Pentecost: This Gift of Love

Canterbury cathedral’s collected Paschal Candles: this year’s special Easter candles will be lit in churches today, the Church’s Birthday.

Reflections from Fr Anthony Charlton of St Thomas’, Canterbury.

In my previous parishes, on this feast of Pentecost the children released helium-filled red balloons, at the end of Mass, to celebrate the great feast. The feast is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the church, hence the balloons. Pentecost ushers in the age of the Church. Now Jesus lives and acts in, and with, the Church.

We are not merely remembering a past event, when those in the Upper Room were transformed and changed. For us, the Holy Spirit is not just a help for the mission of the church. He is salvation; he is life itself. We celebrate today that we are all filled with that Spirit — just as Mary, the women and the apostles were transformed.

Today we celebrate the gift that is given to all of us, this gift of love. We are all immersed in the ‘ocean of the Father’s love’, Cardinal Ranerio Cantalamassa wrote. ‘They discovered for the first time what the love of the Father was, this love that Jesus spoke to them about for so long and in vain. They discovered the tenderness that is in the name Abba which they had heard their Master share about many times.’

A great Pentecost hymn is Come down O Love divine, seek thou this soul of mine.

Because of the gift of speech, all were able to understand the apostles. It was the reversal of Babel. At the building of the tower of Babel, the people said, ‘Let us make a name for ourselves.’ Their focus was on themselves and not on God. At Pentecost, instead everyone understood each other, because they had forgotten about themselves. There was unity, harmony and communication. The apostles did not want to make a name for themselves, but for God. They were no longer discussing among themselves who was the greatest.

We need in our prayer to put the accent on praise. We no longer want to live for ourselves but for the Lord. ‘Praise is what best helps us to decentralise and to recentralise on God.’ We need to rediscover this living Christ, whom only the Spirit can stir up in us. Let us rediscover this personal experience of Jesus — who died and was raised for me.

We need to have the same burning experience that Paul had on the road to Damascus, when he asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ (Acts 9:5). From that moment on, Paul considered everything as worthless, so that he might gain Christ.

At this time some of the people of the parish are joining with others, throughout the Diocese, participating in the Life in the Spirit seminars. It is a seven-week course of renewal, and yesterday they went to St George’s Cathedral, for a day when they asked for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, sometimes referred to as ‘Baptism in the Holy Spirit’.

Let us all pray on this Pentecost Sunday:

Lord Jesus I open my heart to the Holy Spirit so that I may rediscover and proclaim you as Lord.

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14 April: A Spring Moment with Sheila Billingsley

‘A Spring Moment’ was found among her papers when Sheila died. A sacred picture for Easter.

“The dandelion is happy,” 

Ben said,

Thrusting a bruised and crumpled stem:

“For you.”

The white bird wheeled through the blossoming trees,

And dandelions carpeted the field.

“I can’t believe it!”

Swift feet through the flowers,

Swift bird through the Spring sky,

Swift feet through a third Spring.

Spring 1986

Diggle Fields

9 March: On this day: our inner peacock.

From a letter by Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, March 9th, 1822.

One of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a child—when my kind old aunt had strained her pocketstrings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts—a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught-charity I gave away the cake to him.

I walked on a little in all the pride of an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt’s kindness crossed me—the sum it was to her—the pleasure she had a right to expect that I—not the old impostor —should take in eating her cake—the cursed ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose.

I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like—and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.

From The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842.

Well! It’s not hard to sympathise with young Charles Lamb’s examination of conscience, etched in his heart forever with a child’s simple honesty. Of course our inner peacock can be as well camouflaged from ourselves as this one, almost part of the shadows and dappled light, under the leaves of the overhanging tree. Where and when have I been a hypocrite lately?

24 February: The Open-handed Missionary II

Pope Francis opens the Year of Mercy in the Central African Republic.

Cast your mind back to yesterday’s post, or scroll back to it, then ask yourself what dies a brave little girl have to tell us about every Christian being a missionary? We concede that the professional missionary ad gentes may risk her or his life, prepared to die for the faith but also to live for it, or better, to live it. Yet Pope Francis reminds us that it is not just the professionals; every Christian is called:

120. In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelisation, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelisation to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients… Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelisation; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love.

But we must go deeper even than that. Johannes Metz reminds us that the mission to go out and proclaim God’s saving love is not an add-on to our basic humanity, an optional extra for the Christian; rather it is an intrinsic part of being human, or as he puts it, of becoming human:

Becoming human … is a mandate and a mission, a command and a decision … freedom reveals itself at work when we accept and approve with all our heart the being that is committed to us, when we make it so much our own that it seems to be our idea from the first … the free process of becoming a human being unfolds as a process of service.

Metz refers us to John 8:32 – the truth will set you free – a truth we discover through service, obedient to God’s command; a service unto death, even death on a Cross, as we read in Philippians 2:8. Becoming human is a process of service: the little girl risking her life, shows how serving others, even in the form of a doll, is intrinsic to being human. And yet the little girl is totally dependent upon her parents as we are on God’s grace.

6 February: Benedict Angelus III.

Broadstairs Baptist Church, England.

There is a tradition for the Pope to greet pilgrims at Angelus time, around midday, and share a few thoughts, often on the readings for the day. We are glad to offer a selection from Pope Benedict XVI’s reflections, aimed at a general audience rather than academic theologians. Sometimes there are interesting asides addressed to particular groups of pilgrims, showing Benedict’s human side. This audience took place at the Courtyard of the Papal Residence, Castel Gandolfo, Sunday, 29 August 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In this Sunday’s Gospel (Lk 14: 1, 7-14), we find Jesus as a guest dining at the house of a Pharisee leader. Noting that the guests were choosing the best places at table, he recounted a parable in the setting of a marriage feast. “When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honour, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both will come, and say to you, “Give place to this man’…. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place” (Lk 14: 8-10). The Lord does not intend to give a lesson on etiquette or on the hierarchy of the different authorities. Rather, he insists on a crucial point, that of humility: “Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 14: 11). A deeper meaning of this parable also makes us think of the position of the human being in relation to God. The “lowest place” can in fact represent the condition of humanity degraded by sin, a condition from which the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten Son alone can raise it. For this reason Christ himself “took the lowest place in the world the Cross and by this radical humility he redeemed us and constantly comes to our aid” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, n. 35).

At the end of the parable Jesus suggests to the Pharisee leader that he invite to his table not his friends, kinsmen or rich neighbours, but rather poorer and more marginalized people who can in no way reciprocate (cf. Lk 14: 13-14), so that the gift may be given freely. The true reward, in fact, will ultimately be given by God, “who governs the world…. We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, n. 35). Once again, therefore, let us look to Christ as a model of humility and of giving freely: let us learn from him patience in temptation, meekness in offence, obedience to God in suffering, in the hope that the One who has invited us will say to us: “Friend, go up higher” (cf. Lk 14: 10). Indeed, the true good is being close to him. St Louis IX, King of France whose Memorial was last Wednesday put into practice what is written in the Book of Sirach: “The greater you are, the more you must humble yourself; so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord” (3: 18). This is what the King wrote in his “Spiritual Testament to his son”: “If the Lord grant you some prosperity, not only must you humbly thank him but take care not to become worse by boasting or in any other way, make sure, that is, that you do not come into conflict with God or offend him with his own gifts” (cf. Acta Sanctorum Augusti 5 [1868], 546).

31 October: O Holy Christ.

Memorial to fishermen lost at sea, Mallaig.

This prayer from Alistair Maclean’s ‘Hebridean Altars’ seems the right introduction to November, when we remember all who have died and been guided over the ford to Heaven. Consider, if you will, the phrase, ‘When I shall make an end of living’. Maybe we should do that each night before sleep: ‘The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen’

O Holy Christ,
bless me with Thy presence
when my days are weary 
and my friends few.
Bless me with Thy presence
when my joy is full,
lest I forget the Giver in the gift.
Bless me with Thy presence
when I shall make an end of living.
Help me in the darkness to find the ford.
And in my going
comfort me with Thy promise
that where Thou art,
There shall Thy servant be.

25 October: A Holy Well

Harbledown’s Holy Well.

This year we have been challenged not to take water for granted. Long weeks with little or no rain dried up fields and gardens, while rivers’ flow diminished. In one lake nearby many fish died from lack of oxygen.

It was a relief to come to the back of the old Harbledown leper hospital near Canterbury the week before the drought broke and to find the spring flowing in the holy well.

Edward, the Black Prince and Prince of Wales would have been happy, too. He attributed a cure he received to taking the water. He was devoted to Canterbury and was buried in the cathedral in 1376. The well is sometimes called the Black Prince’s Well, sometimes St Thomas’s. This was the last spot to water horses before descending into the city; a chance for riders, too, to take a cold drink and for the hospital to beg for alms.

Notice the Prince of Wales’s feathers carved on the capstone of the arch, an older example of this emblem, more formal than the version on British 2p coins and instantly recognisable to passers-by. The stone appears to be balanced on top of the arch rather than holding all of it together. Perhaps this sign of royal favour was enough to spare the well under the Tudor monarchs’ vandalism.

Let us pray with Saint Francis:
Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

And let us remember how precious water is, and how impure it has become because we have despised its humility and taken it for granted.

1 September: Season of Creation.

Today marks the Day of Prayer for Creation, the start of the Season of Creation, an ecumenical time of prayer. These intercessions were shared by CAFOD, the overseas development arm of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. They sum up themes for the season, which ends on St Francis’s Day, 4th October.

Creationtide intercessions

We pray for the Church: that she may be a beacon of hope throughout the world, reminding us all of our responsibility to care for and protect God’s precious gift of creation. Lord, in your mercy…

We pray for the world, our common home: that through God’s grace we may hear its cry of the damage done and be moved to protect it for future generations to enjoy. Lord, in your mercy…

We pray for those people who are already facing droughts, floods and storms: that God may grant them strength and hope for the future as they work to adapt to the changing climate. Lord, in your mercy…

We pray for our parish and our local community: that through the grace of God we may hear the urgent cry of the earth and of the poor and be inspired to respond at this crucial time. Lord, in your mercy…

We pray for the world we live in: that God may open our eyes to recognise the goodness of all creation and help us to do what we can to restore and care for the wonderful gift that we have been given. Lord, in your mercy…

We pray for world leaders: that God may grant them wisdom to make just decisions which respect the earth and all that lives in it, especially those who are poorest and most vulnerable. Lord, in your mercy…

We pray for our local community: that through God’s grace we may be good neighbours to each other and to the whole of creation, restoring and caring for all that God has made. Lord, in your mercy…

More prayers on this theme

Prayers on the care of creation

Novena to St Francis

Rosary for the care of creation

19 April: No man is base

The Welsh Poet, Henry Vaughan, (d.1695) called himself a Silurist, claiming descent from a pre-Roman tribe that ruled his part of Wales. Yet he maintains that 'A noble offspring surely then without distinction are all men.' We are all of us Easter Children, children of God, each one of us nobly born. No room for racism, as Archbishop Wilson was saying yesterday; we must be children of hope, of one beginning, one birth, one resurrection.

All sorts of men, that live on Earth, 
Have one beginning and one birth. 
For all things there is one Father, 
Who lays out all, and all doth gather. 
He the warm sun with rays adorns, 
And fills with brightness the moon's horns. 
The azur'd heav'ns with stars He burnish'd, 
And the round world with creatures furnish'd. 
But men—made to inherit all— 
His own sons He was pleas'd to call, 
And that they might be so indeed, 
He gave them souls of divine seed. 
A noble offspring surely then 
Without distinction are all men. 
O, why so vainly do some boast 
Their birth and blood and a great host 
Of ancestors, whose coats and crests 
Are some rav'nous birds or beasts! 
If extraction they look for, 
And God, the great Progenitor, 
No man, though of the meanest state, 
Is base, or can degenerate, 
Unless, to vice and lewdness bent, 
He leaves and taints his true descent.

from Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist: Boethius, De Consolatione, Englished.

27 January: S/he shall enjoy everything.

Francis and the Spring which flowed to refresh a thirsty peasant who was helping him to travel.

Three extracts from Chesterton’s account of Saint Francis.

It is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said, “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.” It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.” It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero, from the dark nothingness of his own deserts, that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them; and they are in themselves the best working example of the idea. For there is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

But there is more than this involved, and more indeed than is easily to be expressed in words. It is not only true that the less a man thinks of himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of God. It is also true that he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they become more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them but less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant.

From “Saint Francis of Assisi: The Life and Times of St. Francis” by G. K. Chesterton.