23rd Sunday of the Year

“By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus. ”Small of stature, rocklike in faith, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was entrusted with the mission of proclaiming God’s thirsting love for humanity, especially for the poorest of the poor. “God still loves the world and He sends you and me to be His love and His compassion to the poor.” She was a soul filled with the light of Christ, on fire with love for Him and burning with one desire: “to quench His thirst for love and for souls.”

The whole of Mother Teresa’s life and labour bore witness to the joy of loving, the greatness and dignity of every human person, the value of little things done faithfully and with love, and the surpassing worth of friendship with God. But there was another heroic side of this great woman that was revealed only after her death. Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her, was her interior life marked by an experience of a deep, painful and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever-increasing longing for His love. She called her inner experience, “the darkness.” The “painful night” of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and continued to the end of her life, led Mother Teresa to an ever more profound union with God. Through the darkness she mystically participated in the thirst of Jesus, in His painful and burning longing for love, and she shared in the interior desolation of the poor.

22nd Sunday of the Year

Confidence is something that Jesus never lacked; in this Sunday's gospel, we see him cheerfully going for one of the "disastrous dinner-parties" with which Luke adorns his gospel. The host this time is "one of the rulers of the Pharisees — and they were watching him". So we know that there is going to be trouble. As indeed there is, for Jesus heals a man with dropsy, but for some reason the compilers of our lectionary have omitted that bit. Instead (and would you invite Jesus to one of your dinner-parties?) the first thing we encounter is Jesus criticising his fellow-guests for wanting the best seats at the party, and encouraging them instead to go straight to the worst seats, on the perhaps slightly cynical grounds that it is better to find yourself summoned upwards from there. Then, in case things had not got quite uncomfortable enough, he turns on his host, and attacks him for inviting his friends. "Don't", he says, as we groan with embarrassment, "invite your friends or brothers and sisters or your cousins or your wealthy neighbours — otherwise they'll invite you back". Instead, it seems, the people we are supposed to invite to our parties are all the wrong people (those with whom Jesus was nearly always to be found): "the destitute, the crippled, the lame, the blind and then you'll be happy, [precisely] because they have no way of repaying you: for you'll get your reward at the resurrection of the just".

We feebly try to imagine what the mood was like around the dinner-table after this speech; but if you are making a mental resolution not to put Jesus on your guest-list, then just ask yourself: suppose it is really true that we are happiest if we make a priority of those whom society ignores? Suppose that we are dealing with a God who prefers those on the margins? Can we cope with this unexpected God of ours?

The Assumption of our Lady

Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady's Assumption. Privately we scratch our heads about this feast, and wonder whether it is really "in the Bible", but it may be I, helpful to remember two things. First, all feasts of Our Lady are always celebrations of her Son; and secondly, no city, anywhere, has ever claimed to have her bones. So the celebration is an ancient one, and no matter how difficult we may find it it is all about Jesus, whose mother had to be different, not because of what she had done, but because God had prepared her for the unique task that she had to fulfil, as Mother of God. In addition to that, the fact that she is, in our belief, now utterly present to God, is a sign for us of where we shall be when our story is finished.

It is not an easy business, being the Mother of God; and nor is it easy being a ;disciple of Jesus, as the first reading for next Sunday reminds us. We are halfway through the Book of Revelation, with its account of what is going on in God's world, with a vision of the Ark of the Covenant, which often stands for Mary in Scripture, and then "a great sign". This "sign" is "a woman clothed in the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars". This sounds very grand, but we then learn that this woman is not only in her labour-pains, which is bad enough, but menaced with a thoroughly unpleasant-sounding dragon, which stands before the woman who is about to give birth, "in order to gobble up her child when she gives birth". The child is, quite clearly, Jesus, "who is going to shepherd all the Gentiles with an iron staff', and (to our relief) is snatched up to God's safety. Nothing so congenial for his mother, however, who has to "run away nto the desert, where she has a place prepared from God".

Birmingham Pilgrimage

The final national event of the Ordinariate year is a national pilgrimage to the Shrine of Blessed John Newman in Birmingham. We have been offered use of the Birmingham Oratory on the day nearest to Cardinal Newman's feast day. The pilgrimage begins at St Chad's Cathedral on Friday 7th October, with Sung Evensong and Benediction at 6:30 pm —the Cathedral Choir providing the music. This will be followed by a reception and a talk on Blessed John Henry Newman by Father Ian Ker, who has written several books on Blessed John Henry Newman.

On the Saturday we meet at the Birmingham Oratory. Coffee will be available in the Cloister Hall from 9:45. Confessions from 10:15 in preparation for Mass at 11am followed by veneration of the relics. Packed lunches may be eaten in the Upper Cloister Hall where at 2:30 there will be an address by the Rev'd Dr. Stephen Morgan and a talk on Newman and the Oratory by the Provost.

18th Sunday of the year

The parable of the rich fool, Rembrandt

What are the things that really matter in life? That is the uncomfortable question that the readings for this Sunday pose to us. The first reading comes to us from Qoheleth, or Ecclesiastes (“the Preacher”) as his Greek nickname goes, with the well-known refrain that goes “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. Then (leaping into his second chapter, for some reason), this deep and radical thinker offers an example of this “vanity”: “a person who has expended effort and wisdom and expertise and skill – and he leaves his portion to someone who has not put in the effort. This is also vanity and great wickedness”. Some scholars point out that Qoheleth hardly ever mentions God; but you can do God’s work without speaking of the Almighty, and the task of the Preacher is to expose the foolishness of the pursuits to which we normally give our energies, in order that we may find our way to God.

That is a point made more explicitly in the Psalm for this Sunday, setting the folly of human pursuits against God’s greater purposes (“You turn human beings back into dust, and say, ‘Go back, sons of men’.”) and different perspective (“In your eyes a thousand years are like a single day, yesterday...a dream in the night”). So for God, all our passionate human endeavours are “like grass that flourishes in the morning – in the evening it withers and fades”. So we need God’s perspective, to find out what really matters: “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a wise heart”, and then, in a prayer that comes from the heart, “fill us in the morning with your love”. It is God, and God alone, who can “prosper the work of our hands”.

17th Sunday of the Year

Can God interact with human beings? Can human beings communicate with God? Astonishingly, that mysterious activity to which we give the name of "prayer” seems be not only possible, but also necessary for our growing to full maturity; and the first and third readings for this Sunday give us some idea of how this prayer works. first reading is an extraordinarily audacious tale of Abraham and God doing battle. God has determined to find out if Sodom and Gomorrah should be punished, for offences that have not yet been specified.

It is a charming picture of a God who does not quite know what the situation is; to this God Abraham addresses himself with some courage, endeavouring to protect the city, by arguing that there might be fifty righteous people there, and that it would be unreasonable to destroy it if that were the case. God agrees that for fifty such the city will not be destroyed; but the matter does not end there, and Abraham, deferentially but firmly, beats God down, step by step, to agreeing to spare the city if they can find just ten innocent people. There the matter ends, and the story takes a different turn.

What can we say about prayer? Clearly, according to this-story, prayer is not a matter of magic; it is not that if you put in so many hours of prayer, or over several days utter the right formula, a particular result can be guaranteed; that would be pagan superstition. Prayer is something far more extraordinary than that; prayer, almost unbelievably, is a matter of a relationship between the Creator of All That Is and the insignificant human beings that we are (insignificant, that is to say, except to this extraordinary God).

What's In a Hymn?

It is very easy simply to sing hymns without thinking about the origins of the words and the music. An interesting pastime is to go away and research a little about the hymns we sing in Church. Traditionally Catholics did not sing hymns in Church — not really until the end of the nineteenth century and even then very seldom. When they did there would rarely be hymns from non-Catholic sources. No so today. Our final hymn today is a great finishing hymn 'All my hope on God is founded'. It is really a collaboration between three men. Two wrote the words and one added the music.

  Joachim Neander                         Robert Bridges

Joachim Neander wrote this hymn and sixty more. He was a member of the German Reformed Church, and was strongly influenced by Philip Spenser, the founder of Pietism. A rambunctious sort in his youth, he became involved in ministry in his 20s, but died at age 30 of tuberculosis. However, his hymns, particularly this one and the more famous "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation" have inspired Christian worship for more than three centuries (Neander died in 1680).

This hymn calls us to trust God rather than "mortal pride" or "earthly glory." It reminds us that "sword and crown betray our trust." It calls us to praise the one whose "great goodness e'er endureth." Robert Bridges (Poet Laureate) translated the hymn into English. The Tune 'Michael' was named after Herbert Howells' son who died aged 9 from spinal meningitis. He wrote it over breakfast one morning.

Herbert Howells

Here is a recording of this hymn performed at Westminster abbey during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.