the practice of her Jewish religion at the age of 14, her study of phenomenology and her continual search for truth led to a realization that there is an objective reality that is the ground of all reality and makes all things knowable. So she came to recognize the reality of God. Based on her philosophical writings on 'The Problem of Empathy', John Paul II notes that Edith Stein saw that "this reality [of God] must be heeded and grasped above all in the human being, by virtue of that capacity for empathy, a word dear to her which enables one in some way to appropriate the lived experience of the other". Thus she began to read the experiences of God as related by Christians and especially the mystics. One evening Edith picked up the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila and read this book all night. She recounts: "When I had finished the book, I said to myself: this is the truth." Thus she came to faith in Christ and asked to be baptised in 1922.

St Teresa's search for truth and meaning, which led her through philosophy, to a discovery of the experience of God as expressed in the lives of great European Christians is instructive for us today, for European society seems to have forgotten its Christian heritage and seeks to divorce itself from the Christian experience of its past. In doing so, it can no longer empathise with its forebears and risks becoming uprooted, without an identity.

Conversely, Edith Stein not only empathised with the religious experience of great European saints but also remained rooted in her Jewish identity. She never saw her conversion to Christ as a rejection of her Jewish heritage and indeed she said that she "did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God". Although she went on to become a Carmelite nun, her Jewish roots never left her and indeed she suffered the Holocaust with her people. Her recorded last words, to her sister, when the Gestapo came to take them from her convent to Auschwitz on 2 August 1942 were: "come, we are going for our people" Already in 1933, when the Nazis took over Germany, Edith had written that "[Jesus'] Cross... was now being laid upon the Jewish people" and as a Catholic Jewess she felt that she was able to bring the suffering of the Jews to the Cross in a special way. She wrote: "I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody's behalf".

St Teresa's understanding of the Cross was profound, and her last work, left unfinished by her arrest in 1942, was entitled "Kreuzeswissenschaft" (The Science of the Cross). Clinging to the Cross as our only hope, she knew that "those who are joined to Christ... will unflinchingly persevere even in the dark night of subjectively feeling remote from and abandoned by God... Getting to resurrection glory with the Son of Man, through suffering and death, is also the way for each one of us and for all mankind."

This eternal wisdom and gospel of hope is something that the Church proclaims and which Europe needs to hear. For without her ancient Faith, and feeling remote from God, Europe languishes in moral confusion and gropes for purpose and direction. It is not Brussels bureaucracy or European legislation that will save us but only, as Edith Stein learnt, a conversion to God who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

August 6th - The Feast of the Transfiguration

Living the life of faith is often hard when things are not going well in our spiritual lives. We sit and pray, yet no nice feelings of peace or warmth seem to come. It becomes just plain boring to spend time with the Lord, to the extent that when our time for regular prayer comes, even the most unimportant thing that we have been putting off for months becomes the most urgent task! Or we drag ourselves off to Church, or to our room and just sit there, wishing that time would pass..... Anyone who has ever made some sort of attempt to pray will have experienced the closeness of God - a mini Transfiguration moment, if you like, when God seemed very real and present to us. These kind of experiences are a gift, but often few and far between. When things seem less exciting, what should we do?

Well, there is much to learn from today's Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9). Once the disciples have experienced the presence of the Lord, in all its wonder and terror, they are told to rise, and it is all over. They wanted a moment that would last forever, but they have to get up, be on their way.... after all, there are things to do. But of course, this does not mean that they have to leave the presence of God. The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus - the Law and the Prophets side by side with the one who fulfills both - serves as a reminder to them (and to us) of how God is continually present. For us it is a reminder of God's special presence in the scriptures and in the sacraments, which reveal Christ and offer him to us. So we need not tie God's loving care of us to feelings and emotions, but trust that through our prayer, our reading of the Bible and our participation in the liturgical life of the Church, we continue to receive Christ in our lives, and be transformed by him.... transformed so that we can go into the world and make him known.

July 25 - Saint James

Readings: 2 Corinthians 4:7-15; Psalm 125; Matthew 20:20-28

The Gospel lists of the twelve disciples appointed by Jesus to be his companions mention two who share the name James: James, the son of Zebedee and James, the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3:17-18; Matthew 10:2-3). To distinguish the two, the first James, whose feast we celebrate on the 25th July, has commonly been styled "James, the Greater" while tradition has designated the second "James, the Lesser". These titles perhaps refer to the different degrees of attention each of these disciples receives in the New Testament accounts of Jesus´ministry.

James the Greater and his brother, the disciple John, received from Jesus the nickname Boanerges, or "Sons of Thunder". Several incidents in the Gospels point, in fact, to their fiery, impetuous temperaments. For example, when some Samaritans refuse to receive Jesus into their village James and John ask that they might be allowed to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans (Luke 9:54). Together with Peter, James and his brother John form part of a privileged group within the circle of the Twelve permitted to witness important moments in the life of Jesus. The three disiciples are present at the miracle of the raising of Jairus´daughter (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51), at the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:28) and during Jesus´agony in the garden of Gethsemene (Matthew 26:37; Mark 14:33). They are thus witnesses both to the divine splendour and glory of Jesus and to his suffering and humiliation as the moment of his Crucifixion draws ever closer. It is within the context of these events that James and the other disciples had to learn what kind of Messiah Jesus was to be. In particular, they had to adapt their triumphalist understanding of Jesus seen, for example, in the request of James and John to sit in glory, one on the right and one on the left of Jesus, in his kingdom (Mark 10:37), learning instead that Christian discipleship involves drinking the same cup that Jesus was to drink, that is to say, sharing in his suffering and in his Cross. It is precisly this cup that James was later called to share. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that several years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, perhaps in AD 44, James suffered martyrdom at the hands of King Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great (Acts 12:1-2).

Various traditions exist claiming that Saint James preached Christianity in Spain and that his body was later translated to Compostela, in the north-western corner of the Iberian Peninsula. During the Middle Ages Compostela became one of the most frequented pilgrimage sites and even today it continues to be the destination for many pilgrims. Pope Benedict XVI has pointed to three important features in the life of James the Greater that continue to provide an example for Christians today: "promptness in accepting the Lord´s call even when he asks us to leave the "boat" of our human securities, enthusiasm in following him on the paths that he indicates to us over and above any deceptive presumption of our own, readiness to witness to him with courage, if necessary to the point of making the supreme sacrifice of life".

Good soil yielding fruit that will last...

Br Lawrence Lew OP is on a month-long pastoral placement at the UCL Hospitals in London. Below is a reflection he has prepared for tomorrow, the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A). The readings are Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 65; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23.



Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God, has been sent by the Father into the world. The Son has been sown in the earth, taken root in the soil of our humanity, and has become one with us. This marvellous truth, this wonder of the Incarnation of Christ, is that great thing that prophets and the righteous longed to see and hear but did not.

Yet you and I, who are baptized in Christ and have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, are the ones whom Jesus calls ‘happy’ or ‘blessed’ because we have seen and heard Him whom so many before us, and so many around us, long for. We have not perceived this by our own efforts, but rather because of the gift of faith. The grace of the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts and it is the Spirit who teaches us, leads us into all truth, and gives us the gift of understanding. This is the source of our Christian joy for we, because of God’s generous love and the free gift of his grace, have seen and heard God’s divine Word, Jesus Christ his Son.

Just as the dry land thirsts for rain, so too, every human heart thirsts for God and desires the good news of God’s love and salvation. And it is our great privilege as living parts of the Church, the Body of Christ, to help quench the thirst of those who long for God’s love. For it is through the ministry of the Church that Jesus continues to be present in our world. This practical consequence of our faith is very evident in a place like this. Here, in these hospitals, those of us who are engaged in caring for the sick and serving those in need, are bringing God’s love and care to others, and often we can heal not just bodies but hearts and souls too, with a loving word, sincere concern and even just the gift of our time and attention. Thus we care for the whole human person – body and soul.

Good soil, that is, hearts that understand God’s word and are watered by God’s grace, yields a harvest and bears fruit. Just as a tree bears fruit which is attractive and delicious and offered to all who pass by to receive it and taste its goodness, so too with us. If we draw from God’s grace and live in Him, then we will bear fruit that will last and which our world longs for and needs so very much. St Paul tells us that the fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Gal 5:22f). A hospital, it is apparent to me, is a place where these fruits are evident but also where they can be ripened, for here we can slowly and gradually develop these virtues, and indeed learn so much about them from those whom we serve. Together, our faith, hope and love – those 'higher' gifts of the Holy Spirit – will be attractive to those around us, like good fruit, and others will wish to taste that sweetness which is ours in Christ. This is why saints are such attractive people, and I know that I am in the presence of a saintly person when I am drawn to experience their peace and joy. In my brief time here, I have already seen several such people who inspire and bless me with their presence.

Isaiah says that God’s word does not return empty but achieves God’s purpose and prospers in the thing for which it was sent. But what is the purpose of Christ’s coming among us as a man? God’s purpose was that we should have communion with Him; that we should be raised up from our sins with the risen Lord Jesus; that we should become one with God and share his divine life. For this reason, God became human, so that humans might become ‘gods’. The fruits of the Spirit which I have mentioned are marks of this intimacy with God. God achieves this purpose of making us one with Him through his sacraments which give us a share in the life of Christ, and it is a gradual, life-long process that is not without pain and difficulty, as we know so well. For suffering is a mark of our humanity, just as Christ who became human suffered. As St Paul says: “all of us who possess the first-fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free” (Rom 8:23). Imagine the seedling breaking free from the seed-pod, straining towards the light, growing into a fruitful tree. We too are struggling, straining to become more fully who we are called to be, reaching for the light of heaven, and that is a painful process.

Ultimately, then, we long for union with God in a new creation which is described in the Book of Revelation as a world without pain, sorrow, tears, sin or evil. This is something we all hope for because it has been promised us, and God will keep and fulfill his promise, for he is good and faithful. This promise is made through the gift of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. For in the Eucharist we, together as the one Body of Christ, have Holy Communion with the Body of Christ; this is the “bread for the eating” (that Isaiah mentions) that makes us one with God. So, we take Communion to the sick not because it is magical or even because it primarily imparts physical healing (even though this miracle is occasionally possible), but chiefly because it makes us all – sick and carer – one in Christ and makes real the promise of a new creation and eternal life with God; it heals and strengthens our souls. Through a worthy reception of the sacraments, God’s Spirit dwells within us, and God’s Spirit will help us to be that good soil that will be fruitful and prosper, yielding the gift of eternal life.

It is God’s grace alone that accomplishes all this; not our effort. We on our part are to be soil, to be humus. That word for top-soil, humus, is the root word for the word ‘humble’. And that is what we are called to be: humble, grounded people, like Our Lady, so that God’s word can be sown in our hearts and take root there. As St John the Baptist said, “I must decrease so that He can increase”, and then like St Paul, we can say: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

St Benedict

One could explain in many ways, I suppose, why St Benedict is one of the patron saints of Europe. We could see it clearly when we think about the influence of his Rule on monastic life in the West, or when we think how much good has come from the lives of generations of various orders of monks and nuns inspired by his Rule: apart from saints, preachers, bishops and writers, so many copyists, teachers and ingenious artists, inventors of various agricultural tools, cheese, chocolate and wine makers ... the list is long.

But there is one special thing that comes to my mind on this feastday, that explains far better why Benedict is patron saint of Europe: Benedict was there when, in a sense, Europe was being born. The Roman Emperor had just moved to Constantinopole, Rome was at the mercy of newcomers, the tribes that found their way to the city and were accepted as 'friends'. This was in practice the end of the Empire in the West.

But in what why does Benedict get involve in this apocalyptic scenario? He decides to lead a life totally dedicated to prayer and solitude and later on is joined by various other eremites who want him to become their spiritual father, their abbot.

Obviously we are tempted to ask why did he withdraw from the society that badly needed people like him. Why did he not get involved? This question however is not a good one. It is based on the false premise that a life dedicated to prayer and contemplation is a selfish life, lead somewhere on the margins of the community. And it is quite the opposite. When we pray in solitude we never pray alone, or on our own account but always as members of One Body. In this way the prayer of those who physically seclude themselves from others or live in secluded communities puts them at the heart of the Church. Prayer is never private, that is, done outside the community, even if we pray alone. This is a basis also for our belief in the intercession of saints, who being members of the same Body are in communion with us, and their prayer is united with ours when we pray. So St Benedict's prayers were always with the Church in those difficult times for the community of believers when a new Europe was being born. We believe his prayers have been there ever since, in the heart of our community, the Church.

The Feast of Sts Peter and Paul

The Feast of Sts Peter and Paul celebrates the two outstanding apostles of the Church.  In many ways these two men were different. Peter was from Galilee, a fisherman, poor and uneducated. Although St Jerome tells us that Paul too was a Galilean, his enforced exile to Tarsus as a child opened other possibilities for him: he was well educated and knew his way around the Roman system, perhaps even being a Roman citizen. He trained in the rigorous code of the Pharisees. He was a lawyer but also a skilled tentmaker. How is it their stories became intertwined? What brought these men to give their best efforts and ultimately their lives for the embryonic Christian faith?

The answer lies in the fact that both these men came face to face with Jesus Christ, who called them to follow him. That encounter and call transformed their lives forever. Peter, impulsive and rash, struggled all through Jesus' ministry to understand and believe in the meaning of Christ.  In Matthew 14:22-35 as Jesus walks on the water, Peter impulsively demands proof that it is indeed Jesus by allowing him also to walk on water. As he takes his first few steps, he begins to be beset by doubts and sinks until Jesus reaches out and holds him up. The words “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” seem to be a recurring theme for Peter as he struggles, and often fails, to make sense of this life changing relationship. Yet it is the same Peter who responds to the prompting of the Spirit and declares boldly “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Ultimately Christ draws out the best of Peter to whom he entrusts the leadership of the Apostles and who will go on to preach the first sermon of the Christian Church at Pentecost, while on fire with the Holy Spirit.

We meet Saul in the Acts of the Apostles, full of righteous zeal against these dangerous Christians, approving of the stoning of St Stephen. It is while on a mission to hunt down Christians in Damascus that he has his literally earth shattering encounter with the Risen Christ. He is left blinded, dazed and confused. Stripped of all his certainty, power and assuredness, he must be led by the hand into the city, not knowing where he is going, lost and frightened.  Through the power of the Spirit the scales fall from Saul’s eyes so that he can see.  But in seeing not only with the eyes of the body but also with the eyes of the soul, Paul is reborn in baptism. In this new life, he goes on the preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the Mediterranean as far as Rome, hoping to travel on to Spain, 'the ends of the earth', and leaving us the precious teaching of his epistles and the wonderful example of his life and ministry. For both men these words seem appropriate. “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).

Sunday 12 Ordinary Time - The Commission

Readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 68; Romans 5:12-17; Matthew 10:26-33

The third reading for today is taken from a section in Matthew's gospel where the main theme is mission (please see text). It contains some very formidable exhortations. In Matt 10:27, for example, we hear Jesus say 'What I tell you ... proclaim from the roof tops.'

At present, European football is in all its glory. No team just goes out on the field and plays any how. Each team goes out with a plan, and each team has a captain. The event that Matthew records for us in chapter 10 is quite similar to football in this respect. As Christians we belong to a team. And, Jesus is our captain. But, he is also the coach. What we ought to do as Christians we do not have to try to figure out for our selves on the field. He has already laid down the plan for us and he is with us always leading us. What we need to do now is follow him and his plan. 

Indeed, it is true that the task that is laid before us is enormous. And, we must also admit, some of the instructions can be puzzling. For example he refers to 'one who kills body and soul in Gehenna'. Who is that? Is it God or is it the devil? However difficult these challenges may be, we are obliged  not  to evade them. Perhaps, when we are confronted with these challenges, we must stop and ask ourselves what exactly is the basic task that has been entrusted to us? Getting this in focus may then help us to see the other things better.

Now, what is the basic task? The basic mission with which we are entrusted is to proclaim the simple message of both John the Baptist and Jesus: 'The kingdom of heaven has drawn near.'

Called by our name

Readings: Ex 19:2-6a; Ps 100:1-2, 3, 5; Rom 5:6-11; Mt 9:36—10:8

In today's Gospel, Matthew clearly sees the importance of naming the twelve that were called to follow Jesus and to cooperate in his mission. The names are important, because these disciples and their mission are part of the foundation stones of the Church. Everything that happens in the early Church relies on the testimony of these men, who are witnesses to the Good News that came in the person of Jesus Christ.

But beyond the ecclesial importance of the twelve, there is perhaps something to be said about naming. Our names are so important - they pick us out as particular individuals in the crowd. When people get to know our name, the possibility of relationship begins. When Christ calls us - and after all, he calls each and every one of us - he calls us by our name, speaking lovingly and tenderly to each one of us. To Christ, no-one is just a random face or a number - we are all precious in his eyes. We are the ones whom he has known and loved from the very beginning. Part of our task as Christians is to open our ears so that we can hear him calling to us, and to recognise and respond to his call in our daily lives.

Fr Bede Jarrett, Prior Provincial for many years and founder of our Priory in Oxford, spoke of the link between being loved and being sent. 'God created my soul, [and] has something for me to do ... moreover, since he knows my foolishness and blindness, he will go out of his way to make it clear'. From this we can see how Christ truly is the shepherd of his sheep, constantly working to draw us to him, and to make himself known to us. Even when we fail, he will come and look for us and put us back on the right road. Today's Gospel also reminds us to put our trust in those whom he continues to charge with the task of caring and guiding us in the Church: let us pray that they may always help us to seek his face, and guide us in our journeying towards him.

Encouraged and Challenged by the Gospel

10th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Hosea 6:3-6; Psalm 49; Romans 4:18-25; Matthew 9:9-13

I suspect that the Gospel reading for this Sunday leaves most people, and I include myself, with rather conflicting impressions. For these five short verses both encourage and challenge us, reassure us, yet confront us. Matthew, who in the Gospels of Mark (2:14) and Luke (5:27) is called Levi, is a collector of taxes and, therefore, a member of an unloved class of people. He would have been considered a traitor by his fellow Jews, someone who collaborated with the Roman authorities and loaded his own pocket at the expense of his countrymen. Yet this is precisely the person Jesus chooses to call as a disciple. In the Gospel we see Jesus dining at the house of Matthew, together with a whole group of tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is quite unashamed to be seen with these people, and does not fear that he might be contaminated by their uncleanness. He is in fact expressing quite openly a preference to be with those whom the majority think it right and proper to despise.

This is an uncomfortable situation for the Pharisees and for many people it is still unsettling. It is so easy to look at the Church at any period of its history and to be scandalised by the number of sinners in its midst. Yet Jesus replies that ‘it is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick’ (Matthew 9:12). Jesus is not condoning sin but is seeking out sinners to heal them. And he shows that this can only be achieved with understanding and compassion. ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice’, he tells the Pharisees. He is here quoting from the prophet Hosea (6:6), for Jesus is no maverick, arbitrarily inventing the rules as he goes along. What he has to say about mercy and forgiveness is confirmed by the tradition of the Jewish Scriptures. Therefore, the Pharisees have no excuse.

For Jesus true worship and piety must show themselves in compassionate mercy. In other words, love of God and love of neighbour are two sides of the same coin. This love of neighbour expresses itself in a special way in our attentiveness to the weak and fallen, meeting them wherever they are, befriending them, and eating with them. This is the only way to show the healing love of Christ. This was the whole purpose and mission of Jesus, the reason he was sent by the Father. We should find encouragement in the fact that our God is a God of mercy and compassion. At the same time we ought to feel challenged as Christians to display the same compassion as Christ towards those who are often vilified and written-off but who, perhaps, yearn to be shown the merciful face of the Father.

The Visitation Luke 1: 39-56

Imagine that you are Mary, having just been told that you are going to be the Mother of the Messiah and then you decide to go and visit your aged cousin who is pregnant. What would cause you to do such a thing? Well, if we look at the previous section of this gospel (Luke 1:26-38), we may be able to find our answer. In 1: 38: “Mary said, Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your Word. Then the angel departed from her.” Mary effectively said yes to God when she said may it be done to me according to your Word.

Through her interaction with the angel, Mary’s status is changed because he whose name is Holy (1:49) now dwells within her because of her YES. As a result of this indwelling of the Holy One, Mary’s whole life becomes graced and transformed, so much so that the focus is not on her own needs, desires, joys and struggles as a young woman who is pregnant, but on the needs of others, namely her cousin Elizabeth.

Charity is the characteristic of Mary’s relationship with Christ, because she conceived him in charity of heart and now extends that same charity to her cousin Elizabeth. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “grace (charity) helps to inform the will and intellect of the human person, guiding and directing them to their final and perfect happiness, which is God, since it is impossible for any created good to constitute man’s happiness. For happiness is the perfect good which lulls the appetite altogether, else it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired” (Summa theologiae I.II 2,8). From this it is possible to see that because Mary was open to the will of God, she was able to prefer the good of visiting and caring for her cousin Elizabeth, to other lesser goods, especially because her final and perfect happiness was in serving (doing the will of ) God, who had “looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness” (1:47).

We too are called to share in the joy and happiness Mary experienced in serving her God and we are also encouraged “not to be afraid” (1:30) to serve him because when we come to the Eucharist, we also receive the Holy One, who is able to provide us the necessary graces for preaching and sharing the good news as he did for Mary in her service of her cousin Elizabeth’s needs.

Sacred Heart of Jesus

Modern times have seen a decline in the practice of piety such as the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with some people fearing that these devotions smack of a nineteenth-century overly emotionalistic piety. Such a decline in devotion to the Sacred Heart has been compounded with the mistaken view that it is founded solely upon the private revelations made to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a simple and humble seventeenth-century French nun. Sadly, this has meant that many people now view the devotion as something incompatible in some sense with the spirit and culture of ecclesiastical life in the wake of Vatican II. Nothing could be further from the truth!

When Pius XII wrote the encyclical Haurietis aquas (15 May 1956), the devotional form though certainly still strong was nonetheless in crisis. Moves towards liturgical reform sought an extreme sobriety in expression, together with a theological mindset that sought to steer entirely by Scripture and the Fathers. Pius XII sought to display the enduring significance of Sacred Heart devotion, deeply linked as he saw it to the central mystery of Christ. Joseph Ratzinger would later point out that the questions addressed in Haurietis aquas were presupposed, rather than superseded, in the liturgical reform of Vatican II.

Pius XII begins with the prophetic words of Isaiah 12:3, of which Jesus proclaims himself the fulfilment in his Easter mystery in John 7:37–39. This, he writes, comes naturally to mind when recalling the reasons for the institution of this feast throughout the Church by Pius IX. Haurietis aquas seeks to prove that Sacred Heart devotion is not invented by Margaret Mary Alacoque; rather, the revelation she received yields nothing new. It was because the private revelation received by her was so in keeping with theological tradition that the devotion revealed to her was promulgated. Pius XII writes: “the devotion […] to the love of God and to Jesus Christ for the human race by means of the revered symbol of the pierced heart of the crucified redeemer has never been altogether unknown to the piety of the faithful, although it has become more clearly known […] in quite recent times.” Thus, devotion to the Sacred Heart is deeply rooted in Scripture and patristic theology, a worship of the love with which God, through Jesus, loved us, and at the same time, an exercise of our love by which we are related to God and to other people.

The essence of this devotion is a veneration of the person of Jesus Christ from the perspective of his divine and human love. This love was revealed through his sacred humanity, and is symbolised by his wounded physical heart. In the words of Pius XII: “When we adore the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, we adore in it and through it both the uncreated love of the divine Word and His human love , […] because both loves moved our Redeemer to sacrifice Himself for us and for the whole Church, his spouse.”

optimism of mission

The Feast of the Translation of St Dominic

There is something very striking in the life of Dominic de Guzman. Many see it as a little pearl among the many stories about lives of saints, and it has become one of the Order of Preacher’s most valuable assets. What is it? It is Dominic’s ingenuity concerning the setting out of the mission of the Order and his attitude towards the brethren. What is so exceptional about it?

Dominic did not write a new rule of life for his community, nor did he invent any new mission for his brethren. Instead he set the very mission of the Church at the heart of the mission of the Order: the preaching of the Gospel. Dominic gave his brethren the rule of St. Augustine which suited this mission very well. Consequently from the very beginning the community busied themselves not with establishing a way of life for its own sake, but rather it tried to find such a model of life that would make it always possible to preach the word of God, especially to those who are lost or do not yet believe.

And this is what has become the Dominican tradition: our way of life should never be a burden or impediment to the mission. We live together for the sake of the mission, holding the life of the apostles as our model and inspiration.

The other thing is Dominic’s ultimate optimism concerning human nature. This optimism was expressed in his great trust towards the brethren: he was quick to send them out on mission, believing in them even before they had sufficient confidence in themselves. Another expression of this optimism is the fact that the Order is governed in a democratic way, with the general chapter of brethren having the highest authority. The Order is not a place for a badly perceived seniority, it is no ‘pecking order’, and this means that brethren have been able to live in an unprecedented unity and peace even to this day. As a result, the members of the Order lead a very self-conscious life trying to abandon any ideologies, customs and practices that no longer serve its mission and therefore threaten the life of the community.

These two ideas are in fact at the heart of the universal Church and this is perhaps why the figure of St. Dominic is so valued by the brethren. He gave them a mission that is in fact no less than the mission of the universal Church, and he trusted that they would be able to live up its demands, for he deeply believed that the Lord does not deny help to those work in his name.

The Lord goes up with shouts of joy

To celebrate the Ascension may seem strange. It is, after all, about an ending. Saying good-bye can be awkward, is sometimes difficult, and is often sad. His ascension means the disappearance of Jesus. Up to then he was visibly present with his disciples and now he is, it seems, to be absent. Why be joyful about this? Why think of it as something to celebrate?

At the mid-point of his gospel Luke writes: 'when the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem' (Luke 9:51). His ‘being taken up’ refers to his crucifixion, the moment in which he was ‘lifted up from the earth to draw all people to himself’ (John 12:32). It can also be taken to refer to his resurrection from the dead. And it is complete in his exaltation to the right hand of the Father. He has been taken up to the place of glory that is eternally his.

In the Temple at Jerusalem the High Priest went up into the Holy of Holies once a year, on the Day of Atonement, carrying the blood of sacrificed animals. Through him Israel asked forgiveness of the Lord and a renewal of the covenant. The only other person allowed to enter the Holy of Holies was a new King, on the day he was enthroned. The psalms and other texts of scripture speak about the king going up to a place of honour in the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel.

This is important background for understanding the Ascension of Jesus. He is our high priest who enters the Holy of Holies, not the earthly one in Jerusalem, but the great and perfect one in heaven. The blood he carries is not that of animals but his own blood, which is offered once and for all to gain ‘an eternal redemption’ (Hebrews 9:12). Seated at the right hand of the Father, enthroned as judge of all, Jesus is our king and our high priest.

Ascension Day is, then, the original feast of Christ the King. Because of his love and obedience the Father has exalted him and given him the name above all other names (Philippians 2:9). We celebrate his victory, and its meaning for us, the fact that he is become ‘the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him’ (Hebrews 5:9). As the prayers of today’s Mass put it, he has been ‘taken up to heaven to claim for us a share in his divine life’ and ‘where he has gone, we hope to follow’.

Although Jesus ‘withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven’ the disciples returned to Jerusalem ‘with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God’ (Luke 24:53). They understood, it seems, the meaning of his exaltation. They await the gift of the Spirit, the power from on high that Jesus will send. Jesus had said to his disciples, ‘if I do not go away he (the Advocate, the Holy Spirit) cannot come to you’ (John 16:7). Exalted to the right hand of the Father he sends the Holy Spirit as he had promised. This is why we rejoice at his departure, because his return to the Father establishes a new bond between heaven and earth. In sending the Spirit, Jesus fulfils his promise to remain with us always. We become his physical presence in the world, his body alive with his love. If he is with us in the Spirit, where can we be except with him in the same Spirit?

Our lives have been configured to this great paschal mystery of Jesus, to his death, resurrection, exaltation, and sending of the Spirit. Through baptism we enter sacramentally into the tomb with Jesus so that we may also rise with him as members of his body. Through confirmation we enter sacramentally into his promotion to the right hand of the Father to become temples of his Spirit and witnesses of his grace to the ends of the earth.

Virtue and Vice on the Blogosphere

The Oxford University Newman Society hosted a 'Bloggers' Colloquium' in the Catholic Chaplaincy on 15 February 2008 to discuss the phenomenon of blogging and its impact on the Church and the world. Br Lawrence Lew OP was invited to give one of the talks; an abridged version follows:

That blogs can be a force for good but also for that which is less than good should not surprise us. For social communications through the media is just an expression of our flawed humanity, and indeed the anonymity which the internet affords sometimes exacerbates our flaws. Like everything we do, blogging does not always achieve the good it ought to although I believe that it is essentially ordered towards it. As such, we should treat it like the rest of life – as something with a potential for good, but which can be abused, and where that happens, it should be healed and redeemed. There is no place that the Gospel may not touch, and as a preaching friar, I passionately believe that it is essential that we bring the light of Christ’s truth and the teachings of his holy Church to the blogosphere. It is with this in mind that I have tentatively entitled my reflection: Virtue and Vice in the Blogosphere.

Those Catholics who blog and those who read such blogs are a select few, but they are united by love. At its best, I hope that we are united as Catholic and Christian bloggers in a love for Christ and his Gospel. As this is not a dis-interested love, so the passions and heated exchanges that are elicted online are in many ways understandable and, indeed, to be expected.

However, it is in the area of the passions, that is, the emotions, that we have to be most careful, for sometimes these can get out of control. St Thomas Aquinas, rightly saw that emotions were good and proper for us to possess because they are part of what it means to be a rational animal, to be human. However, they fall within our animal capabilities and so have to be integrated with our rational powers. Thus Aquinas says that passions are “good when they are controlled by reason; and evil when they are not controlled by reason”; the passions have to be moderated by reason. However, this does not mean that one can circumnavigate the emotions or employ the force of sheer ‘will-power’ to control one’s emotions. As the French Dominican Chenu said, one ought to resort to neither “dualistic Manichaeism nor Christian Stoicism”. Aquinas’ answer is that “both acts of the will and the emotions must be given direction, order and guidance; they do not automatically unfold in morally mature directions.” This guidance comes from the acquisition of virtues and the elimination of vices. Developing good habits and virtues will help a person to mature emotionally and grow morally so as to make the right choices in response to one’s feelings and desires; we grow from spoilt brats to mature right-thinking adults. I’m afraid that quite often one sees a lot of the former on display on the blogosphere’s comments boxes! Aquinas taught that “in affirming or rejecting opinions, we shouldn’t be influenced by our liking or dislike of those who propose the ideas, but rather by the certitude of truth”. Thus, we act rationally, guided by prudence and not by our passions. Aquinas’ position is that the passions can be regulated by reason such that “the passions of the wise man are an integral part of his moral life” and indeed, it is a person who delights (and so has an emotive attraction) in doing good who does more good. So, what I want to suggest is that the blogosphere can be a training ground for virtue, but also a temptation to vice.

There is little doubt that prudence is the chief virtue that we must develop in blogging and using the internet. Aquinas says that prudence “is reason itself rendered perfect in its judgments and in its choices.” Often it seems that when one decides what to blog or what to comment, one can take refuge in the truth. That is, something blogged or commented about is justified simply because it is true, or deemed to be quite simply what the Church teaches, and we have to say it no matter what the consequences. I would suggest that prudence, temperance and wisdom require us to judge how and when to act, not just that we are to act. Children may be expected to act without prudent judgment, but mature adults are expected to show some discernment. Otherwise, we can become like the secular press who report whatever they will on the basis that it is fair comment or truth that is in the public interest.

Pope Benedict has said: “The call for today's media to be responsible - to be the protagonist of truth and promoter of the peace that ensues - carries with it a number of challenges. While the various instruments of social communication facilitate the exchange of information, ideas, and mutual understanding among groups, they are also tainted by ambiguity. Alongside the provision of a ‘great round table’ for dialogue, certain tendencies within the media engender a kind of monoculture that dims creative genius, deflates the subtlety of complex thought and undervalues the specificity of cultural practices and the particularity of religious belief. These are distortions that occur when the media industry becomes self-serving or solely profit-driven, losing the sense of accountability to the common good.” I would suggest that the Holy Father’s warning applies not just to the secular media but also to us. For it is easy for us to become embroiled in our cause, our vision of the Church, our idolisation of those things an Aristotelian might call ‘accidents’. As such, I believe that we should hearken to Pope Benedict’s words. Moreover as he also said, albeit in a different context, “Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows”, and so, not just what we would desire in an ideal world. To be sure, one might argue that we are doing this for the good of the Church and for Christ’s sake, but I also think that a certain humility requires us to ask if we are so sure that God has mandated us to do this work for him: for one of the dangers of the blogging phenomenon is that every person becomes his own editor and publisher, every blog becomes a pulpit and there is no accountability. One of the benefits of a group blog like Godzdogz and of writing as a religious friar is that I am accountable to my community, and this, I think, is no bad thing if we want to learn prudence and humility.

A particular vice that aggrieves me and that is not infrequently seen on the blogosphere is detraction, which in Aquinas' great Summa falls under the area of justice. Detraction “strictly speaking is taking away a person’s character by drawing attention to anything that detracts from that character”. Although the intention of admonition does take away the sinfulness of the act, Aquinas notes that “all the same, a man should pick his words carefully, since uttered incautiously they might take away a person’s character, and a fatal wrong might be done without even intending it.” I think this is even more serious if it is directed at our pastors and especially a bishop who is, by consecration, a successor of the apostles. I think the blogs have helped in some areas to fuel such discussions and they have certainly been a tempting place for people to comment and say such things. We may complain – as the flock has always done – about decisions made by our superiors, but to impugn their character, or to judge them guilty of heresy, or to speculate maliciously about their motivations is clearly not good for the Church or for us. The fact is that the blogosphere can be a forum for vicious activity and we should seek not to defend that but to guard our tongues and typing fingers. While our modern world defends free speech, and freedom of opinion, let us be on guard for these can lead to great vice. As the Scriptures say in many places, but here, I am quoting from the Wisdom of Ben Sira: “As you hedge round your vineyard with thorns, set barred doors over your mouth; as you seal up your silver and gold, so balance and weigh your words. Take care not to slip by your tongue and fall victim to your foe waiting in ambush.” Moreover, freedom is a gift that we have to exercise responsibly and this requires the exercise of virtues like courage and temperance, that is, not only the strength to say the truth but to do so wisely and in the right way and time.

So, what can we say in our blogs? St Paul says: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel”. And so, I believe that the blogosphere, and indeed, other instruments of the internet, can help us in the mission given to all the baptised. This is not surprising, for if we are preachers of the gospel, we will naturally use everything in our lives and in our world to give glory to him who has saved us and to preach his Word to all nations. Joseph Ratzinger once said: “The Church will have to develop a great deal of imagination to help the gospel remain a force in public life, so that it may shape the people and pervade their life and work among them like yeast.” The internet is just one such area of public life, and it will work for good if we write about the Gospel, seek to disseminate truth and balanced opinion, and help shape our readers in virtue. Perhaps we can take other pointers from Ratzinger. He noted that “nowadays, particularly among the most modern representatives of Catholicism, there is a tendency toward uniformity… I believe that a great deal of tolerance is required within the Church, that the diversity of paths is something in accordance with the breadth of Catholicity – and that one ought not simply to reject it, even when it is something contrary to one’s own taste.” So, there are blogs for every taste, and it is good that these flourish in the Church and work together for the common good and serve the mission of the Church.

In an aphorism commonly attributed to St Augustine, he is believed to have said, “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.” This should be the creed of all our social communications. It is with care, study and prudence that we are able to distinguish between essentials and doubtful matters, and if we should fear anything in blogging, let us fear a failure in charity.

Gentle Thoughts

The following reflection is by Brother Thomas Casey OP who tends the gardens at St Dominic's Retreat House, Montenotte, Cork

I was around the town of Youghal a few days after the Tour de France whizzed through. The street cleaners had done a fine job of cleaning up and the main street was as clean as a brass penny. I was in no hurry so I took it easy. It was a good time for a stroll and a look around.

As the sun was going down I was distracted by the long shadows thrown by high gables, and then my eye lit on a chimney pot of a derelict building. It wasn't so much the chimney pot, but the spray of pink flowers which stuck up out of it. They were catching the last light, moving and weaving, demanding attention. For those of you who work hard and have long hours, it's good to slow down and look at things like this. As a side benefit I can tell you it is good for the soul because it allows gentle thoughts to have their say.

The first curiosity was how did the flowers get there? Who planted them? Was it a bird or the wind? And of all the seeds which are scattered throughout the world why did this one land here? And how did it survive? But there they were, the fruit of chance, and proud they were, sitting on top of a building where the occupants who had lives to live had lived them and were long gone. If someone moved in now and renovated the building, the flowers would have to go, being a hindrance to the draught in the fireplace and considered nothing but weeds and a nuisance. For the moment, however, these flowers reigned supreme. Who knows, they might have preferred a plot in some lady's garden but it seemed to me that they were doing just fine and were happy to bloom where they were planted.

And I said to myself, 'there you go, sometimes wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else'. That's the way with a lot of people, always restless. I suppose one of the gifts of youth is to be on the move, seeing how best to make a life, and hoping for happiness. For those, like me, who are old, and have wandered down many a byroad unexpectedly, it is great to be able to say, 'well I did my best with the lot that fell my way'. And just like the flowers in the chimney pot of an old house, I now bloom where I am planted and with the help of the good Lord remain faithful to the end.

Good Friday

Galatians 3:23, ' now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed' (NRSV).

Before faith came, as it were, we - being in the loins of Adam - were barred from partaking in the tree of life. We were cast out from the presence of Almighty God. 'He [God] drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life' (Genesis 3.24).

In Adam, and because of whom we are mortal, we lost our status as sons and daughters. We became bound to mortality - a kind of slavery. Our status became that of slaves.

But, thanks be to God, 'when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children' (Galatians 4.4-5).

The Son bore the name Jesus. He was/is the Son by nature, for, He is what the Father is. The Son enjoyed a naturalis aequalitas (natural equality) with the Father. Yet, for the sake of a lost world, for the sake of lost mankind, He did not scorn participation in humankind's nature. For our sake the Son of God, one who was/is equal with God, one who himself was/is God, was paraded as a common criminal before the eyes of the entire world. Then, He was raised up on a tree born-naked. He was made a curse. For, it is written, 'cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'.

The devil and his little demons must have thought there is no way these human beings are going to get free now.

But, thanks be to God, the Father had something other in mind. When Jesus hung on that cross water and blood flowed from his side. As the Blood was flowing, the price for our redemption was being paid. 'He was handed over to death for our tresspasses ... ' (Romans 4. 25). That text from Romans goes on to say, and he 'was raised for our justification'. A justification that gives us access to the Father. Jesus' death swallowed up mortality and, in that death, we too can partake in that swallowing up of mortality. Thanks be to God.

John, the beloved disciple, said 'and just as Moses lifted up the serpeant in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up' (John 3.14). We know Moses lifted the serpeant as a sign for those who were going to die, that if they should have looked on the serpent they would be healed. In the same way, when we look at Jesus on the cross, freed from death, we are healed. Unlike the uplifted serpent, Christ uplifted is an enduring, eternal sign - ever-powerful.

Thus, Augustine was most right, when he said that if humankind were to forget that Christ died for humanity and it was effaced from the history of time then there would truly be dying.

Let us, therefore, look on Christ crucified.

Palm Sunday - Prophetic witness with Christ

Readings: Mt 21:1-11; Is 50: 4-7; Phil 2:6-11; Mt 26:14-27:66.

Palm Sunday begins holy week, the ‘great week’ of our annual commemoration of God’s work for our redemption, the essential liturgical elements of which are attested as early as the fourth century. Jesus goes up to Jerusalem in triumph, accompanied by his disciples, acclaimed by the populace as a prophet and wonder-worker, even as the long-awaited Messiah. Yet, some days later, he will be led out of the city, abandoned by his disciples, to an ignominious execution accompanied by the jeers of the crowd. What had happened?



Familiarity might lead us to overlook a certain ambiguity or tension in the accounts of the Passion. Take the Gospel we read before our solemn and joyful entry into the church, bearing palms. The Evangelist cites this as being the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy of the expected Messiah: “Look, your King comes to you; he is humble, he rides on a donkey, and on a colt…”(Zech 9:9). Matthew in his paraphrase omits the phrase “righteous and victorious is he”, so emphasising, some scholars think, Jesus’ humility. But Jesus rides into Jerusalem, which is an ostentatious action: people would normally approach a place of pilgrimage on foot. Jesus, then, is demonstrating his God-given authority, but that authority is not what people expect. The horse in ancient cultures was primarily a weapon of power, of war - the modern parallel might be a military tank: for example, Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen in the Exodus, or the psalmist’s warning of trusting to human power rather than God “a vain hope for safety is the horse, despite its power, it cannot save”(Ps 33:17). But Jesus does not approach Jerusalem as a conquering ruler, but as a peaceful king, riding an ass, which also reflects the typology of the expected Messiah: like Moses, who places his wife and children upon an ass (Ex 4:19-20) and Solomon, riding his father David’s mule to be anointed king (1 Kings 1:38,44), perhaps recalled by the acclaim of the crowd: “Hosanna to the son of David”.

Immediately after the passage we have listened to, we have Matthew’s account of Jesus cleansing the Temple, driving out the moneychangers, those who have reduced his Father’s house to “a den of bandits” (Mt 21: 12-14). Jesus’ action is best seen as a symbolic action, typical of a prophet; further emphasised by his healing the blind and the lame, who, according to Jewish tradition, should not have been admitted into the Temple precincts. Jesus is challenging the order of worship in his own day, and in so doing winning no friends: Jerusalem’s economy depended largely on pilgrims spending money during major religious festivals. Not surprisingly, this draws criticism: the chief priests and elders ask “By what authority do you do these things?”(Mt 21:23).

Now for us, this side of Easter, our processing with palms is a symbol of our baptismal authority, of our having become members of the body of Christ. Will we exercise that authority, the authority of loving service, even to the cross? Because taking up our cross, taking up the burden of speaking truth to kings, principalities, and powers, is also our way to resurrection.

The Silence of Joseph

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16; Psalm 89; Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22; Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a

Joseph was told in the dream to accept Mary as his wife because the child that is going to be born of her will be born through the Holy Spirit. These words must have been difficult to hear for a young man who is about to start his own family. What was the guarantee that the words heard in a dream will come true? Was the dream just a dream?

Yet no word of Joseph is recorded in the Gospel. He is silent.

We do not know if he hesitated, we do not know what was his prayer before he accepted the angel’s words. What are we to make of it?
We have to look at his actions. Joseph followed Abraham, his ancestor, in the way he accepted God’s promise. He did it with the silence of faith. Joseph believed the angel and took Mary into his house. In this way he was not only privileged to be a parent to Jesus but he was also made a witness to God’s Word. Through his faith Joseph inherited the promise given to Abraham, that he ‘would become a father to many nations.’

It is in silence and faith that we meet the Word of God and Joseph is for us a model to imitate.

The Fourth Glorious Mystery - The Assumption

This mystery presents, perhaps most clearly, how concrete our hope in God is. It is as concrete as the fact that we are bodily creatures. What difference does it make for Christian hope? It is of revolutionary importance: we do not spend this present life trying to escape from the body, we do not believe that the body is evil. The Christian way of life is a witness to the fact that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is in the body that we experience God and it is our hope and faith that we will rise again and live forever in our transfigured bodies. What it means exactly we still do not know, but we already know that Mary is the first disciple of Christ who is already with God body and soul. She is the one in whom the Holy Spirit lived most perfectly as she carried God’s Word in her body, and in her we see the model of the whole community of believers.

This obviously invites a deeper reflection on our attitude to ‘bodily matters’. Both our bodies and souls have been sanctified through Christ's death. If this is so then every act of violence, every suffering that we inflict on others, every help that we refuse to give to the hungry, is in a sense an act of desecration.

Perhaps awareness of the fact that our bodies are in such an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit will help us understand the Christian stance on many ethical issues such as human-cell-engineering. Humanity is an ‘inspired’ race and Mary reminds us of it.

The Third Joyful Mystery - The Nativity

We seem to be running short of answers for those friends of ours who think that religion should be banned. Perhaps, like Herod, they consider the Child born of Mary to be a threat to them, to their lives and ambitions. Nothing more misleading. The Incarnation of God brought us the true liberty and calm, we can now face ourselves and others as we really are. No more fear and hiding. Jesus is born into a human family and transforms the relationship within the family. But there is more. He transforms all human relationships as he brings hope into our world. We do not need to fear a stranger. Why is it? There is no real competition that we can now have among ourselves. It is Christ who is the cornerstone of the entire universe and all things relate directly to him. Both the stranger and we ourselves rely on the same hope. It is the same God who created us all, saved us and is looking out to see us coming back. If we accept this liberty there is no problem in calling Mary the Mother of God. This what she really is and this fact brings no threat to us. Neither does it influence in any negative way our personal hope for seeing God. We can still have a broadband access to God, even though Mary holds the hotline. No need to fear the Mother and the Child.

Praying the Rosary 3 - The Rosary as a Lenten Devotion

The Christian life may be regarded as a journey of transformation or “conversion” which we are called to travel step by step throughout our life. The annual season of Lent, which is itself a journey towards Easter, reminds us that the Christian journey is never over and done with in this life but requires sustained commitment and constant practice. The Rosary - a prayer which is also based on repetition and constant practice – is a journey in the company of Mary deeper into the mystery of Jesus Christ. The Rosary therefore blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian which we live even more intensely during Lent.

The Rosary is usually recited on a chain of fifty beads which are divided into five decades. Each of these decades represents a particular moment or ‘mystery’ in the life of Christ. As our fingers move through the beads of each decade we recite the Hail Mary prayer ten times while meditating upon a particular event in the life of Christ or His Mother. At the beginning of each mystery we pray the Our Father and at the end of each mystery we say 'glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end, Amen'. There are in total four sets of mysteries – joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious - covering all the major events in the life of Christ. The Rosaries which Dominican Friars wear on their habits sometimes have enough beads for all twenty mysteries.

Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are the three traditional ascetical practices associated with Lent. During this season we are invited to intensify our life of prayer, that vital activity which sustains and deepens our relation to God. If the Rosary has sometimes been called a “compendium of the Gospel” we might just as easily call it a “compendium of prayer” consisting of praise, petition and contemplation and comprising some of the most important prayers in the Christian tradition. The “sorrowful” mysteries of the Rosary can be considered of particular importance as we journey through Lent towards Holy Week because with these mysteries we contemplate the individual moments of Christ’s Passion – such as His scourging and crowning with thorns, carrying the Cross, and Crucifixion and death – in anticipation of the light of the Resurrection on Easter Day.

Praying the Rosary 2 - The Rosary and the Dominican Vocation

Recently, the Master of the Order, Fr Carlos Azpiroz Costa, wrote a letter on the Rosary, declaring that this year should be a 'Year of the Rosary' for the Order. In his letter Fr Carlos, suggested that the Order undergo a process of re-discovering the importance of the Rosary in Dominican life, both as a prayer by which we contemplate the mysteries of salvation, and also as a means by which the Gospel may be preached.

The letter begins by treating the memories that we may have of the Rosary: these may be our own, or ones that have been passed on to us. These will help us, Fr Carlos suggests, to rediscover its importance in our own lives, and what it has meant to others. He recounts the story of the persecution of Brazilian Dominicans in the 1970s, and of a brother being dragged away, shouting for his Rosary to be brought to him. Such a moment showed forth the Rosary's importance to that brother. Why then might the Rosary in particular be so important to us?

The Master's answer is that the mysteries we contemplate in the Rosary are very much associated with the events of our own life. Each mystery speaks to us of the mysteries of salvation brought to us through the incarnation, and in a special way of the effect those mysteries have in our own life. There are few prayers that better speak to us and make God present to us in all our needs than the Rosary. Fr Carlos recounts his journeys throughout the world, visiting the Order, and how these have shown him how often people turn to the Rosary as a prayer in their deepest needs: in poverty, war, and violence. He encourages the Dominicans to see the Rosary as gift: it is a prayer that can be said at any time, in any place, alone or together. Sometimes maybe all we are able to do is to grasp the beads in our hands, 'grasping the hand of Mary herself'. It is a prayer for the whole of our lives, whether as a young child receiving our first Rosary as a gift, a young Dominican novice, receiving the Rosary with the habit, or as a symbol of lifelong devotion, at our side when we are laid to rest at the end of our lives.

In the letter, the Order is presented with a call to re-discover the value and place of the Rosary in our personal and community prayer, our contemplation and preaching. Perhaps reviving the praying of the Rosary is something that we should all be involved in as Catholics. We might wish to think about placing the prayer at the centre of our prayer lives this Lent, praying that it will help prepare us to worthily and reverently celebrate the mysteries of our salvation.

The Witness of the Incarnation - St John, Apostle and Evangelist

Readings: 1 John 1:1-4; Psalm 97; John 20, 1a, 2-8.

This is no coincidence, I think, that we celebrate the feast of St John, Apostle and Evangelist, in the Octave of Christmas. He is the first defender of the truth of the Incarnation. He testifies to
what he has heard,
what he has seen with his eyes,
what he looked uponand touched with his hands
he is a witness to the fact that God became one of us.

This truth is so incredible that over the centuries many have tried to deny it. Why is this so? I am sure that there is more than one way of accounting for this. Perhaps the most important reason is that the Incarnation shows clearly the radical love that God has for us. This could be an uncomfortable fact for many, even for us today: love is always a relationship that requires at least two persons, it requires a wholehearted response.

Perhaps we ourselves are not always ready to accept and respond to love with love. Nothing could be easier and more difficult at the same time because of our fear of commitment. But loving God is no serfdom but liberation and deep in our hearts we all long for this Beauty, ‘ever ancient and ever new.’

Nativity of our Lord

Two years ago, I had the most beautiful celebration of Christmas I have ever had in my life. There was no incense or sparkling chasubles, no gleaming liturgical vessel, no elaborated liturgy, no endless rehearsal with the choir, no carols sung joyfully by a half-sleepy congregation, no turkey, no hazy Boxing Day … None of these things we might usually expect. Nothing but a Eucharist in its simplest form celebrated with my family in my mother’s room, in the hospital where she was living her last days … Life is sometimes paradoxical. In the heart of our suffering, profound joy can be sometimes discerned and the voice of the Lord who says ‘I am with you’ can be heard. And the Incarnation is the great mystery that destroys all our categories and securities. Our gaze is sometimes too weak to see and understand him: whilst in the Old Testament, God was presented as creating by separation, the new creation we celebrate today is a creation that put together things that are seemingly impossible to reconcile, God and Man.

In a wonderful sermon on the Virgin Mother, Saint Bernard writes about this paradox and about the many wonders and prodigies of the Incarnation. In the Incarnation, he says, we can behold ‘Eternity shortened, Immensity contracted, Sublimity leveled down, Profundity made shallow. We can contemplate the Light without splendor, the Word without speech, Water which is thirsty, and Bread that feels hunger. We see Omnipotence being ruled, Omniscience being instructed, Virtue supported, God feeding at the breast whilst he nourishes the angels.’ But what is not less astonishing, in the Incarnation of our Lord, we can discover ‘sadness giving joy, fear producing confidence, suffering a source of health, death communicating life, weakness imparting strength.’ In a sense, the mystery of the Incarnation turns upside-down all our categories. We can see the beauty in a dying person in a hospital, not as if pain and suffering could give any meaning to anything at all, but simply because within flaws and rifts, we can discern the feeble strength and the discrete presence of the One who walks with us. Grass sometimes grows on the sand ...

So, the wonderful mystery of the Incarnation we celebrate today invites us to discern the mysterious presence of God, not outside, but within our lives. And this might be difficult to do, because sometimes, we do not accept the tenderness of God. We do not want a God crying and suffering. We would like a God in front of whom we bow, with incense, sparkling chasubles, gleaming liturgical vessels, and elaborated liturgy … and not a God kneeling. But the Incarnation of our Lord shows us that a God who manifests himself clearly as God is not God but simply the King of the World. God is with us. God is within us. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve - The Benedictus

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16; Psalm 89; Luke 1:67-79.

In today's gospel we have the prayer of Zechariah, otherwise known as the Benedictus after the first words of the prayer in Latin "Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel", "Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel". The Benedictus is the gospel canticle, or song, that is chanted at lauds (morning prayer). Lauds is one of the most ancient offices of the Latin Church and we know from the writings of St. Benedict that as early as the 6th century, if not earlier, the Benedictus constituted the high point of the office after the psalms. That this prayer was taken up verbatim and was given a central place in the prayer of the Church at such an early stage in the development of the Roman liturgy demonstrates how highly regarded it was by the people of God.

In the gospel narrative the prayer expresses the joy and thanks of Zechariah for God's work in his own life, in the life of his family, and the implications this will have for the whole world. When he was given the news of the conception of John the Baptist he lacked faith in the words of the angel. Because of his doubt he was struck silent - unable to express to others that which he was unable to believe. Contrast this episode with the annunciation of the birth of Our Lord Jesus to the Blessed Virgin by the archangel Gabriel. Our Lady does not doubt. Her question seeks seeks not a proof but an explanation: "how can this be?". Since Mary believed, she was able to find joy in the words of the angel and express it through her own canticle, the Magnificat. Zechariah, however, had to wait until the naming of St. John before he could demonstrate his faith and thus be free to sing the praises of the Lord.

In this day before the great feast of the Nativity let us pray for an increase in faith, hope and love, and for an evangelical zeal that, like Zechariah, we may be given by the Holy Spirit the words to preach to our world.

Advent Sunday 4 - God is with us

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 23; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

Today we are presented with two similar scenarios. Ahaz and St. Joseph are both in difficult situations. They have made up their minds on how to proceed, but then they hear the Word of God. Joseph is changed, but Ahaz is not.

Ahaz, King of Judah is living in fear for his life. Two armies are marching towards Jerusalem with the intention of deposing him. Faced with such a prospect, Ahaz puts his faith in his Assyrian allies. Isaiah comes to remind Ahaz that he should only place his faith in God. It is in this context that the sign of hope, the birth of Immanuel is prophesized – God’s promise that everything is going to be ok. Ahaz rejects the message quoting Deuteronomy as a rather feeble excuse.

Contrast this with Joseph, who no doubt could have found a passage of scripture to justify not taking Mary as his wife. Instead, he hears the Word of God and it changes him.

Faced with the problems of the world today, we should reflect on how we can be more like Joseph and less like Ahaz. Maybe the difference between Joseph and Ahaz is expressed in today’s psalm, Joseph being the man with clean hands and pure heart, who desires not worthless things. Where does that leave us whose hands and hearts are stained by sin? If we fully embrace the sacraments, our hands can be cleansed and our hearts purified. In this way we can grow into the Body of Christ. The prophecy is fulfilled – God is truly with us.

December 22 - Pregnant with Hope

Readings: 1 Sam 1:24-28; 1 Sam 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8; Luke 1:46-56

The song of Hannah - quoted in part in today's responsorial psalm - had a profound influence on Mary's song, the Magnificat, which we hear in the Gospel. Both these songs, spoken under the inspiration of the Spirit by women who are miraculously pregnant, are themselves pregnant with God's promise. Significantly, although the liturgical text does not cite this, Hannah ends her prayer with these words: "The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed." As we know, this promise is fulfilled in the child - the Son of the Most High - whom the Virgin Mary carries in her womb, and the Spirit who has opened Hannah's womb also opens her lips to speak her words of praise and prophecy. Every evening the same Spirit opens the lips of Holy Mother Church as she sings with one voice and for all ages, the hope-filled words of Mary who is the Church's "type and excellent exemplar in faith and charity" (Lumen Gentium, 53).

While Hannah's words are anticipatory, Mary's Magnificat is in a tense that indicates something already accomplished. As we sing these words each day and recall that still the rich and powerful lord it over the humble and meek, we may rightly wonder how it is that Mary's song (which is not, as some might be tempted to think, a socio-political manifesto) can be in the past tense?

Hannah certainly looked forward to the Christ child, the Redeemer promised to her people, but Mary and we, the Church, who are her children, have already entered into that long awaited promise. Unlike Hannah we no longer await Christ but rather, through our baptism, we have been reborn in the Spirit and become members of Christ's Body, the Church. It is this blessing that the Church is empowered to bear to all people. As Pope Benedict XVI has said: "When you [Mary] hastened with holy joy across the mountains of Judea to see your cousin Elizabeth, you became the image of the Church to come, which carries the hope of the world in her womb across the mountains of history."

However, like a pregnant woman, we Christians live not so much in anticipation of a promise but in hope, allowing the Spirit to fulfill in our lives that promise already accomplished in Christ. As St Paul says: "creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God" (Romans 8:19). Therefore, the Holy Father also said in his second encyclical, Spes Salvi, that hope "is the expectation of things to come from the perspective of a present that is already given. It is a looking-forward in Christ's presence, with Christ who is present, to the perfecting of his Body, to his definitive coming." Rooted in the first coming of Christ but looking forward to His return in glory - an event that would complete the prophecy in Hannah's song - Advent is thus pregnant with this essential dynamic of Christian hope. And this blessed hope founded upon faith in Christ is the most loving Christmas present we could give to those around us.

December 20 - Hindsight is 20/20

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 1:26-38

Each Advent we hear a lot in our readings about John the Baptist. An experienced preacher once told me that it is hard going thinking of new and innovative ways of preaching about John as it gets towards this point in the season. Most of the things that are important to say have already been said by others earlier on. How do you say the same thing again, in a different way, when Fr. X said it so well the other week? Having said that, when we get to today's Gospel, that whole process of underlining the importance of John seems to me to have been well worth while. Why so, you may ask? Today's Gospel gives us the account of the Annunciation to Mary and not another part of the story of John the Baptist. In any case, the events in John's life that we have been focusing on up to this point - his preaching and call to repentance - are much later, years after the Annunciation.

Well, perhaps we are given a hint in the story of the Gospel about what the fruit of 'preparing a way for the Lord' might be for us. We know little about Mary's life, but our belief about her as full of grace, prefect in her obedience to the will of God, becomes important in understanding what it was that John was proclaiming. Mary's life was lived as complete receptivity to God's Word, so much so that she was able to allow that the Word became flesh through her. If we take John the Baptist's message, and use it as a frame with which to look back in history at the Annunciation, we see that preparing the way for the Lord means making ourselves ready for Christ to dwell in us, at the level of the individual and of the whole Church. Today the Church gives us the example of Mary as the icon of that receptivity which results from having lived a life of devotion to God. May we take her example to heart, and through her intercession, may we be made ready to receive her Son this Christmas.

Advent Tuesday 3 - Actions speak louder than words

Readings: Jeremiah 23:5-8; Psalm 71; Matthew 1:18-24

'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid.' It is often said that actions speak louder than words. An overdone proverb perhaps, but nevertheless a wise one. St Joseph shows the truth of this proverb in today’s gospel. Joseph has a dream – like the Joseph of the Old Testament. In this dream an angel appears to him and tells him not to be afraid and to take Mary as his wife, for the son she is to bear is from the Holy Spirit. Joseph arises and is obedient to the angel’s command. He accepts the will of God and seeks wholeheartedly to follow it. This reminds us of the Lord’s later teaching in the Gospels: "it is not those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ who will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of the Father". St Joseph is for us a perfect example of this.

Today’s gospel passage has sometimes been seen to parallel the annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in the Gospel of Luke. In this regard Pope John Paul II wrote that, with regard to what God asked of him through the angel, Joseph showed his readiness of will like that of Mary. In this sense, the words of Elizabeth spoken to Mary at the Visitation, “blessed is she who believed”, can be referred to Joseph as well. What Joseph did, the late pope remarks, ‘is the clearest “obedience of faith”’ (Redemptoris Custos 3 & 4).

Advent Monday 3 - What a family!

Readings: Genesis 49:2,8-10; Psalm 72; Matthew 1:1-17

When the Word became flesh it was into a very human family, a family of 'flesh and blood', as Herbert McCabe put it 'a lot of flesh and considerably more blood'. If you read about the lives and activities of the people mentioned in Matthew's genealogy you will see what he means (in Genesis, 1 and 2 Kings, Ruth, 1 and 2 Chronicles ...). Attention is often drawn to the women mentioned in the list - Tamar the mother of Perez, Rahab the mother of Boaz, Ruth the mother of Obed, Bathsheba the mother of Solomon, and Mary the mother of Jesus. There is something unusual about each of them. Rahab and Ruth are non-Hebrews, 'foreigners' through whom nevertheless God works to bring about the fulfillment of his promises. In some cases - Tamar and Bathsheba - the relationship through which they became the mother of an ancestor of Jesus had something dubious about it. The 'dysfunctional' character of these relationships, and the flawed lives of the men mentioned in the list, might surprise and even shock us, but on reflection is it not a reason for hope? We believe that the Word became flesh, not that he came near to us, or hovered over us, or dealt us a glancing blow like a tangent not really touching a circle. We believe that he became immersed in the dysfunctionality of human lives and relationships - all that we mean by 'sinful flesh' - and that it is by taking on what is ours that He made it possible for us to become what he is. Against this background the holiness of Mary, the mother of Jesus, stands out. Not that she is unreal: she is the most real of the people mentioned, the one living most fully in the light of truth, showing us the kindness and generosity that flow from the love of God, flesh and blood transfigured by grace.

Advent Sunday 3 - The desert shall blossom

Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6a,10; Psalm 146; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

It has always struck me how dreary Advent can become. The absence of the joyful strains of 'Gloria' and the dark purple vestments counter the bright lights and happy singing of the commercial world. But today we are given a little reprieve from our waiting and given the opportunity to rejoice. Gaudete Sunday is like a practice-run of our Christmas celebration, and the rose-coloured vestments mark that contrast for us.

This liturgical practice reflects the manner in which our Christian hope is lived. In our lives, we experience the darkness of sin and evil. We are called to confront these realities, and to seek redemption through them. Yet we can already taste the freedom of our eternal salvation in Christ. This is why we can rejoice today. The reality of our waiting is truly bitter, but the reality of our redemption is truly at hand.

The Prophet Isaiah describes this paradox for us: the desert shall rejoice and blossom, those of weak heart and feeble knees should stand firm - our God comes with vengeance to save us. Our salvation has been revealed. Now we must wait patiently, wait as the farmer waits for his crops to grow. Our Lord is coming soon, he will not delay. We have no need to expect another. Let us rejoice in the knowledge of our Lord, and savour the sweetness of our salvation.

Advent Saturday 2 - The trap of authority

Readings Sirac 48:1-4, 9-11, Psalm 80, Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

It sounds quite dramatic what Jesus says about the scribes:

“Elijah has already come, and the scribes did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.”

Jesus does not say about them that they were wicked people, or murderers. But in a sense their fault is much heavier than that. Their approach to people was institutionalised and blindly chained to the letter of the law. This is how they misunderstood the preaching of John the Baptist and this is why they were about to start persecuting Jesus. Both men could not fit into the scribes’ understanding of how God’s salvation is going to come about. The scribes were figures of authority and for them to accept challenge from two young men, John and Jesus, who were neither important nor educated, was something unthinkable.
This is an ever present temptation in our own life, to presume that as long as we are in a position of authority whatever we do is going to be to somebody’s advantage. But do we care to listen with a keen ear to what others are telling us? Or do we just categorize them and force-feed them with our scheme of things?

We need to remember today perhaps even more than in the past, that it is the human person that is ‘the way of the Church’.

Advent Friday 2 - St John of the Cross

Readings: Is 48:17-19; Ps 1; Mt 11:16-19

Many people loathe Christmas. I do, too. But what I despise isn’t the solemnity of the Incarnation, the celebration of the Word becoming flesh, dwelling with us so that we could see his glory, but what our secular world has made of it: the saccharine conviviality, the relentless jolliness, the artificial cheer, the being penned up with people we spend the rest of the year avoiding – no wonder families fall apart under the pressure of the ‘festive’ season. Another hallmark of the pagan gluttony with which our contemporary culture has debased the religious feast is, of course, overtired, overstimulated, stressed out and thoroughly unpleasant children. Which brings me to today’s gospel.

In the passage we’ve heard Matthew depicts the contemporaries of the Baptist and Jesus as being like disagreeable children who complain that others do not meet their desires and expectations. One group complains that the others refuse to respond to either the wedding game “we piped for you, and you did not dance”, or the funeral game “we wailed, and you did not mourn”. The point is that there is no positive response to either Jesus or John by their opponents. This also has ecclesiological significance for ourselves today: both Jesus and John before us suffered rejection, but we should not let this discourage us from being alert to God’s commandments, from following him in the way we must go, as Isaiah has told us.

Certainly John of the Cross had every reason to be discouraged. In his attempt to lead his brothers back into the way they must go, he had been persuaded by Teresa of Avila to join the Discalced Reform, but was seized and imprisoned for a time by those who rejected it, and him. Some may find the stark demands of his mystical asceticism, his refusal to settle for anything less than God - with the concomitant dispossession of our usual religious sensibilities, the ‘dark night’ of the soul - a terrifying prospect. But it’s important to note that this is only a preliminary, which yields to an awareness of God as the centre of our being, of the world’s being, of the Spirit praying within us with words we do not know how to utter. The Carmelite stresses the experience of God in faith as a vision of the creator, as well as the “wise, ordered, gracious and loving mutual correspondence” among creatures (Spiritual Canticle B xxxix. 11.), in this perhaps against the somewhat over-individualistic assurance of faith emphasised by the churches of the Reformation.

Advent Thursday 2 - the Kingdon is taken by force

Readings: Isaiah 41:13-20, Psalm 145, Matthew 11:11-15.

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.

How is it possible for anybody to gain the kingdom of heaven by force? Who are these violent people and what is this force?

This force is not something we make ourselves do. This force is not something we make others do. This violent force is not something that does any harm to anybody.

The violence of this force is the violence with which we turn the order of the universe upside-down when we dare to call God our Father. This force is the courage with which the blind followed Jesus and cried aloud: "Have mercy on us, Son of David." This force is the persistent request of the Canaanite woman that her daughter be healed: “Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." This force is the meekenss with which the good thief addressed his prayer: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." This force is the prayer of the Holy Spirit who cries in us when we pray.

I guess you have realized by now that these violent people are you and I, for whose sake the Word became flesh.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Readings: Gen 3:9-15,20; Ps 97:1-4; Eph 1:3-6,11-12.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX defined the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus. The statement of the doctrine was that from the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace granted by God, Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin. One of the confusions that often arises with regard to the definition of a doctrine is how it can be that the Church can define a dogma with such certainty. To this, we may say that the definition is the culmination of centuries of theological reflection. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception has been celebrated by the Church since at least the ninth century, and the doctrine itself was developed and explained by theologians such as the Franciscan Blessed John Duns Scotus. In Ineffabilis Deus, we see that the doctrine as we now understand it draws on Scripture, and in particular, the understanding of certain passages which we find in today's readings, but also on the Tradition and liturgical practice of the Church.

Someone once remarked to me that they didn't think that the doctrine made any difference to them and their lives. However, when we think about it carefully, we realise that it makes all the difference. A much loved brother of this Province, now deceased, has become famous for saying that without Our Lady we would be 'in a right pickle'! And the Dogma shows us how Mary, being 'full of grace', is the New Eve, who having been preserved from original sin through grace, can utter that fiat which signals her acceptance of God's call to be the mother of Christ. The Dogma thus presents us with the good news that God has heard our cries, and comes to us as man through the obedience of Mary, to get us out of our 'pickle'. Surely this makes all the difference ...

Advent Friday 1 - Healing the blind

Readings: Isaiah 29:17-24; Psalm 26; Matthew 9:27-31

The gospel reading for today portrays Jesus as the great healer. It is one of a series of stories in Saint Matthew which tell of Jesus curing the sick. Here we see him restoring sight to two blind men. In all these stories of healing Jesus is shown to be the one who inaugurates the great age that the prophet Isaiah anticipates: 'In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see' (Isaiah 29:18). Yet the central theme of the reading is not in fact the miraculous or the dramatic healings but rather the issue of faith. In this story the absence of sight is understood not merely in terms of a physical disability, but stands as a symbol of unbelief which is a sort of spiritual blindness.

The two men in the gospel are cured of their blindness because of their faith. 'He touched their eyes saying. "Your faith deserves it, so let this be done for you." And their sight returned.' (Matthew 9:29-30). What sort of faith did these two men have? It is a faith that Jesus praises. It is also a faith that is enthusiastic to share the Good News with others. Yet is their faith completely mature? In their enthusiasm they do not appear to be completely responsive to the will of God. For as soon as they are healed they immediately disobey Jesus. He asks them not to talk about their cure, but instead they spread news of this miracle worker all over the countryside.

Faith is not something we possess fully from the beginning. Rather the Christian life is a journey of faith in which we seek to move ever closer to the Lord by attentively seeking to do his will. Advent is a time when this journey towards God is given particular liturgical expression. It is a special time to deepen our faith so that we might learn to know more completely the God who loves us and so welcome his light and truth into our lives when he comes at Christmas. Saint Ambrose, the fourth century bishop and doctor of the Church, whose feast we celebrate today, prayed: ‘Lord, teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me when I seek You. For I cannot seek you unless You first teach me, nor find You, unless you first reveal yourself to me’.

Godzdogz: Some facts and figures...

The Godzdogz team has now been posting for over a year. The blog was launched on the 7th of November 2006, though things really started to take off with our daily Advent meditations.

In the last year:

• We have posted nearly 250 articles, reflections, news items and answers to your questions, along with many videos.


• The website has received around 110,000 hits.


• The average daily readership now stands at about 400.
  

One of the things that is striking is that our readers come from all over the world. The map above shows something of the typical geographical spread of our readers in any given 5-6 hour period (locations are indicated by the red 'balloons'). Most of our hits come from the United Kingdom and the USA, but we get hits from all around the world. Here is a list of countries our visitors come from, which is not exhaustive ...

... UK, USA, France,

Belgium, The Netherlands,

Spain, Germany, Luxembourg,

Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Norway,

Finland, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Latvia, Italy,

The Czech Republic, Lithuania, Portugal, Denmark, Malta,

Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, India, Pakistan,

Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore,

Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea,

New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Belize,

Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Chile,

Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada,

South Africa, Lesotho...

Coming soon on Godzdogz: more articles on Dominican Saints, answers to your Quodlibet questions, new daily Advent reflections and much more....

Thank you for visiting Godzdogz! If you have any comments, questions, requests or ideas as to how the site might be improved, please email godzdogz@gmail.com

Not fanaticism but radical love

"Peter began to say to him, "Lo, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life." - Mark 10:28-30

Fr Peter Hunter OP preached at Mass for the feast of All Saints of the Dominican order (7 November) and the Gospel appointed for the feast is that given above. The homily inspired his hearers and we hope that it will give Godzdogz readers an appreciation of our life and hopes.

Fr Bob Ombres once told me a story of travelling in his native Naples. He was talking to a man who told him he was a Catholic. Fr Ombres expressed interest and asked the man where he went to church. Puzzled, the man replied, “Cattolico, non fanatico!”

Yet, religious life can seem in today’s world like fanaticism, a wide-eyed pursuit of an ideal, giving up all sorts of important things in this pursuit. Jesus, in the Gospel appointed for today’s feast (Mark 10:28-30) talks about leaving family and property for his sake and for the Gospel. Isn’t that rather fanatical?

The same Fr Ombres said to me when he heard that I had made the decision to make final vows in the Order, “I’m so glad! If you really throw yourself into it, the life will make you very happy.” But can this kind of wide-eyed pursuit, this kind of fanaticism, make you happy?

The feast we celebrate today, the feast of All Saints of the Order of Preachers, is our more parochial version of the universal Church’s celebration of All Saints. That it makes sense to celebrate it at all is confirmation that the Dominican way of life is rich enough and wide enough to be a way of holiness. That is to say, it says that after all, the Dominican way of life is a way to be happy.

What is this way of life? Our Order is dedicated to the study and preaching of the truth of the Gospel. And when we characterise it like that, we see that commitment to this life cannot be fanatical. It cannot be fanatical because it is, we now see, not a wide-eyed pursuit of an ideal, but based on the love of a person. Loving the truth of the Gospel is ultimately nothing other than loving Jesus. The Dominican saints, no less than the apostles, leave family and property not for an ideal, but out of love for the Son of God. This means that this following, while radical, is not fanatical but reasonable and human.

An early Dominican expressed a worry (perhaps a tongue-in-cheek one) that the life gave him so much joy and hence could not be a way to heaven for him. But it was for him, and it is for us, if we give ourselves to it freely and fully. We can celebrate today that our way of life turns out to be rich enough, broad enough, to be a way to heaven and rededicate ourselves to living that life properly. In doing that, we leave behind things which we rightly love, not out of a wide-eyed fanaticism, but because we love Christ more.

The prophet's word of truth

Br Romero Radix OP is currently doing a summer placement in a London hospital under the direction of Fr Peter Harries OP. This is the reflection Br Romero has written for this week's edition of St Dominic's Newsletter, the weekly newsletter of St Dominic's Priory, London

The king’s leading men wanted to put Jeremiah to death on account of the word of God he had spoken. The king was Zedekiah. The people of Jerusalem were under serious threat of being taken captive to Babylon. Jeremiah had told the king God’s words were these: ‘you shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.’ Furthermore, if any one should remain in the city he would die by the sword or famine or pestilence, but those that go forth to the Chaldeans – that is the Babylonians - shall live.

The king’s leading men did not like this. They said that Jeremiah’s words were disheartening the remaining soldiers in the city. This is the heart of the matter. What God had in mind and what they had in mind were two different things. What they wanted was in conflict with what God had planned. They did not like God’s plan. They were not willing to accept it. They were not willing to change.

Now, of what relevance is this text to us, today? Well, with the advent of Christ the ministry of the prophet was not abolished. Paul tells us that ‘some He made prophets, some evangelists, some teachers, and some apostles – for the building up of the saints’. So, if we as the body of Christ are to be built up, we have a duty and a responsibility to find out the prophets’ words for our time and to receive them with open hands. To do this, first we must ask ourselves who are the prophets of our time? What are the issues with which they concern themselves? And, what has been our response to their words? These questions are worth serious consideration on our part. It frequently resurfaces in my consciousness that we belong to a community that spans the entire globe. This being the case, we have a great responsibility to remain constantly aware of the issues that are affecting our brothers and sisters around the world – to keep praying for them sincerely and fervently.

So, there is the office of the prophet, but people we live with and work with can also be prophetic. God’s word can be brought to us by many different messengers as a wife to a husband or a child to a parent. What is our response when they tell us something that we do not want to hear, or something that we are not pleased with? Do we sometimes dismiss them outright?

Jeremiah teaches us that God's words are not always what we would want to hear, or what will please us. This being the case, whenever somebody tells us something we do not like, we must always be open to the possibility that it might be the truth. If we never leave a space for this possibility we are operating from pride. This may result in serious division in a home or a work place, and derail us from walking according to God’s will for us.

It is true that Jesus in the gospel from Luke today says that he did not come to bring peace on earth, but, rather division. He says, ‘for from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three; the father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother …’

These sayings are striking, but to say that they are inevitable in every family would be to limit the power of love. Granted, divisions might arise, but as Paul says, in every way and as much as is possible try to live at peace with everyone. If indeed we are trying our utmost, then we will always be open to whatever, however displeasing, someone has to say. In this way, we keep ourselves open always to God.

Interestingly, sometimes what we think is displeasing and negative and disheartening is not. Jeremiah was bringing the king’s leading men good news, for he was giving them a word by which their lives would be preserved. But, they could not receive his words because all they had in mind were their ideas. With Jeremiah to learn from we can avoid this mistake.

God bless you
Romero Radix o.p

Healing for Mary's Dowry

During the John Paul II Pilgrimage to Walsingham, Br Lawrence Lew OP gave the following talk which we reproduce here for the Feast of the Assumption:

"Chaucer in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales says that after the April rains, people long to go on pilgrimages and so, he fell in with 29 others who were journeying to Canterbury. That was in the 14th-century when the tradition of calling England ‘The Dowry of Mary’ was already well established.

We 21st century pilgrims follow in the tradition of Chaucer and his folk in ways both alike and different. Unlike them, we are clearly not walking after the rains have ceased, and the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury no longer exists. But we are a similar band of twenty-odd pilgrims, journeying to the heart of Mary’s Dowry, to her shrine at Walsingham. Soon, we shall pray in the Slipper Chapel which was built just half a century before Chaucer wrote his Tales. Some of us even look similar to those pilgrims because of the medieval habits we wear, although it is hoped that the religious and clergy in our band are less quarrelsome, and maybe just slightly less bawdy! But despite these differences, we can be certain that the essence of our pilgrimages, though separated by seven centuries, is the same.

The medieval pilgrims travelled to Canterbury to look for a miracle, and particularly for healing. Chaucer says, “Of England to Canterbury they wend, the holy blissful martyr for to seek, who helped them when they were sick”. And we? Why do we walk in this manner to Walsingham? Are we sick? What do we seek from the holy blissful Virgin Mother of God?

We may not be physically unwell, at least not yet, but we are certainly all wounded and in need of God’s healing, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We have sustained the wounds of original sin, and the wounds that a sin-filled world inflicts on us. Thus, pilgrimages are undertaken as an act of penance. The sacrifice and hardship of a pilgrimage is a vital reminder of Christ’s call that we should deny ourselves, take up our Cross and follow him. So, this pilgrimage is a living enactment of the sequela Christi, the following of Christ, even if on this walk, we are not carrying a physical Cross. And in this act of following Christ, we find life, healing and salvation, for if we have died with Christ, we shall rise with him and reign with him.

In 1400, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, said: “…we English being the servants of her special inheritance, and her own Dowry, as we are commonly called, ought to surpass others in the fervour of our praise and devotion.” That is the goal for England and I think we here certainly share some of that praise, devotion and fervour. There is a Dominican motto, emblazoned on the logo of Blackfriars Hall in Oxford: laudare, benedicere, praedicare; to praise, to bless, to preach. Let it be our motto and a reminder of our goal as Mary’s Dowry: let us praise God, let us bless His holy name with devotion, and let us preach his Gospel of salvation with fervour.

We are also walking this pilgrimage for another reason, with the intention of evangelising England. Our society is clearly sick. All around us, symptoms of its illness can be seen, and yet our fellow countrymen do not recognise and acknowledge their need for the Divine Physician. Christ has come to call sinners to repentance, that we might have life to the full. What sick person does not go to a doctor? The one who doesn’t know he is sick, and so the disease silently kills the person. England needs a doctor, our society needs Christ and it cries out for Him minute by minute. Indeed, England’s need, and our need, is for salvation, for that word, ‘salvation’, is derived from the Latin salus, meaning health. Let every step we take be a prayer for our nation that she may come to realize her need for the healing that only Jesus, the Saviour of all people, brings.

What exactly is a dowry? Basically, it is a present given to a new husband by the bride upon marriage. It took the form of land, goods or money. Why is a dowry given? Because a wedding is near. But whose wedding is near? Every Sunday at Vespers we sing: “Alleluia. The marriage of the Lamb has come. And His bride has made herself ready.” So the wedding that is near, is that of the Lamb, Christ himself. It is the banquet of all the blessed in heaven. The bride is the Church, and the image of the Church is none other than Our Lady. The idea of the Dowry of Mary is profoundly connected to the gift of England – as a people – to Christ at his wedding banquet. Are we ready for that wedding? Yes, and no.

The fact is that we, who are baptised and saved by Jesus, are already invited to this marriage feast and share in its delights. As Pope Benedict said: “For us, the Eucharistic banquet [the Mass] is a real foretaste of the final banquet foretold by the prophets and described in the New Testament as ‘the marriage-feast of the Lamb’, to be celebrated in the joy of the communion of saints.” But in another sense, we are still not there yet. We are the Church Militant, fighting the good fight – as St Paul puts it – and running the race. We are on the way, pilgrims in via, learning to perfect how we praise, bless and preach. As such, a pilgrimage like this reminds us of the journey that we are all on together, moving towards heaven, our true homeland. The Dominican Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, once said that Christians suffer from “eschatological amnesia”. What he meant is that often we live and work as if this life is all that mattered, forgetting that we are actually pilgrims travelling through this life on the way home to God. To be a pilgrim is to have a destination in mind, to be continually moving towards it, and our goal is God Himself and the life of beatitude with and in Him.

This should not be taken to mean that we ignore the plight of our fellow travellers. No. We journey together, we help those who lag behind and we support one another, for we are called to love God and to love our neighbour. Indeed, St Augustine said that “If you see charity, you see the Trinity”. In a sense then, Christian charity in action is a foretaste of the beatific vision. Thus, Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical that “Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful… For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.” The Holy Father goes on to say that “practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them… I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.” Here we have an explanation of how we can best become Mary’s Dowry: through love, the kind of love in which we are ourselves the gift, given to others, for the love of Christ.

In a recent letter to Chinese Catholics, the Pope explained how a nation is brought to know and love Christ. I think his words can also apply to us in England and remind us how we can most effectively praise, bless and preach. Pope Benedict said: “Today, as in the past, to proclaim the Gospel means to preach and bear witness to Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the new Man, conqueror of sin and death. He enables human beings to enter into a new dimension, where mercy and love shown even to enemies can bear witness to the victory of the Cross over all weakness and human wretchedness. In your country too, the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen will be possible to the extent that, with fidelity to the Gospel, in communion with the Successor of the Apostle Peter and with the universal Church, you are able to put into practice the signs of love and unity.” Put into practice love and unity. May this pilgrimage, in which we journey as one and have communion with one another and with the Lord be such a practice, an expression of Christian love. May this pilgrimage truly be a holy preaching, as we praise and bless the Lord together. May our love and unity be a reflection of the life of the Church in our land.

One way we might show our love and unity is through joy, and in song. It is said that our holy father, St Dominic, as he walked the length and breadth of Europe would break out into song. This joy, this confidence in God’s salvation is truly attractive. A few years ago, I’d returned from the Philippines. Sitting on the train from Manchester airport, I noticed how glum and miserable everyone looked, and I noticed this because it was in stark contrast with the joy and cheer I found in the Philippines, Asia’s most Christian country. I hope that we Christians in England are signs of joy in our communities, in our country. May it be a deep joy rooted in our hope of eternal life with God and the saints.

In 1982, at a Mass in Wembley Stadium, Pope John Paul II said: “Brothers and sisters! …We must be a people of prayer and deep spirituality. Our society needs to recover a sense of God’s loving presence, and a renewed sense of respect for his will." In his words we find inspiration for how, by the grace of God, we may evangelise England, and for what we seek from Our Lady at her Shrine:

"Let us learn this from Mary our Mother. In England, the Dowry of Mary, the faithful, for centuries, have made pilgrimage to her shrine at Walsingham. The statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, present here, lifts our minds to meditate on our Mother. She obeyed the will of God fearlessly and gave birth to the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Faithful at the foot of the Cross, she then waited in prayer for the Holy Spirit to descend on the infant Church. It is Mary who will teach us how to be silent, how to listen for the voice of God in the midst of a busy and noisy world. It is Mary who will help us to find time for prayer. Through the Rosary, that great Gospel prayer, she will help us to know Christ. We need to live as she did, in the presence of God, raising our minds and hearts to him in our daily activities and worries ...

Certainly, our fidelity to the Gospel will put us at odds with the spirit of the present age. Yes, we are in the world, indeed as disciples of Christ we are sent into the world, but we do not belong to the world. The conflict between certain values of the world and the values of the Gospel is an inescapable part of the Church’s life, just as it is an inescapable part of the life of each one of us. And it is here that we must draw on the patience which Saint Paul spoke about in his letter to the Romans: 'we groan inwardly as we await our salvation, in hope and with patience.'"

I think this pilgrimage is just one of many signs of England’s own pilgrim journey home to God. There are so many signs of hope in the Church in England, little acts of praise, devotion and fervour … let us thank God for these works of His grace, and walk this pilgrimage as an act of thanksgiving.

At the end of this pilgrimage, our feet may well need healing, but we know that by God’s grace, our hearts and souls will have been healed a little more; healed by the love and unity in Christ that we have found. At the very least, we should be more united and loving than Chaucer’s pilgrims! Only then can our witness be genuine. Let us pray that God’s Holy Spirit will use this love and unity, which he has stirred up among us, to heal England, so that we may once more be called ‘Dowry of Mary’, a people given to Jesus and ready for his eternal wedding banquet."

Salute no one on the road

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm65; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Jesus's instruction to his disciples, 'salute no one on the road', seems odd for three reasons. One, it seems rude. Two, it seems unChristian! And three, it seems like a very bad strategy for people who have been sent out to preach.

They are to be single-minded, focused, intent on the mission they have been set. They are not to be distracted from that task even by good things. We see this urgency in the lives of the prophets and as a result many of them are 'odd'. They do not quite fit into the normal patterns of life. There is an urgency in their task and a single-mindedness in their pursuit of it. There are many distractions, even very good ones, from which they must keep themselves free and detached if they are to concentrate on their work. The Word of God has taken possession of them and they do seem possessed at times.

The kingdom of God which is very near is also very odd. It is not just an endorsement of the way things are. If it is about a new life and if it is about a grace coming from God then there will not be a perfect fit between the world and the kingdom. Something new is being announced, something different, something strange, something not heard before.

Jesus's teaching is not then practical in the sense in which the world might want things to be practical. It is not an alternative social, political, philosophical, or economic arrangement although it has implications for all those things. It alerts us to the deepest level there is, the love of God 'deep down things', and invites us to live from there, so giving us a new and unexpected freedom. It is not an alternative way of acting, an alternative way of making community. It raises questions about all acting, about all ways of making community.

The preaching of the gospel is, at its heart, the love of God abroad in the world. So it will be odd and strange, very near (nearer than we can imagine) but troubling, puzzling, new, a matter of grace.

Nowhere to lay his head

13th Sunday of the Year

Readings: 1 Kings 19:16, 19-21; Psalm 15; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

For a homily by Fr Aidan Nichols on today's readings see Torch, the English Dominican preaching web site.






Please remember in your prayers our brothers Benedict Jonak,Dominic Ryan, Alistair Jones, Bruno Clifton and Didier Croonenberghs who will be ordained deacons at Blackfriars on Monday 2 July by Bishop William Kenney.

The Nativity of John the Baptist

Readings: Isa