July: the month of the Precious Blood

July is the month when Catholics traditionally have a devotion to the Precious Blood. The spilling of this blood is the root of our salvation and each week in July one of our hymns will mention the Precious Blood. Watch out for them.

Walsingham association

Thank you to all who supported the inaugural meeting of the Reading Branch of the Walsingham Association yesterday.

A link to the Walsingham association site can be found here, as well as in the right-hand sidebar. One of the things we learned yesterday was the role of the new media in encouraging pilgrimage and increasing the national profile of the shrine. In particular, you can find broadcasts of Masses on their youtube channel here, or follow their latest developments on social media via their twitter feed or facebook page.

The Roman Catholic Shrine in Houghton St Giles, Walsingham

We conclude with this elegant hymn to Our Lady of Walsingham.

16th Sunday of the Year

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Erasmus II Quellin

Today's readings are about hospitality. Our Gospel for this Sunday is clearly about hospitality — but whose? At one level, it is true, the hospitality is clearly that of Martha, who accepts Jesus into her home. But it is also the hospitality of Jesus, who thinks that it is permissible and proper to be with women and to talk to them about the things of God; like the three men in our first reading, Jesus actually honours the house of the two sisters simply by being there and not worrying about ritual impurity. Jesus is, Luke tells us, on the journey, and we already know that it will take him to Jerusalem and death; furthermore, he has just had an aggressive encounter with the lawyer that provoked the deeply subversive story of the Good Samaritan. The tone here is far gentler (Luke is, in the end, a very gentle gospel); but it is also subversive, for the last thing that we should expect is that a woman would give hospitality. And not just one, but two; for Martha has a sister, Mary, who "sat at the feet of the Lord, and listened to his word", and inevitably we remember that other Mary, in the second chapter of Luke's gospel, who "kept all these things in her heart". There is drama, however, and tension, for Martha has allowed the hospitality to be a drain on her; and she flips, and starts giving orders to the Lord (this is hospitality gone horribly wrong), "don't you care that my sister" (she can't bring herself even to utter her name) "has abandoned me to serve? Tell her to help!" Jesus is incredibly gentle in the face of this aggression, the repetition of her name ("Martha, Martha") robbing his reply of all venom; and he says that Mary's portion 'shall not be taken from her". Who is giving hospitality to whom?

Rublëv's Icon of the Trinity

13th Sunday of the Year

This Sunday's Gospel begins Luke's unique account of Jesus' long journey to Jerusalem (9:51 - 19:17).  Jesus' fateful trek begins in a solemn way; Luke introduces the section with the portentous phrase, "As the time approached when Jesus was to be taken from this world, he firmly resolved to proceed toward Jerusalem . . ." (9:51).  For Luke, Jesus is beginning his "exodus," his divinely prescribed fate to go to Jerusalem to suffer but also enter his glory by being "taken" into heaven (see Luke 24).  In the course of his journey, Jesus will teach his would be disciples the requirements of "following" him. The radical demands of being a follower of Jesus are evident in the opening incidents of the journey.  Jesus is not received by a Samaritan village which provokes James and John to request, “Lord, would you not have us call down fire from heaven to destroy them.”  Unlike the prophet Elijah who did call down fire to destroy his enemies (see 2 Kings 1), Jesus lives out his own teaching on love of the enemy (see Lk 6:2736) by reprimanding his vengeful disciples and moving on to another town.

Three subsequent encounters with would be followers provide Jesus with the opportunity to give proverbs about the cost of discipleship.  First of all, the disciples must be willing to abandon their earthly homes, like Elisha in the first reading. "The foxes have lairs, the birds of the sky nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Jesus' followers also cannot delay the call of the kingdom by waiting to be free of normal family obligations.  The man who wants to wait for his father to die before following Jesus receives the challenge: "Let the dead bury their dead; come away and proclaim the kingdom."  The final encounter is a direct contrast to Elijah's call of Elisha in the first reading.  To the man who wants to take leave of his family at home Jesus says, "Whoever puts his hand to the plough but keeps looking back is unfit for the reign of God."  Each of these proverbs should be heard as a call, rather than a reproach.  Jesus, who is "firmly resolved to proceed toward Jerusalem" where he will meet suffering and death but also enter his glory, is the model for the disciple's commitment.

Meeting of the Walsingham Association

The Reading Branch of the Walsingham Association has its inaugural meeting on 16th July at 3pm at St James’ Church.

We will meet in the Barberi Room and we are delighted to be able to welcome David Chapman who is coming over from Walsingham to be with us on this occasion.

This Association is open to anyone but it is an important initiative of the Reading Ordinariate Mission so it is imperative we support this as a group. Please put it firmly in your diaries.

11th Sunday of the Year

One of the things that religion has to do for us is help us to cope with the fact that we get things wrong, very often out of sheer selfishness, which leads to bad choices. Something of that is going on in the readings for next Sunday. The first reading comes from the lively and unedifying tale of David committing adultery with Bathsheba and then the murder of her husband (read it tonight, in 2 Samuel 11). The prophet Nathan does a very brave thing and traps David by telling, in parable form, the story of what he has done, and when the tale has aroused David’s anger, points the finger at him, saying “You are the man”, and pronounces God’s judgement on him, by way of a reminder of what God has done for him,

Thou art the man, Peter Rothermel

“I anointed you King over Israel, I delivered you from the hand of Saul, I gave you your lord’s house, and your lord’s wives as your own, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah...”. So David is accused of (among other things) rank ingratitude. All is not lost, however, for he is able to say, humbly, to the prophet, “I have sinned”, to which Nathan replies, “The Lord has forgiven your sin – you shall not die”. Now this is not a sycophantic cleric leaping into bed with the politically powerful, for the prophet makes it quite clear to David that he has to be punished (and, as a matter of fact, that he deserves death). So a part of the invitation to us this week will be to recognise that we have indeed made sinful choices, but that at the same time we are dealing with a God who loves us more than we can say, and is ready to forgive.

King David in prayer, Pieter de Grebber

Our latest Newsletter can be found here.

10th Sunday of the Year

Jesus raises the Widow of Nain's son, Mario Minniti 

One of the striking features of the God of Jews and Christians is that ours is a God who cares for those on the margins of society, especially orphans and immigrants and widows. That is what comes out of the readings for this Sunday. In the first reading, a widow who is not of the true faith has just provided food for that slightly alarming figure the prophet Elijah, “the man of God”; then she is apparently rewarded by the death of her son, “there remained no breath [of life] in him”. Not surprisingly, she reproaches him roundly, “What have you and I to do with each other, man of God? Did you come to me to remind me of my guilt, and put my son to death?”

Elijah revives the Son of the Widow from Zarephath, Rutilio Manetti

There is a rather complicated theology lurking here, about what causes evil, but the prophet does not waste time with arguing. Instead he tells her “Give me your son”, and he takes the child upstairs to his room, places him on his bed, and prays to God for the widow, and “stretched himself out three times on the boy and called on the Lord”, and his petition is that God (who is of course responsible for death and life) should not kill the widow’s son. Inevitably God hears his prayer, and the woman recognizes Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God”. There is a real sense here that the world has meaning, after all, and that God cares.