Perfect love casts out fear

Many people nowadays want God, but on their terms, not his. They insist that their wishes to determine the kind of religion that is true, rather than letting God revealed his truth to them. So their dissatisfaction continues and grows. But God finds us lovable, even in our rebellion against him.

God does not love us because we are lovable of and by ourselves, but because he has put his own life into us. He does not even wait for us to love; his own love affects us. Letting it to do this, with no resistance, no holding back for fear of what our egotism must give up, it's the one way to the peace of the world can neither give nor take away.

The Ven. Abp Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your heart,  taken from  Advent Meditations with Fulton J. Sheen, Liguori Publications: Liguori MO, 2007

Let Christ be formed in you

As God was  physically formed in Mary, so he wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew he was seeing through your eyes, you would see everyone as a child of God. If you knew that he worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through .... If you knew that he wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how differently you would be. If half the world did this there would be no war!

The Ven. Abp Fulton J. Sheen How to find Christmas Peace,  taken from  Advent Meditations with Fulton J. Sheen, Liuori Publications: Liguori MO, 2007

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (Year C)

‘Peace through integrity, and honour through devotedness’

The prophets proclaim the message of hope to Israel, in the midst of exile, when times look dark, they are to wrap the cloak of integrity around themselves, and put the crown of the glory of God upon their heads. It is the message of trust, trust in God alone as the source of our hope, the only rock on which to build a life of faith.

As the people of God we are to trust in him and to live lives which prepare for the second coming of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, our saviour and our judge. To be a Christian, then, is to live a life where our love for each other and for God increases day by day as Paul puts it. We are to grow in virtue by being virtuous.

In this morning's gospel we see the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, as he prepares the way for the Lord. He proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In our baptism we promise to turn away from sin, the world, and the devil; we turn away from what the world thinks and does, because our baptism makes us pure and blameless, following the Commandments of God, and shown to us in the life of Jesus Christ.

The church, then, must be a voice crying in the wilderness. What we proclaim may well be at odds with what the world thinks we should say and do, but we are not called to be worldly, to conform ourselves to the ways of the world. We live in a fallen world, which is not utterly depraved, but the church exists to conform the world to the will of God. To say to the world, come and have life in all its fullness, turn away from selfishness and sin, to have life in all its fullness in Jesus Christ.

The world may not listen to us when we proclaim this; it may well choose to ignore us, to persecute us. We have to be prepared to do this regardless of the cost. We must bear witness to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and their saving work even if it means shedding blood of losing our lives, because it says to the world: we trust in something greater than you, we know the truth and it has set us free, free to love God and to serve him, and to invite others to do the same, to be baptised, to turn away from the world, and be fed by word and sacrament, built up into a community of love, offering the world a radical alternative, and holding fast to the truths which the church holds dear, since they are given us by God.

It’s a big, a daunting task, which if it were up to us individually, we would have no chance of achieving. But it is something which we do together, as the body of Christ, and relying upon God alone: it is his gospel, his church, and his strength in which we will accomplish this. Too often we trust in ourselves and fail, we need to trust in God and ask him to bring about the proclamation of the Gospel through us. We need to be like John the Baptist, preparing the way for the Lord who will come again as our Saviour and our Judge.

This is what we await in Advent, the coming of Our Lord as a baby in Bethlehem and his second coming as Our Judge, bearing in his glorious body the wounds of love, borne for us and our salvation. So let us prepare to meet him and live lives which proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.

Homily for the Immaculate Conception

‘Those who dislike any devotion to Mary are those who deny His Divinity or who find fault with Our Lord because of what He says.’

These words of the Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen remind us of an important truth when we consider the Blessed Virgin Mary: she is always pointing to God – it’s all about God and not about Mary. But, I hear you cry, we have come here to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, surely it’s all got to be about her? Well I am sorry to disappoint you, but it isn’t. 

We are not here today to celebrate a doctrine, or a philosophical concept, because that is not what the church does. We celebrate a person, and through her, God. Mary, the spotless vessel, through whose loving obedience our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became incarnate and was born, for the salvation of all humanity, is marked out for a life of perfect love and obedience. She becomes the first Christian, the tabernacle, the Ark of the new covenant, the new Eve, Mother of God and Mother of the Church.

In her response to the angel’s message Mary becomes totally open to God, totally vulnerable and totally reliant upon him alone. In her openness and her vulnerability there is the space in which God can be at work. In Adam and Eve we see how sin can separate us from God. In Mary we see how God begins to put that right. From the moment of her Conception she lives the life of the baptised: filled with sanctifying grace, united with God, because of what her Son will do. She is the model of what humanity can be, she gives us hope as Christians, and points us to her Son, Our Lord and Saviour, whose coming as our Judge and as a baby in Bethlehem we prepare for in this season of Advent. 

Mary trusts in God, she says ‘yes’, and is filled with love, a gift which must be shared. She offers the church the perfect example of how to live a Christian life, in joyful hope and obedience: at the Marriage in Cana she says to the servants ‘Do whatever he tells you’. She stands at the foot of the Cross and watches her Son die to reconcile God and humanity. But in her joy and her sorrow she is truly free, to love and serve God. She is freed to show us, as Christians, how to live our lives loving and serving God and one another, and to show us the wonderful work of her Son who frees all humanity, who saves them, and who loves them.

So, today, let us pause to ponder the love of God shown to us in Mary, let us be fed by word and sacrament, the Body of Christ, which became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, let us treasure him, and let us respond by loving and trusting God, by living lives of service, of God and of one another, and proclaiming the Good News in Jesus Christ, so that all creation may resound with the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

Consecration to Jesus through Mary

A prayer written by Fr Jean Jacques Olier, S.S. (1608-1657)

O Jesu vivens in Maria Veni et vive in famulis tuis, In spiritu sanctitatis tuae, In plenitudine virtutis tuae, In perfectione viarum tuarum, In veritate virtutum tuarum, In communione mysteriorum tuorum; Dominare omni adversae potestati, In Spiritu tuo ad gloriam Patris.

O Jesus, living in Mary, come and live in thy servants, in the spirit of thy holiness, in the fullness of thy might, in the truth of thy virtues, in the perfection of thy ways, in the communion of thy mysteries. Subdue every hostile power in thy spirit, for the glory of the Father.

Slapping Heretics

The world and the church have a picture of St Nicholas, it is a safe picture, he is a kindly man, a Bishop with a big white beard, who gives presents to children and does lots of lovely things. That's all well and good, and there is much that can be said about the gentleness and generosity of the man, and how that points us to Christ. But recently I have found myself pondering another aspect of this great Saint. At the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea in ad325, Nicholas, Bishop of Myra slaps Arius for denying the coeternal and consubstantial nature of the second person of the Trinity, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Nicholas got angry and his fellow bishops and the Emperor Constantine didn’t exactly approve of the pugilist prelate. 

If it were to happen today I could imagine the media outcry, Twitter would be flooded with #bishopgate and #TeamArius posts. No doubt some eminent theologian would state that it’s perfectly alright to say that ‘there was a time when he was not’ and that Adoptionist or Subordinationist positions are all equally valid points of view and that one Christology is as good as another, that this was Arius’ truth and it needs to be affirmed, that we need to feel his pain and resist the patriarchal oppression of an authority figure like Nicholas and so on.

Nicholas slaps Arius because orthodoxy really matters, what we believe about God and the Church really matters. The Word of God, who was with his Father in eternity, before all time, and matter, and space, becomes incarnate in the womb of the virgin, for the salvation and redemption of all humanity: true God and true man, consubstantial and coeternal. It may be easier to deny this, it may make more sense, or be consistent with a philosophical position, but it will not do. As St Ambrose put it: non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum (it was not the will of God to save his people through dialectic) [De Fide 1:5, §42]. The Incarnation is a scandal and a mystery which defies human understanding and intellect, reason and philosophy it is something to be experienced, to be tasted and felt. 

This is what we await in Advent, the coming of Our Lord as a baby in Bethlehem and his second coming as Our Judge, bearing in his glorious body the wounds of love, borne for us and our salvation. So let us live lives which proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.

A thought for the day

'We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. This is what built our culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. It is wrong it doesn't work. It is not gospel.'

from Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas - Daily Meditations for Advent, Cincinatti, 2008, p. 31

If only bishops and others could realize this is what they try to do to the church

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

‘Not in strife and envying: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ’

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but at any time of year and especially now with the dark mornings, I can be somewhat reluctant to leave my bed. It’s nice, it’s warm, and it’s comfortable. So when I hear the words ‘now it is high time to awake out of sleep’ I want to reach for the snooze button. It is sad to say that for many people their spiritual lives can be a bit like this: it’s a bit too much effort, can we really be bothered? But this is what we need to do: Advent is after all a season of preparation, of turning away from the world and sin, and preparing to meet the Son of God, who is born in Bethlehem and who will come to be our judge. We may not be able to recognise the signs, we may not know when it is going to happen, but as we have celebrated the Universal Kingship of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we know that he will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead. He fulfils prophesies but also proclaims the kingdom in word and deed and overthrows the tables in the temple. This doesn’t mean that the Cathedral Gift Shop is an abomination, but rather that the Church needs to be vigilant. When a house of prayer becomes a den of thieves the interests of the world have taken over; when the Church is conformed to the ways of the world, when it seeks the world’s approval or bows to its will, it sells the Gospel short and for that it too will be judged and found wanting.

        The only solution is to be found in Christ. It is he whom the church must put on, his is the standard by which we will be judged. Note also that love is the fulfilling of the law. The law is not abolished in Christ, but rather it is fulfilled, its meaning is deepened. It is through the framework of the Law and the Prophets that we can hope to understand who and what Christ is and what he does. It is our frame of reference; truth is revealed in and as the Word of God. So we are called to ‘cast off the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light’ we are to turn away from sin, from the ways of the world and walk in the way of him who is the Light of the World. We are to watch and pray, and to live lives which proclaim the truth of God’s saving love in Christ. We are to treat our lives on this earth as a preparation for the life to come, not because we can earn salvation through our works, but because in living Christ-like lives we conform ourselves to the will of God, we show the world how we love and serve God, our lives have true meaning, and we truly flourish as human beings.

        So let us lose our lives in order that we may truly find them in Christ, let us live out our baptism when we are clothed with Christ. Let us be fed with him, in Word and Sacrament, turning away from our sins, and looking to him to heal us and restore us, to prepare us to be with him forever, contemplating the vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.