19 May: Pentecost

This window is in Saint Aloysius’ church, near Euston station in London. If you are passing around Mass time you can drop in and see the windows and also the street outside. The Church is not separate from the city!

Looking at the gathering, there are twelve tongues of fire above the disciples and Mary when there were actually about 120 people in the Upper Room, including, surely, the women who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday – the two Marys, Salome and Johannah.

We can add to that number the passers-by who are also part of the picture. If this was our parish we would probably know a few of them by name!

There are people from all over the world in London today as there were two thousand years ago in Jerusalem. Let us pray that the fire of God’s love will be kindled in each one of them so that peace will reign in all hearts and communities in the city.

2 May, Consider. Creation 2024, VII.

Consider by Christina Rossetti

Consider 
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:—
We are as they; 
Like them we fade away, 
As doth a leaf. 

Consider 
The sparrows of the air of small account: 
Our God doth view 
Whether they fall or mount,— 
He guards us too. 

Consider 
The lilies that do neither spin nor toil, 
Yet are most fair:— 
What profits all this care 
And all this coil? 

Consider 
The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks; 
God gives them food:— 
Much more our Father seeks 
To do us good.

This poem is full of trust! Let us take confidence from the Easter event and rejoice in the care Our Father has for us, in time and eternity. Let us spread that joy, day by day.

27 April: Become more like Him.

Make use of this Holy Easter Season, which lasts forty to fifty days, to become more like Him who died for you, and who now liveth for evermore.

He promises us, “Because I live, ye shall live also.” He, by dying on the Cross, opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. He first died, and then He opened heaven. We, therefore, first commemorate His death, and then, for some weeks in succession, we commemorate and show forth the joys of heaven. They who do not rejoice in the weeks after Easter, would not rejoice in heaven itself. These weeks are a sort of beginning of heaven.

Pray God to enable you to rejoice; to enable you to keep the Feast duly. Pray God to make you better Christians. Come to God, and beg of Him grace to devote yourselves to Him. Beg of Him the will to follow Him; beg of Him the power to obey Him.

This world is a dream,—you will get no good from it. Perhaps you find this difficult to believe; but be sure so it is. Depend upon it, at the last, you will confess it. Young people expect good from the world, and people of middle age devote themselves to it, and even old people do not like to give it up. But the world is your enemy, and the flesh is your enemy.

O how comfortable, pleasant, sweet, soothing, and satisfying is it to lead a holy life,—the life of Angels! It is difficult at first; but with God’s grace, all things are possible. O how pleasant to have done with sin!

From Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) by John Henry Newman.

The splendid Processional Cross, Saint Edmundsbury Cathedral, pointing the way to heaven, which for Edmund was through death by being shot with arrows. 

24 April: Darkness cannot overcome

Christ yesterday and today,
the beginning and the end,
Alpha and Omega,
all time belongs to him,
and all ages.

Paschal Candles at Canterbury Cathedral.

My health did not allow me to attend the Easter Vigil in person this year so I tuned into the live stream from Saint Thomas’ in Canterbury. Once everyone present had gone outside to bless the Easter fire and Paschal Candle the church was plunged into darkness. My screen showed a single dark grey stripe in an otherwise pitch black church. Light from the street perhaps produced the slightly paler stripe.

Be that as it may, I was in the dark, and only caught the occasional phrase of the blessing: ‘by his holy and glorious wounds’. But the words are familiar from years of being there; I knew what was being said, sung and done.

Light came in, radiating from the Paschal Candle, carried by Father Giovanni. Away from the resplendent flame, it reached into the corners of the Church but gave a silver-grey monotone to everything. Despite the shadows, the altar flowers glowed white.

Finally, when all were gathered into the building, candles were lit all around, and colours returned to everything, and Father Giovanni was able to sing the Exsultet, with its words, ‘

Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,
ablaze with light from her eternal King,
let all corners of the earth be glad,
knowing an end to gloom and darkness …

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering,
the work of bees and of your servants’ hands,
an evening sacrifice of praise,
this gift from your most holy Church.

And the candle is a reminder that light in every corner, in full, glorious colour, is a gift from God to us; and that we should be glad in our heart of hearts, despite all the evil that seems to have our world in its sights.

21 April: Good Shepherd Sunday

Saint Maximus reflects on Jesus’ parable of the Good Shepherd. He did not only set out to find the lost one, but he brought it back on his own shoulders and set it down securely with the rest of the flock.

  * So too, when he found wandering in the mountains and hills the one sheep that had strayed from God’s flock of a hundred, he brought it back to the fold, but he did not exhaust it by driving it ahead of him. Instead, he placed it on his own shoulders and so, compassionately, he restored it safely to the flock.

Let’s pray that, as the Good Shepherd welcomes us, so may we welcome each other within our parish communities.

*From a letter by Saint Maximus the Confessor, abbot, Office of Readings, 13/03/2024.

9 April: Easter is a master key.

A grain field in Ukraine.

Bishop Erik Varden is reflecting on Jesus’ saying, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of white fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ (John 12: 20-35) The whole of his homily can be found here.

If we live lovingly, in a love that alacritously gives all, we can with confidence die lovingly. ‘Love shall never pass’ (1 Corinthians 13.8). It bears life eternal. Even when it thrusts us into darkness, it mystically points towards elevation and light. The Easter mystery provides us with a master-key to human existence. Let us remember to use it where life seems locked, where death by way of illusion appears to have the last word. Amen.

Quæsumus, Domine Deus noster, ut in illa caritate, qua Filius tuus diligens mundum morti se tradidit, inveniamur ipsi, te opitulante, alacriter ambulantes. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum.

7 April, Easter and Jeremiah XXXIV: My New Covenant with you.

The promises made through the words of Jeremiah are fulfilled in Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection, so let’s return to the prophet to see Easter in the context of Salvation History.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Our covenant should be with God but translated into our earthly daily life: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. If God’s law is written in our hearts, that is how we will act. If only, you say. More likely we will be trying to teach our neighbour, teach our siblings, teach our grandmother even.

We can do better than that with the New Covenant in our hearts. Let us allow ourselves to be transformed, as Mary Magdalene was on that first Easter morning in the garden. Let us look on each other as forgiven sinners, every man and woman of us, every one of us saved.

( Jeremiah 31:31-34)

6 April: Welcome to our church.

It was Easter, but Saint Michael’s church, Harbledown, was closed, the would-be worshippers locked out. Easter was not forgotten though.

This shrine had the crosses of Christ and the thieves, backlit by sunset – this day you will be with me in Paradise! There is a sketch of the water of Baptism, evergreen leaves, a symbol of eternity, and the faithful cross above all, crowned with white flowers:

Faithful cross, above all other,
One and only noble tree:
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peer may be.
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron,
Sweetest weight is hung on thee!

We can worship in peace in Kent this year; Saint Michael’s will be open, all made welcome. Thank God for bringing us through the pandemic, and may he gather in all who have died in the covid outbreak. Let us remember, too, the many who are still becoming infected with the disease and perhaps finding recovery difficult. Lord hear our prayer!

To hear King’s College choir sing a setting of this hymn, click here.

5 April: Praying with Pope Francis, For the role of Women.

We pray for the dignity and worth of women
to be recognised in every culture,
and for an end to the discrimination they face
in various parts of the world.

This pot is part of our Easter Garden at Saint Mildred’s in Canterbury. It represents Mary Magdalene who had walked with Jesus through the Holy Land, who had supported him with her own money, who had stood by the Cross as he died, who came to anoint his body on Easter morning, who met him risen in the garden.

Mary Magdalene helped to make Jesus’ mission possible, and brought her practical skills to the fellowship of the disciples. Today, let us discern and recognise the many ways in which women build up the Church and give thanks for them. Let us celebrate their gifts and graces. Let us enable and encourage them to take on roles new to women in the Church.

2 April: A real Easter?

A Question for today: Do we believe that Easter is real? Put it another way: what does it mean? Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof Communities, explored this:

One thing is clear to us: as the church, we must hold to Jesus. Everything depends on this, that we place the Jesus of the four Gospels, the son of Mary, the man who was executed under Pontius Pilate, in the center of our faith and our life, and keep to him. This Jesus has become unknown. His words have been distorted and disfigured, his work weakened. All the more, we must rediscover this Jesus and hold him up before all the world.

Our life together in the church must be oriented by nothing else but by Jesus’ life, his word, and his working. Our commission is to bear the love of Christ, which is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This love, free of the unclarity of human thinking and feeling, was manifested perfectly and unmistakably in the life Jesus lived. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, his life was sealed as the revelation of God’s heart (John 6:27). The Holy Spirit, when it descended on the first church in Jerusalem, made this sealing of Jesus’ life known to the church so that it might follow Jesus and carry his life back into the world.

Perhaps the angel is free from the unclarity of human thinking! Let us make room for the Holy Spirit who found his way into the Church when they were gathered together in fellowship and prayer, seven weeks on from the events of Easter.

Arnold, Eberhard, The Jesus of the Four Gospels, 2019, Bruderhof Historical Archive, Walden, NY, USA