The Kingdom of Truth

Sermon for the feast of Christ the King

Throughout the day, we have been standing with Our Lord Jesus as He stands before Pontius Pilate. We have spent today gazing upon this one scene looking at all the aspects of what it means to be king and it brings us back to this meeting of leaders. What we witness here is a struggle between kingdoms and yet only one is a real kingdom. 

This is a strange struggle, though, as we don't see soldiers fighting. Our Lord says that He has legions of angels at His command and yet He will not use them. The battle we are witnessing is not like anything we know. No cannons roaring or bullets flying; no swords nor spears; no skirmish or battle cry - at least none we recognise and yet, here, in the Roman Governor's office a battle is raging between kings.

[PAUSE]

Kingship involves imposing control somehow. Every king must face the struggle of exercising their will. Some do this by brute force; some do this by persuasion and diplomacy; some do this by careful manipulation.

How does Jesus rule?

[PAUSE]

God rules by the sheer act of creation. Things are as they are because He wills it. He says as much:

 Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

The truth is what really is. We owe our existence to God: only He makes things exist. More than that, God uses the very existence of things to communicate with us. We know that the Heavens are telling the glory of God. They have no speech or language and yet their sound has gone out into all lands. This is the truth that we hear and what we hear is the voice of God.

[PAUSE]

Kings exercise control in order to impose their will whatever the motivation behind that will may be. The truth of God's kingship is that it is motivated by goodness and love for us. His will is to love. He does not seek to dominate us. He does not seek to terrorise us or gain some pleasure by pitting us against each other. He does not play with our lives or seek some demeaning services from us. We are indeed to serve Him but in serving Him we find true joy.

We have a king who truly has our best interests at heart.

As He stands before Pilate, Our Lord is intent on proclaiming this truth that He is here to save us from evil and that, in a few hours time, He will do that on the Cross. That is His declaration of sincerity. It is His new covenant with us.

[PAUSE]

The rule of a king depends on those who accept his authority. The struggle is with those who do not accept it. Standing before Pilate, Our Lord is struggling. He struggles not against Pilate, nor against Pharisees, or Rome or the world: if He were then these would not stand. Christ fights against all the forces of Evil which have infected us since Adam and Eve.

He fights and His victory is our freedom. We are fully free to choose and that is God's victory on our behalf for true love allows the beloved to make a free choice. The truth will set us free. We could, like the Devil, choose to reject God and that distance from God will be ours for Eternity. 

Or we could accept the rule of Christ and see the truth. That truth will open our eyes to own selves and we shall behold His glory as the One Who sits upon the throne. His control over Creation gives us life and this life with Him will be Eternal.

A little something for Halloween

I was dared by a friend to turn this famous "true" story into a ballad. This is the result. Sleep well.

Listen to The Vampire of Croglin

1) 

As Charlie's reign draws to its end,

a fable rather strange

begins its haunt at the Low Hall

that's known as Croglin Grange.

Two brothers and a sister lease

this Hall that's near the church.

The graveyard's old; the stones are worn,

and there the phantoms perch.

2)

One night, the winds are high and howl

around the sister's room,

and from her window she can see

some movement in the gloom.

Two points of light, red fire aflame,

flit swift from tomb to tomb.

Afraid, she shuts the casement tight

and draws back in her room.

3)

And, as she swoons upon her bed,

wracked by foreboding plain,

she spies those self-same points of light

at her dark window pane.

A scratch upon the glass appalls

and pins her to her bed.

The beast outside, to entry gain,

unpicks the window's lead.

4)

A pane falls in, a finger long

creeps in and lifts the latch.

And through the window wide it slinks,

its victim now to catch.

It stands up, tall and thin and dark,

its face a shrivelled brown.

its eyes glow red and, to her bed, 

it holds its victim down.

5)

And into her poor throat all white

its fangs it deftly sinks

her roseate blood it trickles out

as Croglin's vampire drinks.

The brothers hear her screams and burst

into the sister's room.

The girl it drops and, whence it came,

flies out into the gloom.

6)

 The sister lives, though wounded sore.

Her neck the brothers bind.

They send her off to Switzerland

for health of mien and mind.

A few months pass, the girl returns

to Croglin's haunted hall.

She takes her chambers back again

to bilk the vampire's thrall.

7)

Yet, when the next the winds are high,

and red lights show their gleam

once more at sister's window pane,

she straightway starts to scream.

The brothers enter, pistols cocked

and see the vampire's frame.

A bullet fired into its leg

renders the monster lame.

8)

Across the grounds it limps and flees

towards the churchyard near.

And close behind, the men pursue,

no longer slaves to fear.

They find a stone all cracked and rent.

Beneath, a coffin old

its lid part off, the fiend within

all rank and all a-mould.

9)

A stake is driv'n; a spade is raised

and slices off its head

and, by the morn, the monster's burned

with its foul reign of dread.

Now, when the wind at Croglin's high

by candlelight, it's said

you may still hear the scratching sound

of unpicked window lead.

The hysteria of the Antichrist

Sermon for the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

In the film adaptation of The Name of the Rose, there is a darkly comedic scene in which a murder victim is found in the monastery with his legs poking out of a large jar of pig's blood. The monks immediately leap to the conclusion that the Antichrist is here and the end of the world is nigh and there is much wailing and fear. And Brother William of Baskerville, the Franciscan hero of the story, remains calm and rational. Yet, one thing is very clear, the Antichrist is present in that monastery: the murder is evidence of his presence. However, the murderer is not the Antichrist as Brother William demonstrates.

[PAUSE]

Lots of people get into hysterics about the Antichrist and yet don't quite know who he is. Some say he's the Devil; some say he or she is a human being born in an evil reflection of Our Lord's Holy Incarnation; some even identify him as being the Emperor Nero, Martin Luther or even the Pope. This is not what St John means.

The Antichrist is not like that. What many people understand by the Antichrist is a product of artistic licence brought about by religious hysteria.

[PAUSE]

St John is actually very clear on what Antichrist means. The clue is in the name: Antichrist means something that is "against Christ". St John says:

"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son."

Just as the Holy Ghost inspires men to call Jesus Lord and recognise the truth of His Love through His Incarnation, so the Antichrist is the spirit which inspires us to deny the reality of Jesus. There is an important difference.

For its plan to work, the Antichrist wants you to believe that it is at least God's Equal. You know this not to be true because, as St John tells you, you know the Father. If you know the Son, then you know the Father. You know God. And one thing you know about God is that He creates everything. This includes the very spirit that will rebel against Him of its own free will. The Antichrist is created by God, but it makes itself the Antichrist by going against God. This is true of all creatures who go against God. How can it be God's Equal? There can be only one Creator.

[PAUSE]

The only weapon of the Antichrist is lies. Lies cause doubt and confusion. Confusion causes hysteria, disruption and distrust. All of these cause a greater attention to the World with all its lusts and hatreds and distractions and, most importantly, forgetfulness of God.

When we forget God, we fall into sin. This is critical to understand. Most of us do not sin as part of some wilful desire to disobey God. Most of us sin because we have forgotten God. We sin because we have forgotten to put God first, to seek His righteousness and accept His rule. We put ourselves first with our own selfish desires to make us feel good. When we realise that we have sinned, we come scurrying back to Him in repentance. But we need to have that realisation in the first place. 

The Antichrist wants us not to realise that we have sinned precisely so that we don't repent. 

[PAUSE]

Rather than looking for the Antichrist in others, we need to look for the Antichrist in ourselves. When we sin we become antichrist because we fall from Him and oppose His rule. This makes self-examination and confession all the more necessary. We must examine ourselves in the light of Christ. The painful reality is that the better we know Christ, the better we know our sins and our failings and the more agonising this becomes. 

The pain of the realisation of our sins is so good for us because this is the pain of death to sin. Dying to sin is a painful business and it calls for God's strength to be with us and the Church standing with us. In the Church, we confess, turn to Christ and find true forgiveness. It hurts.

Of course, pain is not something we want in our lives and we are open to distraction from it. This is why the world is in hysteria with all its conflicting messages on television, in the news, on social media. While we are concentrating on things worldly, we are failing to look at our spiritual lives with God. 

The greater the pain of realising that we sin, the greater the distraction we need and hysteria produces precisely the confusion needed to distract us. Perhaps this is why the world is so noisy at the moment.

The best way of dealing with the pain of dying to sin is to focus on the eyes of Christ Who sees all. Christ suffers pain for us upon the Cross so that the pain of our dying is given a greater meaning than we imagine. The more we focus on Him, the more bearable the pain becomes and the closer we draw to Him

[PAUSE]

We are in pain because of what the Antichrist has done to us right from the start. Only Christ saves us and is doing so now.

Hear His words cut through the hysteria of the World and trust Him.

Missing the Physician

Sermon for St Luke's Day

In the Gregorian Canon of the Mass, there are two places in which a whole host of our spiritual fathers and mothers are mentioned. One set of names occurs before the consecration and consists of the Apostles and Martyrs; the second occurs after the consecration and consists of more Apostles, Marrtyrs and Virgins. In neither list will you find the name of St Luke. For that matter, you won't see the name of St Mark. Why not?

[PAUSE]

To be fair, there are many names missing from the canon of the Mass. What of St Timothy, St Titus, or St Justin Martyr? To be fair, even when St Gregory writes the Canon down in the Sixth Century, the list of apostles and martyrs is huge. It is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, just a representative list.

We know that St Luke is from Antioch and probably heard the Faith from St Paul but we don't know whether he is Jew or Gentile. We know that he is a physician and that he is credited as being the first ikonographer. We have his Gospel which contains songs sung by Our Lady, St Zacharias and St Simeon, as well as the words of the penitent thief.

And yet, St Luke does not appear on the list and this really wouldn't bother him. The one thing that concerns him is that people know who Our Lord is. He writes his Gospel and the Acts for one reason alone and that is to bring people the facts of our Faith. Nothing else matters.

We cannot treat the lists of Apostles and Martyrs as a Hall of Fame: that's not how things work. We have to see the Church in them just as we encounter Our Lord in the words of St Luke.

The same is true of our lists of intercession in which we read the names of all those who are dear to us who are sick or have died. We don't remember them at the expense of the countless millions who are sick or have died; we remember the few in order to bring all those millions to God. The people whom we know become representative of all because we all share the same humanity with each other and with Our Lord Jesus Christ.

[PAUSE]

At the Mass, we are brought into the company of Heaven as our home. As we gaze upon Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament nothing else matters for God is here. Like St Luke we may not have seen Him walk the earth with the Apostles, but we see him in the lives of others and in their testimony to the truth. 

St Luke does not attend the Last Supper the night our Lord is betrayed. He attends it with us at the celebration of the Mass. That's where the Apostles and Martyrs who are mentioned either side of the consecration point: not to themselves but to Christ being present with us.

That is the nature of the Mass: no Christian is ever missing from it.

Sacramental Curtains

Sermon for the eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

If nobody had ever told you, would you believe that God exists? If there were no Church, no Bible, no Gospel, no people testifying, would you be a Christian?

[PAUSE]

Many people say that religion has been made up and the only reason that people are religious is because their parents, teachers and, indeed, people around them are religious. This is true to an extent. If all you hear are the teachings of a particular religion the more likely you are to believe that religion. There is something to be said for learning about what other religions say.

These religions exist because they give a language to the voice that we hear in us. They give words to the stirring of the spirit.

The trouble is, they might not be the right words.

[PAUSE]

St John writes his letter to us in order to help us to hear the truth. He does not begin with myths and legends. He does not start talking of fables or spiritual utterances. He starts with what he has personally experienced. He has seen God with his own eyes. He has touched Him, embraced Him, heard Him speak and teach. He has eaten with God, seen God asleep in the boat, watched God work miracles before his very eyes. He has seen God crucified, bleed and die. He has been given the care of God's mother. 

And he is not the only one.

We are told that five hundred people see Jesus after His resurrection. They recognise that He died and they recognise that He lives. 

Unlike other religions, Christianity has eye-witness testimony to its truth. The voice that we hear in our souls is given a language in the truth.

But we don't have eyes to see what St John sees. Our eyes are in the darkness of two thousand years of history.

[PAUSE]

We can't see God the Father: He stands outside Creation and our sinful little eyes are too separate from Him to stand His glory. We would burn up in an instant.

We can't see God the Son: His walk with us is too long ago for us to see.

We can't see God the Holy Ghost: He is like the wind and we can only see His effects.

And yet, God is Light. Our existence is like having the curtains closed on a sunny day. If we opened the curtains, the light is too much for us to bear. They protect us while we walk this earth. Somehow God has to reach us through the curtains. He gives us the eye-witnesses but He also gives us Himself in veiled form.

[PAUSE]

While He walks with us, God is veiled in our Human Nature. While He is ascended, He gives us Himself veiled in the sacraments. His invisible grace is rendered visible by the curtain of our small reality.

What the Church does is give a language to what we experience in ourselves through the Holy Scriptures, through teaching the Catholic Faith and through giving us God Himself in the sacraments. This is why we need to go to Church: we need to hear what our soul is saying in the language of the One True God Who has shown Himself to be part of our History not our myths and legends.

[PAUSE]

We see through the glass darkly. Once we have the language for it, we realise that what we glimpse through that dark glass is pure Love.

Whose lives matter?

There is a lot of racial tension going around the world. The latest manifestation of this is the deep unrest caused by the unlawful death of George Floyd Jr at the hands of the police. Given that Mr Floyd had been convicted of eight crimes prior to this fatal interaction with the police does suggest that there may have been sufficient reason for his lawful arrest. Yet the video evidence is compelling that the poor man had an officer kneel on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Why was there no due care and diligence from the officer?

The other fact that has to be acknowledged is that the outrage it caused has to have come from somewhere - no smoke without fire! It is clear that many members of the black community do not feel that their lives matter. This is why the Black Lives Matter movement has arisen.

Of course, many will counter this with, "all lives matter!" Of course, that is very true but we do have to be careful. Simple Aristotelian logic tells us that if all human lives are lives that matter and that all black lives are human lives then black lives are lives that matter. Barbara comes to the rescue again! It's very easy to get behind a slogan and allow that slogan to allow us to find some emotional equilibrium without confronting the issue.

The death of Mr Floyd raises the question as to whether people who say "all lives matter" really mean that or whether they mean "black lives matter no more than anyone else's". The trouble with this last meaning is that it allows for the possibility that black lives do not matter as much - this is precisely the problem!

If we really mean "all lives matter" then we need to be showing it. The content of the Lord's commandment, "love thy neighbour as thyself" is precisely motivated by the fact that all lives do matter to God and that He is capable of demonstrating that. Of course, He requires that each of us demonstrate that, too.

White people can never know the abject suffering of black people at the hands of slave-traders. It's for good reason why we cannot appropriate their culture nor try and buy their affection by trying to be like them as if our whiteness somehow makes black cultural acceptable. If anything, the statues of those involved in the slave trade should remind us of our cultural shame. In this instance, Shame is no bad thing. We all need to feel shame for our sins because that shame demonstrates that we recognise our own personal wrong-doing. Just as the Germans must live with the fact of Nazism so must we live with what we have done.

No, we have no personal guilt but our lives today are the results of the sins of our fathers. We are infected by their sin even if we are not guilty of it. This is precisely what the doctrine of Original Sin says.

I've been reflecting on the dreadful case of Emmett Till who was a black boy mutilated and murdered because he whistled cheekily at a white woman and whose white murderers got away scot-free. His mother tore the lid off of his coffin at his funeral because she wanted the world to see what had been done to this perfectly happy young man. Those who express outrage at the death of George Floyd are doing the same.

As with all movements, there are some who jump on the bandwagon in order to pursue some violent antisocial agenda. There will be those black people who seek vengeance and the extermination of whites. These are consumed with anger and bitterness and will perpetuate the violence if they are allowed to become prominent. 

The Catholic Faith teaches us that Baptism makes us dead to sin and that we must now seek to live lives worthy of our calling to be Christian. It is not a dismissal or rejection of the past: we need that past to remind us of why Jesus had to die so horribly. The Cross is both our shame for its necessity and our joy for our salvation through it. It is a sign that our lives matter but that this is not mere lip service to a slogan nor a subscription to a political ideology.

If we really want to show that all lives matter then we need to enter into meaningful and humble dialogue with those who believe that they are being told that their lives don't matter. Why do so many young black men go to prison or fall victim to gang violence? What is our collective contribution (or lack thereof) to that?

The Catholic Faith teaches confession, repentance and forgiveness. We also have to remember that forgiveness is not a right  for the penitent nor that it is immediate. Forgiveness takes time to complete and requires true contrition for it to work. We have to earn forgiveness with tears and sincerity: we have to let people earn forgiveness with both justice and mercy.

If people are crying out that their lives matter then we must accept that they have a reason to believe that their lives don't matter. Of course this does not give them carte blanche to make unreasonable demands: a life without the latest mobile phone is not an unvalued life but demands for that phone on the grounds of rights are rather evidence that someone has a system of value judgement that actually undervalues human life and dignity. Unreasonable demands make light of the sufferings that many endure.

Let us just talk. Let us get away from soundbite, slogan, sign and signalling. Rather let us listen - really listen - and then speak words which have some substance, address real issues, and express true sorrow. Let none of us try to be someone we're not but rather learn to live with the repercussions of our fathers' failures and seek to bring good out from them in the eyes of God who knows all.

Keep the statues and remember the history - the shame together with the triumph, the sin together with the virtue - for that confusion of Saint and Sinner is preceded what we humans are until we are transformed by God into His likeness.

Above all, let us continue to learn to love our neighbour as ourselves. Our neighbourhood is multicoloured and all lives matter because they are worth living just by the fact of their existence.

Armour amour.

Sermon for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

It is no coincidence that the handshake has the same origin as the salute. They are very old gestures that go back to ancient warfare. 

The salute is said to come from raising the visor of your helmet so that you can be recognised as a friend. The handshake demonstrates that your hand is free from weapons.

Both are gestures that render you vulnerable. In order to salute someone or to recognise them as a friend, you have to trust them and expose the chinks in your armour. To trust makes one vulnerable to attack.

[PAUSE]

Armour has changed greatly over the centuries. Breastplates have become bullet-proof vests. Helmets no longer have to be fastened over your head with screws or rivets. Kevlar has replaced iron.

What hasn't changed is the use of armour to defend yourself. Christians are no different.

[PAUSE]

St Paul acts as our armourer, showing us each piece of our armour and how it is to be used.

Our loins are to be girt with truth. Our most vulnerable parts are to be protected by being honest and recognising what is real. The Devil can wound us very easily with lies and falsehood. Knowing what the truth is stops us from being damaged from within and protects us from infection.

Our breastplate protects our heart. Together with truth, righteousness protects us from deep injury because we know right from wrong and that we seek to do the right thing. It stops the Devil trying to convince us to sin, for the wages of sin is death.

Even our feet need to be protected. We hear Isaiah say how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. We are bearers of good news and so our feet need to be protected from stumbling in order to help our brothers and sisters hear the Gospel.

Our first defence against the Devil is our shield of faith. We have good reason for believing in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ. There will be times when our belief is challenged and so we need to wield our faith as our protection from the fiery darts of the Devil.

Our helmet is Salvation. Our minds can be clouded by all kinds of doctrine and false teaching but the truth is simple enough for any human being: salvation from Evil is ours for the taking at the hands of Our Lord Jesus Christ Who died on the Cross to obtain it and Who rose again to give it to us. 

Finally, our sword is the Holy Ghost. This is important. Our foe is not a physical being. Our real enemy is not any other human being: our foe is the Devil and he is a spirit along with his minions. The only true weapon that we have against such an imposing adversary is God Himself. The love that God has for us is that He is willing to be our sword and destroy the enemy.

Why do we need armour? Why doesn't God just keep us in an impregnable fortress?

[PAUSE]

The fact that we have armour shows that God expects us to fight Evil actively. We aren't to hide passively in a bunker. Our duty is to be soldiers for Christ out in the world for the good of those who do not yet believe, for the good of those who may never believe.

But we have to recognise the Enemy. 

The real Enemy is never another human being. We are expected to love those people whom we might call our enemies and to show no less charity to them than we show our friends. It is for their sake that we are not hidden in a bunker but seek to combat real Evil.

We are to do it with humility and not bluster or bravado. We are to do it with wisdom and faith and not with all guns blazing. We are to do it with care and generosity for the salvation of others and not seeing our brothers and sisters as anything other than the reason to fight.

[PAUSE]

 The attack on Evil has been made for us on the Cross. Our fight is to defend ourselves and each other from a dying enemy. Our whole armour is nothing less than that of true love.