Departing love

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Easter

How do you prepare yourself when a loved one leaves?

The pain of separation is one of the most acute stress factors that human beings can suffer. According to some sources, the most stressful things that a human being can undergo are the death of a loved one, childhood trauma, and divorce. Each is centred around and breeds from a loss of love. Yet, each one of us will suffer these sorts of stresses in our lifetime. It’s unavoidable.

Sometimes, it seems that Our Lord glosses over this sort of pain. We hear Him say to the Eleven Disciples, and us, “Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.”

Is it really that easy to rejoice, knowing that a loved one is going away to a better place? Is this not a bit of emotional blackmail on the part of the Lord Jesus? “If you really loved me, then you would rejoice…” Is that what He is saying?

[PAUSE]

The pain of separation is caused by nothing less than our love. It’s a pain that many people can’t truly face and so try to avoid it where possible. Some will try never to love but remain protected in a shell that keeps everyone at a distance. Others will fill their lives with distractions, turning from this fashion to that fashion so that they are not still enough for love to catch up with them. Others will numb themselves to the pain, even through things like drink and drugs. This is happening so much in the world around us.

The fact is that Love requires the greatest investment we can give, and yet it is only something that we can give as a gift. It’s never a bargaining tool. If we give love, then we can only give it freely in the knowledge that, in so doing, our hearts will be broken.

If this is the case then why does Our Lord tell us that if we love Him then we would rejoice because He goes back to the Father? Is that not like saying, “if you really loved me, you wouldn’t get that tattoo”?

[PAUSE]

The fact is that Our Lord does recognise that His departure will lead to our sorrow. “Now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But, because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.” Yet He must go so that He can bestow more love upon us, namely the gift of the presence of the Holy Ghost. It is through the Holy Ghost that God can be present to each and everyone who desires His presence. But that presence is unseen and His ways are unseen. If we love Him then we must trust Him because trusting someone is what we do as part of our love for them. We can rejoice in Our Lord’s impending departure because we know where He is going and, in Him, we have the hope that we will go there, too!

In Christ, there is pure Hope! - a certainty of our resurrection and the end of our pain. It can only come through Him and through no other means. No self-help book, no philosophy, no other religion can give us that certainty because it comes through realising Who Jesus is and entering into a relationship of love with Him.

Of course Love is hard – really hard. The pain it will cause each one of us is immense because it requires giving of ourselves at a level that we simply don’t believe we can afford. This is why many of us try to protect ourselves from it, or numb ourselves to its pain. In so doing, we lose the benefits of Hope and Faith that come with Love and are subject to it.

[PAUSE]

Love is the perfect gift that comes down to us from Heaven from the Father of lights. As Christians, we dare to receive that gift and the cross that comes with it. Do we receive the Hope that also comes? It is part of the package deal after all.

Missing Myth

Some people believe in the literal history of Genesis.

I think that's fine and not wholly unreasonable. They believe that God tells us the truth and that the Bible is His Word and therefore the events of Genesis are history.

This does mean that those who hold this viewpoint must reject the findings of our science and its conclusions. If this stance deepens their relationship with God and helps them love Him in spirit and in truth and in obedience to His command to love  then this can't be a bad thing. The point of fact is that no human can have complete knowledge of our origins. All we have to go on is evidence and reason from that evidence.

However, I must say that I believe the events of Genesis to be a Myth.

I might perceive a gasp of horror from some of my readers, especially those from a more Evangelical persuasion. I beg you to bear with me so that I might be allowed to explain myself.

 The modern way of thinking is that a myth is necessarily untrue, or just a story - something that doesn't need to be believed. This is because we tend now to use the word wrongly. We talk about the myth that dock leaves cure the wounds caused by stinging nettles, or the myth that women have smaller brains than men. These are untrue statements but they are definitely not myths.

Modern thinkers like to reject myth as not being an authority on what is true and therefore believe that we may have free reign to interpret it how we want. 

This is false.

"Myth" should not be a dirty word for a Christian who believes in the inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Our Lord's parables are stories and get to the point about what myths are for the Christian. 

We tend to have a narrow view of what counts as knowledge, these days. We view scientific truth as the only truth and thus discount the existence of God because He is unobservable. If there is truth of God's existence (and there is scientific evidence) then it must be by revelation from Him and therefore beyond the limited way we think.

Myth frees us from our obsession with understanding things without God's help. 

This is why I personally think that a purely literal interpretation of Genesis is far too narrow to be the truth. There is a lot that is revealed to us in Genesis without needing to ask when it happened or who wrote the text and with what intention. If we trust God then the Holy Scriptures that He has called His Church to compile for all Christians must be theologically true regardless of the modern tendency to subject the texts to various criticisms in order to find the truth.

Indeed, I am becoming more convinced that the modern way of Biblical Criticism tries to set modern thinking up above all thought that predates it. Modernity looks down its nose at the interpretations of fishermen, tent makers, carpenters, and first-century women with the same disdain as the Pharisees. Everything must be criticised according to the correct up-to-date critical theory before it can be judged to be true.

If the myth of Genesis tells me that God created men and women then I believe that, and from that I can believe that men and women are not interchangeable else the text would not make mention of the differentiation. From Genesis, I know that God created all that is. It doesn't say how, but I know that there are six different aspects of that creation. However, I cannot understand how a "day" can happen without the Sun nor a planet on which there is to be a day. I know from science that a day on Venus is longer than its year. How am I to understand this "day" if there is no reference to astronomy yet created. I can only understand it as an aspect of God Himself, of His engagement with Time from Eternity which boggles my tiny understanding.

There is always an accusation that the liberals make of Traditional Christians cherry-picking our myths or the interpretation of our common myths that the Bible contains and it is their attitude that denigrates the mythic nature of our Faith. We do not have to be ashamed of what we have received from the hands and mouths of our forebears. We should be proud of it. The liberal accusation not only stops there but also denigrates the Sacred Tradition of the Church Fathers as being morally inferior to the present age. They are judged as sexist but permitted to be because they were products of their time. Our time is clearly superior.

The question is in what system of values they make this judgement of superiority. Why is Now with its demythologising influence better than "Then" with the Myths and stories which God has given His Church for all time in order for it to explore the transcendent nature of Reality inaccessible to Science and Rationalism? Who gets to make that decision?

My Evangelical friends may still criticise me for believing in God and the Big Bang and Darwinism. However, I hope that they appreciate that I, too, hold to the inerrancy if Holy Scripture as a means of knowing God and His relationship with Humanity, of knowing His pleasure and thus the necessity for us to live lives which resonate with this pleasure, of knowing our own sin and our salvation in Christ, and of knowing that there is hope for the future through Christ alone.

Metanoia and Thatcher

Sermon for the third Sunday after Easter

Sometimes, everything seems to get at you, even inanimate objects. Jets of water from the tap always seem to end up on you in an embarrassing way. Milk cartons refuse to open without the intervention of heavy-duty cutlery. And let us not get started on trying to open bin bags.

Sometimes the world seems to just get at you.

Of course, some people have it much worse than others. Some of us seem to suffer misfortune after misfortune. Respectable men and women suddenly find themselves with nothing. Clever and enterprising young folk end up on the street. Little children grow up scared and scarred because of the actions of grow-ups.

The Church has a lot of work to do.

If only the world would let us do it.

[PAUSE]

As Christians, we can definitely subscribe to the feeling that we are being "got at". This is because we are being got at. The question is trying to work out who is getting at us. The answer is not always very obvious.

You might say, "actually, it is the world that's getting at us." Our Lord Himself says, "Verily, verily I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice!" What is this "World"?

It's easy to think that it's a them and us situation. It's us versus the world - Athanasius contra mundi - and we put on our suits of armour and seek to challenge the World to a dual.

The trouble is, the World is not something outside of us. Think of this: you're never stuck in traffic, you are traffic. By being in a car, you are part of the traffic congestion on the M25. Margaret Thatcher is right: Society doesn't exist as something outside ourselves that we can always blame for our troubles. While we participate in Society, we cannot pass the buck.

"What's wrong with the World?" We say as we see the latest atrocity. G. K. Chesterton would reply, "I am." While we are in the World, we cannot separate ourselves from what's wrong with it. While we live in worldly ways, we contribute to the very thing that we struggle with.

How can we hope to separate ourselves from the World?

[PAUSE]

It's clear that we can't any more than we can package up the darkness before we switch the light on. We turn to Christ and use His light to help us transform our ways. We cannot hope to seek the will of God in worldly desires. A new car will not bring us closer with God: it will just make us more worldly. Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.

We turn to Christ. The only thing of any real value to us is the Cross of Christ, His suffering, His humiliation, His death. Death is the only thing that the World can ever give us because it is corrupted by our sin. Christ breaks through that barrier for us and offers us the way through.

We turn to Christ. We learn to value what He values and seek only love and unity with Him. A true search for unity with God cannot exclude other people because if we are united with God, then we will be united with all others who find Him. Our lives are to be spent, not focussing on the world's problems for the world's sake, but focussing on loving God and accepting His values so that we can solve the world's problem in true and honourable service to Him. We can gain the world, but we lose our souls in the process.

[PAUSE]

We cannot do any good in this world without God's involvement. The solution is simple: we involve God in our lives in prayer and the study of His word. We look at how we can shrug off worldly values and the pursuit of worldly esteem, we take our cross and suffer with Christ.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

Just wait in God, and see.

Good shepherds?

Sermon for the second Sunday after Easter

Don't you feel that being referred to as a sheep is a bit demeaning?

What about your priest being referred to as your pastor, or your bishop as the shepherd of your souls? Do you like being part of someone's flock?

Does that mean while you're merely a sheep, an ordained priest is actually a real human being?

[PAUSE]

Clearly, some have held this view in the past which seems to set priests up above the laity. It's little surprising that, because they cannot become priests, women see the Catholic priesthood as being another example of male oppression over them. If they are the sheep and the priest is the shepherd, then it seems that women will always be lesser. Likewise, men who are not called to the priesthood would have some objection to being referred to as a sheep.

There is clearly a point to answer here and, as always, to know the truth we listen to Jesus Himself, and it only takes a few words.

"I am THE good shepherd."

He doesn't say, "I am a good shepherd." It is very much, "I am THE good shepherd." There are no other good shepherds than Our Lord.

And now we begin to see something. With God as Our Creator, any comparison that we make between Him and us is always going to make us look insignificant. Before God, we are nothing more than dust. Our lives begin and end in the twinkle of His eye. We are nothing in comparison with Him.

To describe Himself as a shepherd and us as sheep is actually a great kindness to us. He could simply not bother with us at all, because we are so insignificant before His Eternal Majesty. The fact that He calls Himself our shepherd shows that He does care - really care. This is a care that is far beyond any care that a human being could have for anyone.

Listen to Him:

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

He is not in it for any money, or kudos, or for the glory of being worshipped. He has no need of any of those things. His care is completely focussed on the sheep. He will defend us to the hilt from all Evil that would beset us - even to death.

And how He proves that to us on the Cross.

What does it prove? 

It proves that, no matter who we are, God wants to create us. He loves us so much that He brings us into being in the first place and then gives up His own life for us so that we might not be lost to Him through our own sin.

[PAUSE]

It's also worth listening to St John Baptist when he says of Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

Lamb?

So Jesus Himself is being referred to as a sheep?

If we're sheep, then so is He!

And now we really do see that when God calls us His sheep, He is referring not to us being animals before Him, but rather demonstrating His care - a care so great that He becomes one of us in order to be with us. He shows that our human state - while being infinitely inferior to His glorious majesty - possesses worth for Him, possesses dignity, possesses in its very heart Heavenly Gold. We are not nothing to God.
Why then do we call priests, "pastors," and bishops, "shepherds"?

[PAUSE]

This point cannot be emphasised enough. It is not because priests and bishops are humans and the laity merely flocks. Look carefully: how can Mother St Teresa of Calcutta be lesser than one of those awful paedophile priests who have brought shame upon the whole Catholic priesthood? How can St Mary Magdalene be lesser than the treacherous Judas?

No. In failing to see priests and bishops as being somehow above normal human beings, we miss the point of Christ's sacrifice as the Lamb of God. The ordination of a priest is the means by which Christ operates through a sinful, fallible human being in order to feed us with His grace in the sacraments. The priest is a sheep through whom the Shepherd gives His care. What credit does that give to the priedt?

The priest is only a pastor by virtue that each Christian should look to him to see Christ the Shepherd. In fact, in not allowing the grace of God to act in him, in not showing care for his parish, the priest commits a terrible sin.

It is important to note that every faithful member of the laity is made holy through living their faith. Men and women together have an equal opportunity to become saints and to stand before God's throne for Eternity. The faithless priest, the priest that is in it for the prestige, the fancy robes, the adulation and respect, is an hireling and will receive his reward which can only end in Eternal Death.

Go out: be holy and faithful under the oversight of our Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, and don't forget to pray for priests and bishops that the whole world may be filled with Christ's grace.

Mathematical Sehnsucht

I find, to my amazement, that I have had something to contribute to Fr Anthony's Blue Flower project. While I won't reproduce it here, I will perhaps mention that Mathematics does begin to give expression to the Transcendent and I may expand on that in a future article for the Blue Flower if there is sufficient interest.

Do please look out for this publication as there will be articles written by those of greater academy than me. I'm told it is aiming to be out in June.

A late announcement

To many not used to the liturgical interplay between the solar and lunar calendars, the concept of a date not being a saint's day seems difficult to understand. A few years ago, I upset revellers celebrating St George's day, when I pointed out that - it being the Octave of the Resurrection - St George's day did not happen on April 23rd. (What an obnoxious know-it-all I am! 😜) This year, in the Roman Rite, St Valentine got bumped to a commemoration by the privileged feria of Ash Wednesday.

Especially this year, March 25th was not the Feast of the Annunciation according to the Roman Rite Since it clashed with Palm Sunday, the Rubrics ordered that it be transferred to the nearest available date outside the Easter Octave. Of course, this is not a universal practice. The Sarum Rite, for example makes provision for the Annunciation to be celebrated on the next day, being the Monday of Holy Week.

So we have had to wait a while for the announcement that Our Lady is to bear a child.

How typical!

Announcing the birth of a baby is not as straightforward as one might think. Parents filled with the joy that they are going to have a baby find themselves frustrated that it's really best to wait for the twelve-week scan before making a formal announcement so that they can say that the baby is happy and healthy. Were the Angel Gabriel to follow the same practice, we would be celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation on 25th June instead - the day after the Nativity of John the Baptist.

However, the Angel just needs to announce the Immaculate Conception of Our Lord. His birth is guaranteed, unlike many pregnancies even today. It is a matter of great sadness that many pregnancies end naturally within the first twelve weeks. Some babies do die even before their own mother knows that she is pregnant. For some mothers, the miscarriage is the first she knows.

We make later announcements so that we can share the joy of the presence of a baby knowing that it is viable for life. Even then, pregnancy is delicate and though the probability that the baby dies shrinks daily, it is never zero.

Could Our Lady's pregnancy have failed? Yes, it could: Our Lord's gestation was as fraught with danger as our own. However, it did not fail and this is something that those possessing an Eternal point of view always know.

We rejoice in the benefit of hindsight that, from His Conception, Our Lord's birth was assured and the path of our salvation at His hands revealed. While we rejoice, we must pray for all pregnant women and for all those who suffer the tragedy of miscarriage.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Pressing Faith

Sermon for the first Sunday after Easter

You may have noticed that, around Easter time, the newspapers tend to scrabble around for something to write about. We've had a congregation whose Easter banner said "Chris is Risen," the Archbishop of Wales being reported as saying that we can never know that the Resurrection happened, and the Pope being reported as saying that Hell does not exist which the Vatican denies. It seems that the press want to say something about Easter, but are not sure precisely what to say. What they give us is either something light-hearted or something that challenges the belief of millions of Christians.

Why? Why does the press want to challenge the Christian Faith?

[PAUSE]

At the most obvious level, the press just want people to buy papers and so print challenging headlines to make us think. Some papers rejoice in giving purely reactionary articles just so that people find a reason to shake their heads and tut about the state of the world. In many ways, the press give the people what they want to read and, as the old proverb says, they won't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

If today's press is inaccurate why can we be sure that the Gospels are accurate? Perhaps it is difficult to believe that Our Lord is risen from the dead. Perhaps we will never know.

[PAUSE]

It's okay to be tempted by thoughts like this. Poor St Thomas has trouble believing the reports of Jesus' Resurrection and so He demands evidence. It is only when they see His scars that the disciples are glad when they see the the Lord. After such a horrible few days in which we see Christ humiliated and executed, we are bound to be shaken up by this. The fact of the matter is that, in our experience, people don't tend to rise from the dead.

But Jesus does.

And that cannot be exaggerated. People are either alive or dead. Jesus was dead and now He is seen to be alive by eyewitnesses who then go about preaching of this resurrection. There's nothing to mishear, misinterpret or distort. Jesus was dead and is now alive. It doesn't get clearer than that. In two-thousand years, there has been no reasonable evidence to contradict the eye-witness testimony of the time.

When we doubt, what we have to do is to have faith.

Faith is not something that denies what we see. It doesn't throw out reason and scientific evidence. Faith is the result of trusting that God is Who He says He is and believing Him when things seem dark. Jesus says He will rise again from the dead. When He does die, we have to trust that He is right. When He does rise again, we see that our faith in Him is justified. We see that He is telling us the truth. We see that He does keep His promises even when they seem difficult to believe.

Having faith is a powerful thing. St John tells us clearly that

Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

The Faith that God gives us allows us to treat the misinformation of the world with a grain of salt. It means that we can hold onto Church teaching and not worry when it conflicts with this world's morality because we trust in God and not the world. It means that we are not slaves to culture, nor to big business, nor to what Society expects of us. We just need to have faith and allow that faith to grow in God.

[PAUSE]

Like the plants that begin to bud in spring, so our faith grows because of Our Lord's Resurrection from the Dead. It is the report of the death of our faith that is greatly exaggerated.

The Threshold

Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection

We stand at the door of the empty tomb, peering into its dark interior as the sunlight begins to flood the cemetery. Towards us is the black open door leading into the place of the dead and to who-knows-what. Behind us the sky is black with the beginnings of a pale blue hue at the horizon just before the Sun begins its ascent into the sky.

And we come to the realisation that this is the beginning of a new day. It's a beginning, not an end. Looking at the empty tomb, we are not seeing an end even though it is supposed to be a last resting-place. The credits don't roll. We aren't going to find out who the production assistant and script editor are. This is not a drama that has just played itself out. This is still happening.

[PAUSE]

We stand on the threshold of the tomb at the threshold of the day trying to understand the events of the last few days. They have been a threshold too, that between order and chaos. This is where it all begins as God Himself stands at the moment of Creation on the threshold between something and nothing, looking into the void and deciding in His impenetrable infinity what to create.

The threshold is where we are and it is here on this threshold that God saves us.

Every day, we teeter on the edge between good and evil, and we're not always aware of it. The world around us is a chaotic pattern of ripples from good deeds and ill entering into our everyday lives, often without us knowing. The order of our lives is being nudged by forces we can neither see nor control. We might as well be playing blind man's bluff on the edge of Beachy Head. The mind of Humanity is dark and cold to the love of God. And dark and cold is the morning as we gaze into the empty tomb. Many of us spend our lives here at this threshold and never seem to cross it.

But He is not here: He is risen and He meets us in the dawning of day and the breaking of bread. In order to meet Him, we have to cross the threshold into the unknown. This is the nature of our Faith.

Faith is not some unreasoned acceptance of an apparent truth. Our Faith is a growing trust in someone we are coming to know. It is as empirical as Science is itself. Our faith grows by what it sees and experiences. Our faith in God grows because we experience Him and seek Him out. Abraham knows God and trusts Him to raise Isaac when God calls him to sacrifice his son. It is only because he knows what God is like that Abraham would even dare to obey. In so doing, Abraham crosses a threshold into a new relationship with God with Isaac alive.

[PAUSE]
Leaving their hiding places from the crucifixion to gather in some secluded spot to decide what to do, the disciples find Christ. And they realise that their experiences of His teaching and miracles are true. The figure they see standing before them, still bearing His scars, still Him, is Christ Jesus Our Lord, and none other. No ghost. No hallucination through grief or intoxication. Through faith in Our Lord, they cross the threshold from a world groaning for Salvation into a world in which Salvation is present for those who want to receive it.

And the threshold of this Salvation is Christ the Door, the Strait Gate, the Way. He is the threshold between Life and Death. He is the door of the tomb for those who wish to pass from death into Eternal life.

[PAUSE]

This is as much our Resurrection as His. This is why He comes back to see us and show us the truth that our faith may be strengthened and our joy complete.

The sun rises and the blackness of the tomb lies behind us. Let us proceed in the peace of Christ into His life.

The Clamour and the Crucifix

Sometimes, it all gets a bit much.

Trying to maintain your Christian Faith in a world which wants you to alter those beliefs sounds very straightforward when you say it out loud. It's when the fall-out hits you: today's Western World may not seek to stone you, throw you to the lions or crucify you literally. No. Today's tactic is to destroy your faith through "science", social pressure, complex legal arguments, and more and more trivialities-dressed-as-important so that your mind is torn hither and yon seeking for the way to honour God - the God Who is with us, for us and fiercely on our side; distraction, distraction, distraction. It is all noise.

We can see just how much the world hates Christianity: it is called the Cross and, today, we behold our sovereign saviour, our Lord and God Incarnate, stripped, nailed, reviled and mocked on the cross. You can hear the noise around Him as He hangs there. All He can hear are the taunts of people who are anti-understanding, seeking to drown out His message with their list of obligations. This is how Our Blessed Lord is no-platformed - pinned to a cross and drowned out.

It is only those who stare at the cross in tears and silence that hear the one thing that the Devil was trying to stop us from hearing.

"Tetelestai!"

It's this that the Devil doesn't want us to hear because it is the truth: he has been conquered and his eternal fate known in Time. It doesn't matter what you hear around you. The truth is the truth. The cross is the cross. And God is God. No matter how this world tries to drown out what you know to be true in your heart, it cannot. It might as well try to convince you that two and two are five. You may not know why two and two have to be four, but you do know that it is four despite even courts ruling that the sum should be otherwise.

The only approach to this clamour is silence.

In silence, we hear the little voice of God who seeks out only those who want to hear Him. The world may hear tetelestai and drown out, distort and confuse its meaning with words, psychobabble and redaction. But we hear it, and we hear it in context: Christ has done it; He has perfected His salvation; He has poured Eternal Truth into the world through the opening of His hands and His side.

All we have to do is sit at the foot of the cross, look up, listen and be loved.

A Passionate Embrace

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent called Passion Sunday

Why do we suffer?

Perhaps we will never know for sure but we can be quite sure that suffering is pretty much guaranteed for all of us at some point in our lives. Perhaps this suffering will make us call God into question. Perhaps it will weaken our faith. Perhaps, in searching for the answers, we will lose sight of all that is good and holy.

Knowing that this is an unfathomable part of the human condition, why do we refer to Our Lord's suffering as His Passion. Isn't passion something felt between lovers who aren't backward at coming forward to express their love?

[PAUSE]

The words, "patience," "passive," and "passion" are all related and come from the same Latin word which means to suffer or to endure. If you are a patient in a hospital, then you are experiencing a passion. A passion is something that happens to you. As we enter Passiontide, veiling the images and the statues and crucifixes, we are demonstrating that in being a saint, we have to be willing to suffer because Love suffers. Perhaps that's why suffering has to exist so that we can learn to love truly and thus truly know God.

That's thoroughly unpalatable in this day and age when we have all kinds of medicines and distractions that can dull our pain but without actually addressing the cause. We see too many people addicted to painkillers of many forms. Some embrace the pain, seek to have it define their lives and thus become perpetual victims. There are those who simply cannot stop grieving for one whom they loved so much and, in so doing, settle down into a comfortable half-life of grief. If passion is something that happens to us, then what else can we do but let it happen? Isn't Jesus, in His suffering in the dreadful events of the coming week, a perpetual victim?

[PAUSE]

Indeed Our Lord is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. It is by His eternal victimhood - His Eternal Passion - that we are reconciled eternally with God. What makes the Passion of Our Lord so unique is that He isn't just the victim: He is the priest as well. He makes the sacrifice happen. This doesn't mean that Our Lord is suicidal: it means that, by being in control of His passion, He can put it to the best use possible.

"CHRIST being come an High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands; that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves; but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us."

It is the priesthood of Christ that turns around the notion of the victim on its head. Instead of being passive in His suffering, Our Lord takes what He has been given and endures it actively. While His life undergoes pain and torture, He takes the fight into the spiritual realm and smashes the whole of the Devil's work to make life a misery and death an Eternal inevitability.

[PAUSE]

And this is part of the nature of our Catholic priesthood. The Church, through the activity of all its members, offers up the suffering of the world through the exercise of Love. The Church, herself, is nourished through the obligations of priests who must participate in the active sacrifice of Christ in order to give each Christian the spiritual nourishment they need in order to keep the fight going.

Our challenge is not only to take up the Cross at Our Lord's command, but also to venerate it even as we would venerate the cross of Christ. We are to venerate the very cross to which we are nailed.

By accepting the suffering that we receive and carrying it with us, bearing one another's burdens as the Church, we can follow Christ into taking up the fight against Evil and, by enduring, win through God's grace.

We need not be passive in our passion. Christ isn't.

The Lie of Progress

In this period of Lent, Christians are invited through prayer and fasting to examine their consciences and make an appropriate repentance. Why?

Every Christian should have the goal of becoming more Christ-like: each of us is to put on Christ and put to death the old man who lives only according to the flesh. It seems very reasonable that there is, for each individual Christian, a perfectly well-defined notion of progress in life. We progress by committing fewer sins and by co-operating with the grace we receive abundantly from Almighty God. Our end is our beginning: perfection in God.

How do we measure that progress, though? Saying, "I committed five sins yesterday and only three today," might give the illusion that progress is being made but yesterday is not the same day as today. You never step into the same river twice.

"Ah!" says my detractor, "you always argue that whatever is sinful does not change in Time. How can you argue this if each day is contextually different from the next?"

Sin is defined in relation to God. Sin always misses God - that's what the term "sin" means, a missing of the target. Since God is Eternal and thus changeless in Time, whatever misses Him must also be Eternal, in the same way that one quarter, the square root of two, and 𝜋 must always miss the set of whole numbers. The time at which these numbers fail to be whole numbers is meaningless. What may change is the gravity of the sin within temporal contexts: murder - that is, the unlawful, premeditated killing of another human being - is always sinful, but the reasons why that murder is committed will differentiate it from being malicious and being weak. Unlawful killing? Which law? Clearly, the law of the one who gave it - God!

Take God out of the equation and there ceases to be any form of universal law. The unlawfulness of murder can be decided by whatever human authority is appointed to decide what law is. One only has to look at the last century to see that it is possible for the extermination of various groups of people to become lawful in human civilisation.

Okay, that's last century. That won't happen today! We've made progress.
If you haven't yet read it, make sure you read and understand Orwell's 1984 and see how already we are being conditioned to think in a certain way.

We know that slavery is wrong, yet still it happens and people are prepared to sanction it. Big businesses paying children a pittance in some part of the world to sew together cheap trendy trainers for wannabe rich kids.

We know that sexism is wrong, yet still women are being treated as an underclass by those who seek to assert their dominance through maintaining sexual stereotypes which serve only to make both sexes caricatures of humanity.Yet, the Western Governments are passing laws by which even the safe spaces of women's restrooms can be used by men by redefining what "men" and "women" mean - or rather by legislating that a word no longer means what it already means by the abuse of grammar.

If the Enlightenment seeks the progress of human beings, what does it see as the goal of Progress especially if part of that "enlightenment" is the destruction of belief in God?

The only goal of an atheist progress must be some form of Utopia to which end human beings are to work. From what little I understand of such a worldview is that Science, Reason, and Humanism are the means by which the ills of poverty, disease, injustice. war, old-age and even death are eradicated. Thus, all human beings become a means to this end and nothing more. If my life ends with my death then,  by virtue of the fact that I would not see Utopia, only work that I do towards it will be my worth as I fade into oblivion. The humanity of those who will see this Utopia will not be shared by those who have died to realise it unless this Utopia possesses the ability to raise the dead. How would that be possible for those, like Blessed John Henry Newman, who have completely gone to dust?

Perhaps I am being selfish and, by refusing to work for Utopia, I am depriving my descendants of that goal just because I want to be pat of it. Is it not better to embrace my existence as a means to the joy of my descendants and, with my dying breath, feel pleased that someone else will have what I have worked for but never had?

It would indeed be worth working for, if it were possible, but I cannot believe that such a future humanist Utopia can exist, perhaps in the same sort of way that an atheist cannot believe in God and Heaven. Personally, I find that there is much more empirical evidence for the existence of God than there is of progress in human nature.

Here and now, there continue to be people who live in absolute (not relative) poverty in Africa and India. Frankly, I believe Our Lord when he says "ye always have the poor with you; but Me ye have not always." There has always been disease and even now we are at the mercy of drug-resistant bacteria and viruses. We still haven't eradicated the common cold. I fail to see how there can be any true justice without the existence of God since injustice continues conveniently unrecognised by the media. Science itself seems to suggest that we cannot naturally live past 120 years old and that this is genetic in nature. As for Death, the Universe itself is predicted to die out via Science. This planet will not survive the death of the Sun. Science fiction may give us the inspiration to go universe-hopping, but there is as much scientific evidence for the existence of other universes as there is for God. If there is a Utopia, it will not last and all the effort of those who strive for its realisation will be in vain anyway.

All I see of this Utopia is anodyne, unimaginative and, quite frankly boring. If they do invent a machine that can raise the dead, then count this as my desire not to be raised in this way. I don't want this resurrection because it won't be a resurrection - I doubt it wil even be me.

The whole idea of working for a Utopia is really a form of Pelagianism which seems to attract the SJWs among Christians. Of course, we need to follow Our Lord's commands and help those in need with the utmost care and love that the dignity of human nature has been given by its Creator. The poor need to be helped; the naked must be clothed; the bereaved need comfort and help. But we cannot pretend that we can work our way to building Heaven on Earth. That's not going to happen. The Kingdom of Heaven is with us now - right now - and this is despite the horrors that take place in the world. The only way to Heaven is to seek God now, accept His rule and await the resurrection of the Dead on His terms.

Unless there is clear evidence the human beings are changing for the better, that the old sins of murder, adultery, coveting, stealing and bearing false witness are dying out, I will remain unconvinced of any progress worth its salt.

Tuna sandwiches

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent

Feeding the five thousand? In Lent?

That's a bit cruel of those who wrote the liturgy for us, isn't it? Here we are, all good and a bit ravenous for a chocolate biscuit, and then we see Our Lord dole out a magnificent feast for a multitude from five loaves and two small fish. Is your tummy rumbling yet?

Perhaps not if you don't like tuna sandwiches.

Why is the feeding of the five thousand part of Lent?

[PAUSE]

There are two occasions in which Our Lord encounters large numbers of people on mountains - the Sermon on the Mount and this, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. A mountain pulpit in these cases is largely practical: mountain spaces are wide enough for large crowds and, by positioning Himself uphill from them, Our Lord can address them well.

However, it is important to notices that in both cases the crowds are already hungry. In both cases, the multitude comes to Jesus because they are hungry for what He has to teach them. He offers life, hope, joy, peace, and love as a reality, not just as a nice idea nor as a campaign for social justice. To Him come the people who are tired with the second-rate substitutes for happiness that the world offers. They come to be nourished with good things, and this means leaving their working lives behind, just for a moment, and finding what truly matters.

And Jesus feeds these hungry people with what they seek. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

At the mountain, Our Lord feeds the hungry with good things and then he feeds them with bread and fish. To Him, both body and soul matter together: you cannot be truly human unless you have a body and a soul, so both need looking after. In feeding five thousand, the Lord is demonstrating a wonderful miracle that He performs to this day. Every Christian who will have ever lived will be fed by Christ Himself by His word of life in the preaching of the Gospel and by His very self in the Mass.

In order to receive these, we have to be prepared to climb mountains, and this is the true purpose of Lent.

[PAUSE]

In Lent, we climb out of our comfortable world with all its junk food for both body and soul. We leave behind all that which feeds us but doesn't really nourish us, and make our way up out of the life on the flat earth and into a life more suited to heaven. Like Our Lord, we may be tempted to throw ourselves down again, but we can resist and, when we fall, begin the climb again.

When we find God, we know that we shall be fed truly and fully.

This is the climb for which we don't pack the picnic basket:  the buffet will be provided.

The freedom of Jerry Springer

About ten or so years ago, there was a bit of a furore when the BBC decided to broadcast the controversial programme, "Jerry Springer: the Opera". At face value, the work is about the lurid visions of Jerry Springer at the point of death and that is what the composer, Stewart Lee, says that it is about. The opera itself contains much swearing and profanity, and there are some scenes that are very disturbing to the Christian mind. It is clear that Mr Lee is no Christian! That's his choice.

Christian Voice got wind of the showing of this programme on the BBC and managed to whip up 50,000 or so complaints before it had even aired. They tried also to bring the director-general of the BBC to court charged with blasphemy. Shops refused to stock the DVD of the broadcast and Mr Lee himself felt that he could no longer perform as a comedian to a general audience.

You might say, "Good! Serves him right!" But there's a problem and it needs thought.

For my part, I turned on the programme for all of thirty seconds, grimaced at what I saw, and then I turned the television off. Should I not have been complaining more about being offended?

That's the rub. What Christian Voice have effectively done is a spectacular piece of "no platforming." It is exactly the same thing as has been happening on the university campus both here and in America: academics and political figures who hold controversial views and ideas are not being allowed to express them to university students on the grounds that they are offensive. The Transgender debate (if there is such a thing as gender) is a prime example. Prominent feminist Professor Germaine Greer is not being allowed to speak in universities because she believes that there is no such thing as transgenderism. She is accused of hate speech and transphobia because of her views. She offends and must be silenced. However, the fact of the matter is that, as an academic thinker, she has been a loud, clear voice trying to raise the plight of women who are still treated as an underclass around the world. She has a point but, because she dissents from the current mode of political correctness, she must be silenced.

Unfortunately, that is something the Church has been very good at for centuries - silencing dissent.

Why should the voice of dissenters be silenced? There are two reasons that I can think of at this moment.

First, no one wants to hear things that they cherish being trampled on in the mud. There are things that are too offensive for us to bear, and this is good. It shows that humanity is not wholly bad - that each one of us is not wholly bad. It is reasonable to put these things aside if we can, but we should not do so at the expense of the truth when  that truth is important.

For example, I do pray regularly for juries who have to sit on some truly dreadful cases, such as the Fred and Rosemary West case. These people have to suffer the graphic details of the case to determine the truth. However offended they are by the facts, or even by the defendant's views, only the truth can matter. If someone holds terrible views and opinions but has not actually broken the law, then the truth of the matter means that this person is legally innocent, though their moral health is clearly questionable.

The danger then comes in trying to legislate that actually holding an opinion that is offensive. That's problematic because it effectively becomes the Thought Police. Yet, we still have to deal with people in a position of influence using that influence to radicalise and incite hatred in others. What we need to do is to educate people about questioning what they are being taught. This is fine and healthy, and brings me to the second reason why no-platforming occurs.

In the past, the Church has silenced dissenters and heretics (usually by burning in the medieval period) in order to preserve the spiritual health of simple Christians. This makes sense: a parent censors what a child is exposed to because the child is too young to cope with the issues they involve and will misunderstand them to their hurt. Yet, taken too far, this idea stunts good Christian growth. The ideal is to be Christ-like, i.e. sinless. While it cannot happen without the grace of God to begin the process, the process need to be maintained in the will by developing the conscience and through constant repentance. We are all children of God, some further along the road to perfection than others. But we are not all infants. Good Christian education is not indoctrination. It is the presentation of the facts of Christian Doctrine, which is immutable because it is God's revelation to all of humanity as a whole, in order that the individual can willingly be part of the Church, warts'n'all and thus find salvation. This can only happen if the individual is free to choose sin. This, of course, doesn't mean that we have to choose in. As this period of Lent shows, in His temptation in the wilderness, Our Lord is clearly like us: He is free to choose sin. He doesn't.

In silencing dissent, the Church has, in the past, infantilised her children rather than educating them. If we are free to sin, then the Church has precisely the mechanism by which people can return to God. If we sin and are reconciled to God, then we allow our mistake to inform us and make us better. All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. This even includes the effects of our sin. Our growing hatred for sin should prevent us from thinking that we can just sin and repent without tears and penance.  Love for God is the key. Nonetheless, the temporal consequences of our own individual sin must still be endured by all humanity.

In creating such an overreaction to Jerry Springer: the Opera, Christian Voice have given sanction for the strident Trans-Activists and other similar SJWs to silence those who dissent from their views. The trend of no-platforming is precisely due to the censorship that the Church has been involved with. The Councils of the Early Church were called precisely to thrash out the issues on both sides. The result is a clearer understanding of God's revelation to us about who He is and who we are.

The Pharisees crucified Our Lord in order to silence His dissent from the social norms. He in turn seeks debate, risks offending, calls into question, but never once stops loving the people He is fervent in trying to reach. If God has given us the freedom to walk away from Him, then we should afford other people the same courtesy. Love does not coerce: it seeks willing consent.

Freedom of speech may require that we take the consequences of what we say, but that does not mean that we are receiving those consequences justly. We recall that the word "freedom" is often described negatively as "freedom from" - lifting of obstacles, making the crooked straight and the rough places plain. Yet, we forget that "freedom" can be defined positively as the ability to excel in a particular endeavour. Freedom of Speech means that not only are we freed from being silence, but we are also freed from being told what to say in order to express ourselves clearly.

With regard to Jerry Springer: the Opera, I find myself squarely with what has been attributed to Voltaire (but may not actually be authentic to him).

Monsieur l’abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire.

(I wonder if I've got the right quote, Fr Anthony!)

I am sorry that Stewart Lee's career has been affected like this, though I am not sorry that I don't hear such awful things being said. He must be allowed to speak so that we can better hear the truth. Perhaps this is the lesson that he gives us. If the atheist can be silenced by the Church, then the Church can be silenced by the Trans-Activist.

Perhaps, if we are prepared to speak the truth and thus risk offending, we should strengthen our own resolve so that when we are offended, we shrug it off and examine what is said for the truth about us and the truth about God. If God can go to the cross and rise again in glory, then we should be able to get past the rising of our hackles at something unpalatable!

Better the Devil you know...

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

You may remember that the ritual we use for Baptism contains three exorcisms. You should see the look on the face of the families when they realise that their child is about to be exorcised. How do you feel about that?

It's all a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps you have seen that famous film The Exorcist and still have nightmares about it. It's rather sensational, but why do we exorcise babies when they aren't levitating in their cots and throwing people out of windows?

[PAUSE]

First, we have to remember that the Devil does actually exist. Our Lord speaks about him using the names Satan and Beelzebub. The Devil is the one that can hurt both body and soul in hell. We also know that it is the Devil who tempts us to sin just as he tempts Our Lord. It is the Devil who is responsible for tempting us, but we are the ones who are responsible for how we act when we're tempted. That's the terrible thing.

The Devil wants us away from God permanently because he is away from God permanently and he will do anything to accomplish that.

This is why we have something to worry about. We don't need to be violently possessed to be influenced strongly by the Devil! He can possess us from outside using his temptations, thus making us his possessions.

This is why we exorcise people - even babies! - at Baptism. All humans are infinitely precious to God and it makes sense that the Devil already has his designs on them. By driving away the Devil and his followers away from someone being baptised, we are doing just as Jesus would want us to do and gives us the power to do it. We make as strong a statement as we can to the Devil and to the world that the person being baptised is a child of God and is being saved by the blood of Christ by becoming part of the Church. We tell him very clearly that those who are baptised are not possessions of the Devil.

We know that we live in evil times, however God is with us. We know things seem black and that we keep sinning and walking away from God. Whether or not we are Baptised, the Devil is still too strong for us. An archangel fighting against a fallible human being is not going to find much of a match. However, there is something that he wants us to forget - the words of Our Lord Jesus.

When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.

When Our Lord says this, He speaks of the Devil as a strong man who keeps human beings as his possessions. In seizing Our Lord in the same way, the Devil finds himself in the grip of someone much more powerful. How do we know? Our Lord uses just the finger of God to drive him out. A finger is all it takes.

[PAUSE]

As the Church is united to Christ by Baptism, we find ourselves united with Christ in our fight against the Devil. This means we can trust that God has the victory over Sin, Death and the Devil. The world around us may be blackened by the works of Satan, but we can look through that blackness by clinging to the Cross and seeing the beautiful creation of God through His light that dispels darkness.

Sometimes that takes a bit of doing. We still need to watch out. We need to be sober and vigilant because our enemy the Devil walks around seeking whom he may devour. We must resist him steadfast in our faith, come what may. However, through repentance and prayer, and seeking the Kingdom of God, our struggles and suffering at the Devil's hand will not be fruitless in the eyes of God. We are being saved from Satan right now through Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Evils of the World will cease to affect us. Do we dare believe that?

The judgment of God

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

Jesus says nothing.

Here is a woman pouring her heart and soul out to Jesus, and He says nothing.

She explains her predicament. She tells Him of the devil that is torturing her daughter, tearing her life apart, causing agony to the whole family as they watch her writhe in pain and cannot help her one single bit.

And He says nothing.

In fact He tells her that He is sent to the sheep of the house of Israel. He calls them children, but He calls her a dog.

And this is the God we worship.

Are you feeling uncomfortable, yet?

[PAUSE]

This does seem to cause a problem for Christians in this day and age but the problem is an old one. What happens when God is silent or doesn't seem to care. What happens when He appears to be rude and offensive?

Some say that this woman changes Our Lord's mind by showing Him that He is being narrow-minded and actually rather racist. They say that, because Our Lord is human, He is as much a product of His culture as we are. They say that He has no knowledge of His future work and that He has to learn His vocation just as we do. They say that Our Lord is shown to be wrong by this Canaanite woman.

Can you hear what's wrong with this?

[PAUSE]

It is true that Our Lord is indeed human. It is true that he possesses in His human nature all that we know to be part of our condition. We can only do so much, think so much, know so much and love so much. We are finite, feeble and frail. We are born, we suffer and we die.

Yet, we also know that Jesus is God, and that He does not just possess human nature, but God nature too. And we know that these two natures cannot be separated from each other. In His humanity, Our Lord can only do so much: He will feel emotional and physical pain; He will laugh and cry; He will fall over and even have moments of clumsiness; He will be tempted; yet He will not sin! Sin is not part of human nature. The tendency to sin and the ability to be tempted, is.

If Jesus can know whether a woman whom He has not met before is living with a man who is not her husband, then He can know that He is called for the the whole of humanity - not just Israel.

If we think He is being racist or narrow-minded, then we have accused Our Lord of sin whether or not He is a product of His culture.

If He is a product of His time, then how can His words of hope speak to people now? How can His life, death and resurrection two thousand years ago bear the same message to us and those to come?

[PAUSE]

If Our Lord's attitude to this Canaanite Woman troubles us, then what crime do we think He has committed?

He calls this woman a dog!

Except He doesn't - at least not directly. He uses an analogy which compares Gentiles to dogs, and not to wild dogs, but rather to well-beloved pet dogs.

So He's comparing her to being something lesser. He's being offensive.

Maybe. Maybe not. Where does Jesus actually demonstrate that He does not love this woman, inside and out and more than we can know? Can we judge God so quickly?

Look what happens as a result of what He says.

This poor woman finds she can respond to His words with confidence. Our Lord has given her precisely the right cue for her to speak her mind. He has said precisely the right words which allow her to articulate her faith in Him. She has already recognised Him as God - why else does she actually worship Him when she sees Him? In speaking her faith out loud to us all, she has received so much from Him and given us all much, too!

[PAUSE]

If we are troubled by the actions of Our Lord here, then maybe we are too ready to be offended to see what's really going on. This woman could have taken offence and stormed off. She didn't. She listened respectfully, responded cleverly and gently, and received more than she desired. History will remember this woman as a woman of great faith. It's a shame we don't know her name. God does and rejoices.

Too often, people are ready to judge God by their own rules and their own morals. We forget that He knows the rules so well, that He can challenge our thinking in what He says and draw us deeper into knowing Him. We therefore have to trust Him that whatever He says and does is for our benefit even if it troubles us, taxes our mind, or even downright offends us.

Our Lord will offend us because He is not a product of our age and culture, but rather goes beyond every age and culture. We should always look to trust Him, rather than to judge Him.

Goodbye to the contradiction

I know that I have been rather quiet lately. Family duties and the death of my mobile phone have made blogging a little more difficult, but this is probably for the best.

I have several projects in mind that I have brought to the Throne of Grace in my prayers so that they may be begun, continued and ended in God. I am at present tweaking the draft of a book that I have written for my Diocese. This will need a nihil obstat but, given its length and the commitments of my superiors, this will have to take some time. That is fine.

Much upon my mind is the spiritual battle that Christianity has with the prevailing culture. There is something demonic within Postmodernism that is breaking down even the ability for human beings to communicate with each other. Marx's Critical Theory is responsible for everyone to be categorised as oppressed or oppressor, victim or victor, proletariat or bourgeoisie - rather curious for a society that wants to be non-binary.

Of course, Kierkegaard would always want us to consider the both/and rather than either/or. So would Hegel for that matter. On their terms, they suggest that we should always be looking for the synthesis of two extremes rather than keeping the extremes apart.

This seems reasonable: God Himself breaks down the naive thesis-antithesis duality by being Three yet One, by indivisibly Human and Divine, by being both immanent and transcendent, by being both temporal and eternal. Yet there is one thesis-antithesis that He cannot break down - Good and Evil which we might also express as Sin and Righteousness. Yes, this is something even God cannot do - not because He is impotent, but rather because Good and Righteousness are defined in terms of His being and His divine nature, whereas Evil and Sin are defined by standing outside His divine nature.

You could ask whether God is impotent against the laws of logic. Is God Himself bound by the law of non-contradiction, that something cannot be both A  and not-A simultaneously. The writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite might expect us to leave aside all talk of Reason when it comes to discussing God. Yet, we know that within God is the very root of Reason itself - the divine Logos! God is - this is what He tells us Himself in calling Himself Yahweh or Jehovah. God is and thus He cannot not be. There is an exclusion of being both. Our modern physics may tell us that it is possible for the cat to be both alive and dead but in order to be either alive or dead, the cat still has to be.

The language of Quantum Theory is troubling to our world of common sense, but it is worth reminding ourselves that it is framed only in the language of mathematics. We know what it is to make an observation but while we might describe that observation using a self-adjoint operator on a Hilbert Space, that's not what we actually do do. We observe. Our observation does change the reality around us precisely because we are here to observe and that we do make that observation.

Of course, mathematics is infallible in what it tells us but, often, it doesn't really tell us anything that we didn't already know. Numbers exist as non-physical objects, but they do nothing. Mathematics is irrelevant without the conscious mind to manipulate it. Consciousness provides mathematics with a home in which to thrive and thus, just as God cannot be comprehended by His creation, neither can Mathematics truly comprehend the conscious mind. A science that claims it can explain consciousness is quite simply wrong.

Absolute truth exists, otherwise "there is no absolute truth" becomes absolute. Yet we can only make that observation because of the  Logos Himself. Reason is an expression of God's mind. He gives us this gift so that we might have some language in which we can communicate and debate and study and discover and glorify Him.

Although I believe that we should be careful in talking about dichotomies, I firmly believe that true dichotomies exist because God exists. Many dichotomies will be false such as the dichotomy that God is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing and yet Evil exists. It takes reasoning and prayer to understand the truth behind such a dichotomy.

There is another dichotomy that is indeed truly binary, male and female. Postmodernism will deny this. Quite why it will deny this is up for debate, by my suspicion is that Postmodernism is an expression of inherent narcissism within our modern humanity. However, God made male and He made female. That is enough.

Watch out! Here comes virtue!

Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent

A plane crashes.

You watch the result on the television and see the terrible aftermath. Your heart goes out to the dead and their families and friends. You are genuinely saddened. So what do you do?

Write a Facebook status? A blog post? Video yourself offering thoughts and prayers? 

Why? Why do you need to do anything? No friend or family member of yours was on the plane. No-one associated with the crash is going to know who you are or how valuable your sentiments are. They are going to be concerned with rebuilding their lives. Why should your public display of grief matter?

[PAUSE]

It's a good point. We hear Our Lord say quite categorically to His followers, " when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." He says that we should not do things for the sake of appearances. The only reward you get is everyone's approval which will very quickly grow cold like a forgotten cup of tea.

Yet, hang on. A plane has crashed. People are hurting. Surely they need to know that you're standing with them? That's a different thing. You're standing in solidarity with them, just as the saints in Heaven, even Our Lady stand in solidarity with us, just as even Our God Himself deliberately chooses human flesh so that He can stand in solidarity with us against the tragedies of our humanity. Surely, that's okay? You're letting people know so that they can find some comfort even in the most remote glimmer that somehow, somewhere, someone kind is thinking of them.

But they won't see it, will they?

Are you sure that you aren't doing something in order to be seen doing something, even if you know full well that the gesture is utterly futile?

We have to be able to see the difference between virtue signalling - expressing our morals with the intent to be socially acceptable - and true virtue. The Devil tempts us to perform acts of virtue signalling just as he tempted Our Lord. The actions of turning stones to bread to feed the hungry and throwing oneself from the top of the temple to demonstrate God's power fall are actions of virtue signalling because they are done for motives that are not pure, rather they are done for personal glory and approval from the people who would see these deeds happen.

We need to be able to tell the difference because actions of virtue signalling can be very subtle as posting something heart-warming on Facebook might demonstrate, especially when you see those "likes" build up.

[PAUSE]

This requires very, very careful examination of our own motives in our lives, and Lent helps us to do just that. It is best to ask your priest for help so that you don't go wrong, but self-examination is something that every Christian should do. The key thing is that true virtue cannot be separated from God, because all virtue comes to us by grace.

St Paul writes words of encouragement for us.

We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also, that ye receive not the grace of God in vain... giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed; but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God.

God gives us His grace. Remember that grace is God's presence working with us and in giving us grace, He gives us Himself. We can receive God's grace in vain, as St Paul suggests, by working without God's input. However, if we are to do anything at all for good, we need the grace of God. We are made right with God through our faith and by cooperating with God. This doesn't come from good works alone, nor through faith alone, but by uniting the two in our walk with God. With God, it's not what we do, it's that we do.

[PAUSE]

We may be accused of virtue signalling even when we are not. That's irrelevant. St Paul says that, through God's grace, we can approve ourselves as the ministers of God. What does this mean? It means that, however the world looks at us, no matter how our actions are judged, or what consequences they may have, what we do for the love of God will bear God's fruit with God's grace. If we do something for God, then we are God's minister, and through working with God we can be sure that we have done something to demonstrate our love for our neighbours.

Our virtue is not for signalling: it is for doing. Can you be sure that your virtues are signals of God's presence with you?

For the love of a narcissus

Sermon for Quinquagesima

As spring approaches, we begin already to see the flowers starting to come up. In particular, in March you will see the daffodil and the narcissus start to come out in the flower beds. The narcissus, you may already know, has a particularly sad story behind it according to the Greek Myths.

In this particular myth, we see a handsome young man who deals very cruelly with the women who fall for him. Once such is a nymph called Echo whose love for him is so strong that, even when Narcissus rejects her, does not stop loving him. She mourns and pines away until only her voice is left, doomed only to repeat the last few words in the sentences she hears. As a punishment, Narcissus is doomed to fall in love with his reflection. In this way, Narcissus suffers precisely what he inflicts on others: he cannot receive his own love and eventually he, like poor Echo, wastes away until all that is left is the flower that bears his name.

This is all very well, but is this Christian?

[PAUSE]

As Christians, we are to be in the world but not of it. We may observe the story told about Narcissus and ask ourselves, “is this true? Is God telling us something through this story?” Indeed He is, and He uses St Paul to explain it to us in one of his most famous pieces of writing to us.

He tells us quite clearly: we can be expert communicators, we can be the wisest scholars, we can be the most generous person there is yet, if we do not have love, then we have already become nothing. Like both Narcissus and Echo, if our love is not really the Love that God is, we have already wasted away. What has gone wrong?

[PAUSE]

Looking carefully at what St Paul says, the work that we do to become expert communicators, wise, and generous people is not true love because any love that we are showing is being directed inwardly towards ourselves. We can give up everything we have for the sole purpose of gaining respect and affection of others. Some people do indeed do that. They are prepared to make sacrifices so that they can manipulate others through some form of respect and admiration. If our motivation is not from true love, then everything that we do, and everything that we are actually becomes nothing. It will all pass away when we die, and we shall die indeed because God is not there.

Much of the problems in society come about because people think they know what love is. They will demand the right to love whomsoever they want and express that love however they want. Yet, if we look very closely at their language of rights and love, we see that they are motivated only by a ghost of what love is. Many people behave like Narcissus and spurn true love in favour of a love that bigs up their own achievements or even their own beliefs about who they say they are. They reduce themselves to just being a communicator, a wise man, or a “nice guy”, or something else and expect us to love only that aspect of them. It’s like writing your name on a piece of paper and telling people to love that paper rather the real you, the you that really is, not a nothing that really isn’t.

What is this love, then?

[PAUSE]

It’s very simple. God creates us. God wants to create us. God has no need to create us. He does so out of no desire for Himself, but rather that we should be. This is His love and it is directed out from Himself to us, not back in on Himself.

Our love for others needs to be directed out from ourselves. This is why St Paul says, “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.”

People who suffer for the good of others and are kind direct their love out from themselves. People who envy, or puff themselves up, or behave in an unseemly fashion, or get irritated, these are concerned only with something about themselves.

[PAUSE]

The trouble is, we now face the Joey Tribbiani question. Is there anything that we human beings do that isn’t actually selfish in some way? Possibly. Possibly not. However, one thing is clear: we cannot be anything unless we have love and draw that love from God Himself. Lent is about an examination of our relationship with God and working on turning to Him as our Creator. As long as we are looking to Him and to Him alone, whatever we do doesn’t matter for it will always be done with Love.

Come May, the narcissus will be gone, wasted away into itself. Will we?

Your credentials, please!

Sermon for Septuagesima

You hear a woman calling in the street, "repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!" Of course, you feel uncomfortable by this brazen display of being religious, but one of the questions that might go through your mind is, "who is she to say that?"

What might make us trust her message? What will give us confidence that she is qualified to go around and preach this discomfort?

What if she is a doctor of divinity from Oxbridge?
What if she is a Dominican nun?
What if she is well known for having visions from God?
What if she is an Anglican Catholic?

[PAUSE]

Everyone who makes some authoritative statement in today's society has to present their credentials so that people can be satisfied that they have the required authority and suitability for issuing that statement. We would expect someone who says, "the UK Economy will grow, this year" to have had much experience of working in the global financial industry. Likewise, we would expect someone who says, "Chocolate Orange causes ingrown toenails" to have a medical degree and substantial time in medical research before we accept that.

St Paul has to go through this procedure too. His previous message to the Church in Corinth has caused many in that Church to question his credentials. "Who is he to say that to us?" they say as St Paul takes them to task on their obsession with spiritual gifts. The trouble is that the Corinthians will not hear his message - they will not hear the word of God - until it is shown to be acceptable to their earthly way of thinking. They have ears, but they will not hear it with those ears until they cry out to Our Lord Jesus for those earth-filled ears to be unblocked.

You hear that woman's voice again! "Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand!" Is this woman speaking God's will?

[PAUSE]

You might call into question her credentials. Perhaps she got her doctorate in Divinity by bribery or studied some obscure topic such as "breakfasts of the apostles." Perhaps she has just been expelled from the Dominican Order for preaching too loudly. Perhaps her visions of God are due to a lithium imbalance in the brain. Perhaps she is one of those people who claim to be Anglican Catholic but is just using the name to validate her own sect.

If we don't want to hear the message, it's very easy to discredit the messenger.

And that's the problem. Sometimes, we focus too much on the messengers than the messages that they bring.

St Paul know this well. He regards his own credentials as being magnificently irrelevant. All that he has done, all that he has experienced, all that might give him some qualification, all that might earn him respect, all can be called into question by others because they cannot experience St Paul's life for themselves. There is no worth in his actions that will convince everyone that he is telling the truth.

This is why he is asking us to listen to his message, and evaluate that.

There she goes again, "repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!"

[PAUSE]

Suddenly, the women herself becomes irrelevant, though she is infinitely precious in the eyes of God. It is her words that we hear.

If we are good and if we are honest, we will recognise those words as being of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

Do we, too, ask Our Lord to present His credentials before we will listen to Him?

If we're Christian, there will be one thing that will convince us that this is His message and that His message is true, and that is His Cross. It is that Cross that has the most impact, the most earth-shattering, curtain-rending, heaven-rending impact which must convince the Christian of the truth of the message. This impact we call Glory.

This is how we know whether a message is true - does it bear the glory of Christ's Cross? Does it present the great truth of God made man, born, crucified, risen and ascended? If it does and holds the truth of the Gospel, the message that the Church has always possessed, then it is true and the person of the messenger is irrelevant. For this is the word of God and, in the good and honest heart, it will grow and bear fruit.

You don't need a degree in fruit-bearing for that to happen.

He can lead us into temptation but a pencil must be lead

Recently, Pope Francis has (again) courted controversy this time with his views on the Lord's Prayer. He takes issue with "lead us not into temptation" because he says, "A father does not do that, a father helps you to get up immediately." He prefers to say, "do not let us fall into temptation".

The trouble is that the Greek text which is the earliest record of what the Lord says does say quite clearly "lead us not into temptation". The Greek word is eisenegkēs - "may you bring into..." - a very clear expression of us being led by God. However, what does this actually mean? Is God responsible for putting us into positions where we can be tempted away from Him.

There is an apparent contradiction here:

1) God wills us nothing but Good.
2) God might lead us into temptation.

We must appreciate the hurt and scandal that our Patriarch is trying to address here. There seems to be an inconsistency in God's behaviour towards us. However, we need to try and unpack what Our Lord says when He tells us to pray "lead us not into temptation."

The Greek word peirasmos can mean an experiment, trial or a test. When the Lord is taken into the desert specifically to be tempted (peirasthēnai) of the Devil in St Matthew iv.1, who does the leading? Answer: the Holy Spirit.  God leads His Son into temptation! In verse 7, we hear "Thou shalt not put the Lord to the test" and the verb "putting to the test" (ekpeiraseis) is again related to peirasmos.

It seems that when the Lord tells us to pray "lead us not into temptation" He means it. What of Pope Francis' objections?

It is clear that we need to understand peirasmos. What is temptation?

When we are tempted, we are faced with a choice: there is one choice which is immediately preferable but has serious consequences; there is another which appears hard but ultimately will bring about some good. The chocolate biscuit tastes nice, but not having diabetes is nicer. It seems, then, that temptation is a battle of wills.

Consider the Agony in the Garden. A choice presents itself to Our Lord Himself who seems never to be free from temptation in the way we are only He does not sin. This Agony comes from a very simple question, "Do I have to be crucified?" His Father's will has led Him to this occasion in which the temptation arises. The Lord's human will is tempted, but He aligns it to the Father's will which causes this agony. Our Lord articulates this desire that the cup should pass from Him and, in doing so, He presents His human will to God and thus gives it the respect of its God-given dignity. However, He seeks only the will of His Father.

Our Lord knows what it is to be led into temptation, and He doesn't wish it upon us. He does not want us to suffer, but knows that we must because of the very nature of what it is to love. Love opens itself up to be wounded: there must be agony. God does not want suffering, but suffering is necessary for some greater good that we cannot understand but rather must accept as we learn to trust God.

It is clear that, by telling us to pray not to be led into temptation, Our Lord is saying that we should not want to be put into this position of having to choose between God and not-God. What we should want is for there to be no choice for us to make, that things should be clear-cut if not easy. This means being utterly aligned to the Father's will even as He is.

It also seems that Our Lord is tempted so that we shouldn't have to be.

Thus, we need to voice to God that we do not seek out to be tempted - we do not want the martyr's death - but rather prefer the stable, quiet life in God. We can see this if we try making the opposite prayer: "lead us into temptation!" While this might appear the prayer of a champion of the Faith to test his resolve, we notice that it would be a prayer for Pelagianism: we seek to earn our way into heaven by overcoming temptation off our own merit.

Thus, perhaps we should see "lead us not into temptation" as a prayer for grace to live out God's will knowing our own weakness and fallibility. We have to fear temptation knowing that, with the best will in the world, we will probably fall so very far short by choosing the path of sin. In praying not to be led into temptation, we are praying to rely on God's grace in the face of temptation and receive our salvation at His hands.

If he is indeed questioning what is in plain scripture, Pope Francis may be inadvertently opening up major Catholic Teaching to question. If the Lord's Prayer doesn't say what it says, then why shouldn't other words of Our Lord say something different? Are the Jehovah's Witnesses actually right when they believe that Our Lord says, "this represents my body" instead of "this is my body"? If this is what he is saying, does our venerable patriarch not make it possible for Protestant innovations to become normalised?

Perhaps he isn't saying this after all. I know that I am fallible but, then again, so is he!