11 November, Feast of Saint Martin: the only reason to look down on someone

Shared from Bishop Erik Varden’s blog, Coram Fratribus, 16 September 2023

I was on my way home last night, when a man approached me on the tram and told me: ‘Religion is psychiatric illness!’

To go around proclaiming that contemporaries, for whom the question of the divine seems irrelevant, are missing out on something is unlikely to engage them. Furthermore, it plays into an attitude of condescension which the Holy Father often condemns. In Lisbon he reminded us: ‘the only valid reason I have for looking down on someone is if I am helping him or her up’. Christian evangelisation, today as in antiquity, must testify to a superabundance of life, to a plus ultra. This something is not of human making. It must stem from an encounter with God through the Church that results in a transformed life. Ultimately, the only thing that will truly impact on our self-sufficient world is the testimony of sanctity (Cf. Notebook of 11 October 2022).

The illustration is El Greco’s Saint Martin and the Beggar (1597/99).

Martin, an army officer, cut in half and shared his cloak with a street beggar, who turned out to be a manifestation of Jesus, who called Martin to follow Him. Martin was to become Bishop of Tours and is a patron saint of France. He looked down on the beggar to help him up; the beggar helped him up to fulfil his vocation Let’s pray this remembrance tide that nations will strive, not for power, but to help each other up.

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8 April, Holy Saturday: Let the children come to me.

MMB photo

And they brought unto him also infants, that he might touch them. Which when the disciples saw, they rebuked them. But Jesus, calling them together, said: Suffer children to come to me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God. Amen, I say to you: Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom   of God as a child, shall not enter into it.

Luke 18:15-17.

I am used to rather sentimental pictures of this Gospel story, a stained glass Jesus who looks like a film star, perfectly trimmed beard, freshly shampooed blond hair, flowing, pristine robe … Not what we see here.

But I cast my mind back and thought of the children making the Way of the Cross with me in St Thomas’ church, Canterbury. Spontaneously a group of them gathered around the life size Mary and Jesus in the Pieta. wanting to stroke, console and condole with the Sorrowful Mother.

There was no disrespect in this, and mercifully, no-one present took offence. Yet I could imagine the tut-tuts that might have been uttered another time. No doubt the little ones who met Jesus in the flesh wanted to touch him and climb all over him, and it’s not difficult to envisage the disciples trying to pull them away. But ‘of such is the kingdom of God.’ I think it is fair to let this phrase suggest that Jesus felt himself within the kingdom when the children were swarming over him.

Pope Francis gave his customary press conference on  the plane returning from World Youth Days in Panama.

At the end of the conference the Pope thanked reporters for their work, and left them with a final thought about Panama: “I would like to say one thing about Panama: I felt a new sentiment, this word came to me: Panama is a noble nation. I found nobility.

“And then”, he concluded, “I would like to mention something else, which we in Europe do not see and which I saw here in Panama. I saw the parents raising their children and saying: this is my victory, this is my pride, this is my future. In the demographic winter that we are living in Europe – and in Italy it is below zero – it must make us think. What is my pride? Tourism, holidays, the villa, the dog? Or the child?”

Speaking for myself, I am proud of my children, and my grandchildren, though (or even because) they are all very different. But it would not be a healthy pride if they needed to win my approval rather than doing right, and following their own vocation rather than one laid down by their parents. I can say of my family – with those Panamanian parents – this is my victory, this is my pride, this is my future. Though I trust I will not be too much of a burden to any of them when I’m definitely doddering!

Meanwhile, in the Northern Hemisphere, we can see our gardens telling the story of new life, a clue to what, in God’s mercy, awaits us in our eternal life, with the One whose Mother is embracing him here.

30 March: An interesting experience at Lichfield Cathedral

Lichfield Cathedral is welcoming local people and visitors once more. Its website offers a range of attractions and experiences as well as the regular and seasonal services which are the very reason for its existence. We like the look of this library tour; 35 spiral steps will set you up for the calm of the library. There are activities for children during school holidays.

Library Tours

Climb the spiral staircase to see one of the Cathedral’s best loved treasures, the Library, for yourself and explore some of our fascinating collection.

In 2023 we investigate ‘Journeys and Exploration’, a chance to discover how our understanding of the world and local area has changed through the centuries.

Take a journey from Staffordshire around the globe, delve into beautifully illustrated map-books and charts, and uncover insights from James Cook’s voyages.

Each tour lasts around 1. 5 hours

Daytime tours Tours – Starting at 10:30

Saturday 11 March Saturday 22 April Saturday 27 May Saturday 17 June

Saturday 29 July Saturday 12 August Saturday 16 September Saturday 21 October

Candlelit tours – starting at 19:30

Friday 10 March Friday 26 May Friday 16 June

Friday 28 July Friday 11 August Friday 15 September

This atmospheric tour takes place in the evening under LED candlelight. 

Tickets £18

Click here to book

PLEASE NOTE: You must be able to climb 35 spiral steps to take part in this tour.

The synodal and missionary Church presses on.

More news from the African Synodal Assembly.

PRESS RELEASE N.3 This Synod Assembly is over, but the synodal and missionary Church is moving forward!  After a morning dedicated to the practice of spiritual conversation in working groups on the draft Final Document that will be sent to the General Secretariat of the Synod by 31 March, this afternoon the participants gathered in plenary assembly to share the fruits of the morning’s work. Much of the afternoon was devoted to perfecting the final document with corrections and amendments. It was an arduous but true collegial work where everyone was able to express their opinion. The assembly managed to approve a set of priorities that it intends to offer as Africa Synod document to the universal Church for the work of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The ad hoc group of experts who, since the seminaries in Accra and Nairobi, have been working on the Addis Ababa Synodal Assembly document, will continue to refine the document according to the indications received from the Assembly before sending it to the General Secretariat of the Synod.   In their closing remarks cardinal Berhaneyesus Souraphiel, who hosted the meeting, said “We are all Africans, so let us be free to move anywhere, to journey together, especially our youth who aspire to go to go Arab region of Africa and South Africa in search of greener pastures. SECAM can not only be the voice of Africa but also the point of reference”.   Bishop Lucio Muandula, first vice-president of Secam, quoted psalm 133 “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes” to express his satisfaction and reminded how “Journeying together gives us the strength to overcome any problems and challenges.”   Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, General Rapporteur of the 16th General Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of the Bishops, expressed his joy and satisfaction on the work of the assembly. “I would like to thank God and all of you for this wonderful time of listening, of listening with empathy. In all continental assemblies I have found a catholic way of journeying together, of synodality through the spiritual conversation where sisters or brothers are a place where the Holy Spirit speaks to us and where we are all called to conversion in order to serve the world”. And referring particularly to the last session, he stated “I must say that I admire you for the passion you put in this last debate. It shows that the Church in Africa is living and that God’s Spirit is living in you”.   Then, the President of Secam, cardinal Fridolin Ambongo closed officially the meeting saying “We have come to the end of this historic Continental Plenary Assembly of the Synod on Synodality. […] These days we have been together at this Synod Assembly were not only a moment to talk about synodality, but a moment of experiencing synodality. We truly felt like a family, the family of God in Africa and the Islands that walks together, sharing joy and sorrows of our time. Focusing on the exercise of listening, cardinal Ambongo recognized that “listening to each other and to the Holy Spirit, helped us to reach consensus in dealing with the delicate themes that the Church is living today on the continent and the Islands, and to identify the priorities of the Church in Africa. This Syond Assembly is over, but the synodal and missionary Church is moving forward!” The President of Secam then concluded that “Renewed through the celebration of this continental synodal assembly, the Church in Africa and Islands commits to move on, especially by deepening the sense of being a Church-family, making it a place of mutual listening and listening to the Holy Spirit, a place of communion, forgiveness and reconciliation. Renewed by the celebration of this synodal assembly, the Church in Africa commits to enlarge the tent of inclusion by following the Gospel principle of conversation as the criteria”.

29 December: Small acts of kindness by Father Peter.

Chicken by Abel, 7.

Father Peter shared this story in Missio magazine, Autumn 2022.

I was driving slowly in the countryside on one of Kenya’s dusty, gravelly roads.

Just ahead of me I saw a young girl walking by the side of the road carrying a chicken. As I drove past, the chicken jumped out of her hands and flew into the side of my car and was killed.

I stopped the car, got out, and apologised to the girl – although it was not my fault. The poor girl was distraught, looking down at her dead chicken lying on the road which would now not lay any eggs for the family.

Seeing her distress, I gave her 10 shillings. Her eyes lit up and a smile crossed her face. With that money she could go back to the market and buy not just one but two egg-laying chickens! Not only that, but she could also take the dead chicken home and she and her family could have a tasty meal.
Best of all – she would not face the wrath of her parents!

To live a Christ-like life, one does not need to perform heroic acts of self–sacrifice! Small everyday acts of kindness, compassion and caring can turn sadness into joy and make us channels of God’s love.

FATHER PETER
You can write to Fr Peter at:
41 Victoria Road, Formby,
Liverpool L37 1LW

Mission Today Autumn 2022 published bu Missio -England and Wales
Build a vibrant Catholic Church for the future


FATHER PETER
You can write to Fr Peter at:
41 Victoria Road, Formby,
Liverpool L37 1LW

More about Fr Tom Herbst’s funeral rites.

For Father Tom, the dividing wall is broken down!

We can now share more details of Fr Tom’s funeral arrangements, thanks to the indefatigable Rob Meredith.

Just to confirm, Fr Tom will be brought into church on Friday 25th at 18.00, Helen has kindly agreed to play some music. The Mass will be at 12.00 on 26th to be followed by the celebration of Tom’s life. It will be held in the Kentish barn in Canterbury Cathedral lodge directly after the service, about an 8 minute walk. There will be a condolence book in church. Please feel free to put your thoughts down, we will send this to the mission in San Luis Re afterwards. Finally, regarding flowers. Fr Ton asked that donations in lieu of flowers be sent to Oxfam.

The Mass will be live streamed. Follow this link: https://stthomasofcanterbury.com/livestream/

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Later, in California:

A funeral Mass will be celebrated for Fr Tom by the Provincial on Saturday December 3rd at 10.30 a.m. at Old Mission San Luis Re, 4050 Mission Avenue, Oceanside CA. His ashes will be inurned with his family at San Luis Re Cemetery following the Mass. A reception will be held at the San Luis Re Pavilion after the inurnment.

Here is another reflection by Fr Tom in Agnellus Mirror. This one comes from Pentecost, 15 May, 2016. You can find more at Agnellusmirror.wordpress.com then search for Herbst. But read and enjoy this one!

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Many years ago, in my hometown, I had a powerful experience while riding on a bus. I don’t know why I was taking the bus that day, as at that time I drove a motorcycle, nor do I recall where I was going…but, really, all of that is beside the point. The experience I had, while staring aimlessly out the window, remains fresh in my memory, even decades later.

Now, please, don’t misunderstand what I am about to write – as if it were a claim to some privileged mystical experience. Rather, it came in the form of a daydream; a sparkling thought, caught up with an image, all in an instant…that made me blink then smile and begin the first of many re-plays. What occurred was a kind of visualisation that I have come to call the ‘breakthrough’; a great, shattering, re-arranging, expansive, irresistible, all-encompassing force pulsing through a billion shards of what seemed like brightly coloured stained glass, all rushing forward and constantly re-configured in near-endless patterns of dazzling complexity and creative expression. It was also immediately apparent that the thrusting force was purposeful, even rational, and, above all…exuberant.

I reckoned right away that it must have been a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

Over the years I have remembered and cherished that image, tried (with varying degrees of success) to represent it in art, and have also discerned it in some others’ experience as well. As I have done so, many different dynamic aspects of the fundamental breakthrough have emerged. The first is scriptural and that is of a Triune God on the move; nearly peripatetic, even mendicant. This has always been obvious in terms of the Second Person of the Trinity, first in terms of the explosive creative agency of the Word and then through the itinerant ministry of the Incarnate Word; preaching and working miracles on the many byroads of Palestine- the foxes have holes and the birds build nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. But what of the other Trinitarian Persons? The Holy Spirit blows like the wind, wherever he wills, defying all of our attempts to place God within perceptible perimeters or even (God forbid!) a box. He also dances and flickers like tongues of flame; dead, static religion has no place in that raucous Kingdom. What of the Father? Moving, always moving with his desert people in the great covenantal Ark; a mendicant God for a pilgrim people, sparkling with the guiding light of shekinah even in the dark nights of weakness and despair.

And like Siva in a very different religious tradition, that Spirit of wind and fire, ever moving – siempre adelante – can unmake as well as make. But God being God is necessarily all in all and utterly good. When Love unmakes it is only to pave the way for the exhilaration of renewed freedom. Thus, St. Paul in Ephesians 2:14, For he himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall… I have seen many a wall tumble and, when it is the work of Christ attested by the Holy Spirit, people invariably look up, rubbing weary eyes in wonder at undreamed of promise…fulfilled.

TJH

5 November: Not the forgetting, but the pain.

Boats at Beccles, England, wikicommons.

We offer this reflection from Tagore as a contrast to Frank Thompson’s poem of two days ago. He urged his beloved to forget him, Tagore insists on the sweet sorrow of parting, as a foretaste of death: parting and death do hurt, they cut through the false pride that Thompson accused himself of.

War always brings parting and death, realities that Romantics like Thompson and Brooke minimised, at least before seeing combat.

ON BOARD A CANAL STEAMER GOING TO CUTTACK, August 1891

The quiet floating away of a boat on the stream seems to add to the pathos of a separation—it is so like death—the departing one lost to sight, those left behind returning to their daily life, wiping their eyes. True, the pang lasts but a while, and is perhaps already wearing off both in those who have gone and those who remain,—pain being temporary, oblivion permanent.

But none the less it is not the forgetting, but the pain which is true; and every now and then, in separation or in death, we realise how terribly true.

Glimpses of Bengal Selected from the Letters of Sir Rabindranath Tagore.

21 October: the Pilgrim comes home.

Rolling Hills of Iowa by Bill Whitakker

Bill Bryson spent many years living in England, so many that he felt the call to reconnect with his native America, a call he answered by driving across 38 states out of 50. He visited the two Oceans, the mountains, prairies and deserts, until he crossed the border into his home state. A book worth looking out for, an interesting insight into America in its many guises.

It was wonderful to be back to the Midwest, the rolling hills and rich black earth … I passed back into Iowa. As if on cue, the sun emerged from the clouds. A swift band of golden light swept over the fields and made everything instantly warm and springlike. Every farm looked tidy and fruitful. Every little farm looked clean and friendly. I drove on spellbound, unable to get over how striking the landscape was. There was nothing much to it, just rolling fields, but every colour was deep and vivid: the blue sky, the white clouds, the red barns, the chocolate fields. I felt as if I had never seen it before. I had no idea Iowa could be so beautiful.*

Marie Curie said that the present moment is a state of grace, and so it proved for Bill Bryson when the sun came out. But all those moments he documented when his pilgrimage took him through inhospitable landscapes and inhospitable towns, motels and diners, they too were moments of grace – at least when seen in hindsight.

This pilgrim’s progress brought him home. May we be grateful for our holidays and thankful to be able to come home among family and friends. And may we all meet merrily in heaven when our journey is done.

• Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent, Travels in Small Town America, New York, HarperCollins, 1989.

11 October, Little Flowers XCVIII: sing as you die.

Once again the friars are at a loss what to make of Francis in the face of his suffering and imminent death. Not everyone sings songs of praise on their deathbed, but we might if we were assured of eternal life within a few days. Firstly, a few words about another witness to the stigmata; we will meet Madonna Jacopa again later.

Madonna Jacopa di Settensoli of Rome, who was the greatest lady of her time in Rome and was most devoted to Saint Francis, saw them before he died, and, after his death, saw and kissed them many times with great reverence; for she came from Rome to Assisi, by Divine revelation, to the death-bed of Saint Francis; and her coming was after this manner. 

For some days before his death, Saint Francis lay sick at Assisi in the palace of the Bishop, with some of his companions; and, notwithstanding his sickness, he often sang certain lauds of Christ. One day, one of his companions said unto him: “Father, thou knowest that these citizens have great faith in thee, and hold thee for a saintly man, and therefore they may think that, if thou art that which that they believe thee to be, thou shouldest, in this thine infirmity, think upon thy death, and rather weep than sing, in that thou art so exceeding sick; and know that thy singing and ours, which thou makest us to sing, is heard of many, both within and without the palace; for this palace is guarded on thy account by many armed men, who perchance may take bad ensample therefrom. Wherefore I believe (said this friar) that thou wouldest do well to depart hence, and that we should all of us return to Santa Maria degli Angeli; for this is no place for us, among seculars.” 

Saint Francis answered him: “Dearest friar, thou knowest that two years ago, when we abode at Foligno, God revealed unto thee the term of my life; and in like manner also He revealed unto me that, a few days hence, the said term shall end, in this sickness; and in that revelation God made me certain of the remission of all my sins, and of the bliss of paradise. 

“Until I had that revelation I bewailed death and my sins; but, since I have had that revelation, I am so full of gladness that I can weep no more; and therefore do I sing, yea, and will sing unto God, who hath given me the blessing of His grace and hath made me sure of the blessings of the glory of paradise. As touching our departure hence, I consent thereunto and it pleaseth me; but do ye find means to carry me, because, by reason of mine infirmity, I cannot walk.” 

8 October: Little Flowers XCV

Santa Maria degli Angeli was, of course, not the great basilica that greets the pilgrim today, but a little chapel.

Francis and his companions continued their journey and came to Santa Maria degli Angeli; and, when they were nigh thereunto, Friar Leo lifted up his eyes and looked toward the said Place of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and saw an exceeding beautiful Cross, whereon was the figure of the Crucified, going before Saint Francis, even as Saint Francis was going before Him; and on such wise did the said Cross go before the face of Saint Francis that when he stopped it stopped too, and when he went on it went on; and that Cross was of such brightness that, not only did it shine in the face of Saint Francis, but all the road about him also was lighted up; and it lasted until Saint Francis entered into the Place of Santa Maria degli Angeli. 

Saint Francis, then, having arrived with Friar Leo, they were welcomed by the friars with very great joy and charity. And from thenceforward, until his death, Saint Francis dwelt for the greater part of his time in that Place of Santa Maria degli Angeli. And the fame of his sanctity and of his miracles spread continually more and more through the Order and through the world, although, by reason of his profound humility, he concealed as much as he might the gifts and graces of God, and ever called himself the greatest of sinners.