Fr Peter's newsletter notes - April 2005

2nd Week of Easter - Sunday 3rd April 2005

The change of hour last weekend made me believe that the congregation on Sunday would be sadly diminished. This was to be far from the case, as nearly eighty attended Mass, a small number for most Parishes, but large for St Mary Moorfields. Even this surprisingly large number was smaller than the congregation on Good Friday. The size of this congregation to that of Holy Thursday and Easter Vigil/Sunday is something that always fascinates me. The most obvious explanation would be the close association we can draw between the suffering of Jesus and human suffering in general. It is a day when God in Jesus Christ is so much on our side. The blatant hypocrisy of the Chief Priests, the mindless cruelty of the soldiers, and the moral weakness of Pontius Pilate all add to the sense of suffering. Most of us believe we have met such figures all too often in our own lives. Hypocrisy, mindless cruelty and moral weakness are the order of the day. It forms the content of much of our national newspapers, it describes the conduct of all too many governments and, if we are honest, we can perhaps see something of ourselves in this description as well.

To take Good Friday and isolate it from Easter Sunday, as if Easter was merely the divine confirmation of the innocence and divinity of Jesus would be to loose the heart of the Christian message, which is the triumph of hope over death, of light over dark, and the beginning of a new creation. Jesus most certainly did die a cruel and savage death, and the presence of the Father throughout that day seems more of an absence. The presence of the Father though becomes obvious in the Resurrection, as he raises His beloved Son to new life. The Father has indeed remained faithful to His Son throughout His suffering and death. The Son, in turn, remained faithful to His mission up to the end, and the prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane show that even to Jesus the will of God can be opaque.

The mysterious action of God at the heart of the Resurrection is far more difficult to grasp than the natural empathy that any believer can feel in relation to Good Friday, as there are no human parallels. The restoration by the risen Jesus of His relationship with His fallible disciples could only be a divine work. No mere human agency could have brought them back together. Jesus' few words to Mary Magdalene on the first Easter morning to 'tell the brothers that He was ascending to my God and your God', and that 'He would go before them to Galilee' are world shattering. They describe the outpouring of forgiveness that involves a restoration of a formerly broken friendship and the opening to a new way of believing in God. No longer will belief in God be of someone out there, but of a living with God, and a sharing in the life of the Trinity.

This new relationship that the risen Jesus establishes is very different. The radical nature of Christian faith is that God has come near in Jesus Christ, and that He invites us to share His divine life. This is revealed in our efforts to help build the kingdom of God, through following our vocation, completing with a joyful heart the obligations and burdens that relate to our state in life; to bring together those that have become dispersed; to heal division and to bring peace.

These actions answer the question, how does the Resurrection affect our moral life? None of this is possible without first following the Ten Commandments, but the gift of the Holy Spirit makes us want to go further. The sharing of divine life, however tentative, impels us to participate in bringing forth this new creation that the risen Jesus promised His disciples, when he gave them the Holy Spirit, and the power to forgive sin.

4th Week of Easter - Sunday 24th April 2005

It seemed hard to believe at the time of active hostilities in Iraq that this was a nation technically at war, whatever one might think of the legalities or merits of such an action. The volume of newsprint did little to inform the nation on whose behalf the war was being fought, as many people were already alienated from the whole process of political discussion that led up to the war. The reasons that led the government to justify such actions have now been lost in the obvious manipulation of the advice given by the secret services and other bodies. The sad consequence of such a short-sighted activity is the accelerating collapse in trust between the subject and those who govern the country.

The conduct of government by tabloid slogans insults the intelligence of the average person who knows that many issues confronting governments, including the reasons for the Iraq war, are complex and do not lend themselves to glib answers or red-top slogans. The claim that weapons of mass destruction are ready to be set off from Iraq in forty-five minutes now looks risible, and it seems incredible that so many were taken in by this tabloid-style scare story. Consequently, it is no wonder that many find it hard to believe that there is going to be an election in just over three weeks. The party most likely to win is the 'No Vote Party', and this could have all sorts of largely unpredictable results. The collapse of trust that has occurred with accelerating speed in the last few years, along with the simultaneous appeals by all political parties to trust in their promises, are a massive turn-off to most people. This will lead to increasing number of independent and local candidates, who will enter Parliament.

This progressive sense of detachment between subject and government is a source of great danger. Every country needs legitimate authority to organise its affairs both within and without its borders, and the wholesale abandonment of the democratic process will let some very unsavoury elements take over the instruments of power for their own agenda. This may already be seen in the doctrinaire way many members of the Cabinet behave with respect to others' opinions, or to any intelligent debate about such issues as identity cards, the abolition of the Office of the Lord Chancellor, and the vindictive stance against academic excellence. It is a form of conduct that perhaps differs little from the days when some currently serving individuals would have been categorised as extreme left-wing student politicians.

The Christian does have a duty to exercise the vote as every believer has his or her feet in two cities, that of the city of God and that of the city of man. The abandonment of the city of man, out of a justifiable distaste for the governing class, is not a possible option. The kingdom of God is being established here on earth in a provisional way, and its future can be occasionally glimpsed through the struggles of daily life. The Catechism includes the section on Civil Authority under the heading of the Fourth Commandment, 'Honour thy father and thy mother'. The civil authority is to safeguard the 'rights of everyone, especially families and the disadvantaged'.(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2237).

This would obviously include the right to life, from conception to natural death, and the commitment to social justice, both within and outside the country. Every candidate, and political party, needs to be questioned on all those issues to do with the beginning and end of human life. They also need to be questioned about their understanding of our culture that has led to such high levels of abortion, marital break-up, binge drinking and ubiquitous low level lawlessness. Do they have any alternatives to propose, and can they see how such a culture might be changed in these areas? The wilful refusal by any government to accept that perhaps the direction of contemporary sex education, with its emphasis on condoms and morning-after pills, is not the only way does not give one much hope. Just as the virtue of humility is necessary for any believer, it must be a requirement in any politician or candidate for such office. Most people do not expect wholesale change overnight, but any individual worthy of a Catholic vote should be willing to contemplate and encourage others to take the necessary steps to foster a culture of life rather than to perpetuate a continuing culture of death.

5th Week of Easter - Sunday 24th April 2005

The choosing of the name Benedict by Cardinal Ratzinger on his election to the Papacy raises a number of very interesting parallels. The very fact that he will be Benedict XVI gives the Papacy an aura of historical continuity and anchor in tradition. The name also resonates with two historical figures of the same name, St Benedict, Patron of Europe and founder of Western monasticism, and Pope Benedict XIV, the much-maligned Pope for peace who reigned between 1914 and 1922. Each in their different ways stood apart from the times in which they lived, and their actions though misunderstood then have now been proved correct in hindsight.

St Benedict grew up in the twilight years of the Roman Empire, when belief in the validity of the Roman Imperium was in sad decline, to be replaced by a debauched and irreverent way of life among the ruling classes. Benedict rejected this descent into barbarity and retreated into the hills beyond Rome to establish a community where learning, civility and morality could still flourish. The prescient act made sure that much of the deposit of human learning was preserved through that period of history known as the Dark Ages. The monasteries become the sole repositories of learning, and remained places of civility and culture in dangerous age.

Alistair Macintyre, a famous British philosopher ended his work on 'After Virtue', with the statement, 'we are waiting not for a Godot, but for another, doubtless very different, St Benedict'. This work was both a critique of contemporary morality and a call to return to the traditional virtue morality of the Church, a morality embodied in the lifestyle of St Benedict and his companions. Perhaps Alistair Macintyre's wish has now been granted. The choosing of this name says much about the role of the Church in preserving all that is good in human culture, and of giving the necessary respect to the human person. Today's culture is very similar to that of the dying days of the Roman Empire. The collapse in belief in the legitmacy of the government as witnessed by the mass indifference to the current General Election, demonstrates the lack of will to support our way of life. It no longer captures the imagination as something worth saving. The reasons for this are varied and complex, but have been fostered by a creeping alienation from the political process, a systematic distortion of the truth, and turning of the language of human rights into the language of power. Human rights have now become an expression of power of the strong over the weak, not as originally intended the protection of the weak against the strong. Once the human person is reduced to a consumer or client of the state, then his transcendent qualities are quickly obliterated. The Church cannot stand idly by and simply watch this process, and hence its quickly misunderstood, in the viewpoint of the world, defence of the defenceless. The preservation of human dignity, and the sense of life as a gift from God will in the future be seen as one of the great prophetic acts of the Church, long after we are all dead.

A similar type of prophetic act may be seen in Pope Benedict XVI's predecessor, Benedict XV, who reigned during the First World War, His attempts to mediate peace between the warring sides was rebuffed by both, who each though the Papacy favoured the other. Now the carnage of the First World War can be seen, eighty years later, in all its horror, and had his attempts to mediate peace, countless millions would not have dies in that senseless slaughter.

The Church preaches Christ as the answer to questions of humanity, not simply through its doctrines but also through her way of life. The Church, through her communities, whether Parish or otherwise, will continue to sustain places where civility and morality still hold centre stage. The idea that the Church is going to suddenly adopt the mores of the world, and to condone the acts of violence of the strong against the weak, which is effectively being demanded by numerous TV and newspaper commentators, shows a complete lack of understanding of the prophetic role of the Church on this the cusp of the new Dark Ages.

Jesus and Nicodemus. St John c3:1-21. Second Week of Easter 2005.

The conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus took place early in Jesus' public life, but is read during the Easter season as it concerns the entry into eternal life, the fruit of Jesus' death on the Cross.

The entry into the kingdom of God is only possible through the Sacrament of Baptism (through water and the Holy Spirit). This is a unique of God, but one that requires an appropriate human response. Nicodemus, like so many others, stumbles over the necessary transition from simply seeing Jesus as a uniquely endowed miracle worker, to one of seeking entry into the kingdom of God. The Christian faith requires more than identifying Jesus correctly. It also involves entry into a specific way of life animated by divine love.

The 'being born from above', which so perplexed Nicodemus, will involve gazing upon the raised Cross. These words of Jesus are a prediction of His Passion, and an indication as to its consequence for salvation. Jesus draws a parallel with the bronze serpent fashioned by Moses on the instructions of God, and which he raised to protect the Israelites from the poisonous snakes that had been divinely sent after their apostasy. The Cross, like the bronze serpent, is a spiritual healing but also the recognition of sin, and the deepest reason why Jesus died on the Cross. The raising of the Cross will result in the conquest of sin, but the action of lifting will find its accomplishment in His resurrection and ascension back to the Father.

Behind the lifting up of the Son is the work of the Father who, acting out of the most mysterious of motives, sent His Son into the world of fallen humanity. The Resurrection of the Son is the ultimate proof of the love of God for the world. The choice to accept or reject this love, which has been made visible in Jesus' life and death, will bring with it either the gift of eternal life or the wrath of divine judgement. This critical choice is never made in a vacuum, and the answer is already implied in the life we now presently lead.

The Good Shepherd: St John c.10 (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) Fourth Week of Easter 2005.

The use of 'shepherd' to describe a religious and political leader has a long tradition in the Old Testament. Both Moses and David were shepherds before they took up their divine summons. The prophet Ezekiel promises that worthy shepherds will be sent to lead the chosen people by God.

Jesus takes up this imagery but develops it further. The Good Shepherd is contrasted with those other shepherds who act through self-interest alone. They run away in front of danger, and they fail to recognise the call of the sheep, as the sheep also fail to listen to their voice. Ultimately the Good Shepherd will go so far as to lay down his life for the sheep. These three key differences between Jesus and the other shepherds point to the depth of love implied in the Incarnation, of God becoming man in Jesus Christ. Jesus adds to this shepherd image, that of the door to the sheepfold. This is a conscious echo of those Psalms that speak of opening and entering the gateway to the Temple of God. As well as exhibiting all the pastoral qualities of a good shepherd, Jesus is also claiming to possess exclusive access to the Father, which will be revealed in His resurrection from the dead and return to the Father, an action made possible through His divine nature as Son.

The emphasis that Jesus places on being the Good Shepherd makes the Jews ask whether he is the Messiah? Jesus never answers such questions without qualification, as they are easily open to a political misinterpretation. His identity must follow from His works, such as the healing of the man born blind. Jesus' identity is revealed through an act of faith potentially open to all, but in reality open only to the relative few who can read the signs. However, to those who respond, another force is mysteriously at work, that of the Father. This means that those with faith may never need be lost, nor lose the fruits of faith, eternal life. The passage ends with Jesus' statement that, 'The Father and I are one', which forms one of the texts for the doctrine of the Trinity as developed by the Church through reflection on the Scriptures.

St John's Gospel c.15 'I am the true vine' (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) Fifth Week of Easter 2005.

The prophet Isaiah was the first to use combination of both vine and the vinedresser to express the relationship between God and His chosen people. Now Jesus identifies Himself with the vine, a living plant composed of numerous branches. Other than the trunk the vine virtually becomes the branches. This corporate image of Jesus points to the Church as the 'Body of Christ'.

The image is further developed through Jesus' emphasis on the need to remain. The branches only bear fruit by remaining attached to the vine. St Augustine draws the conclusion that all religious life is committed life, and there can be no division between faith and works. The meritorious qualities of good works are only done in union with Christ. The later emphasis on either good works or faith does not accord with the mind of Christ or the Church.

The fruits of the branches are revealed in the world through the commitment to love. This love will imitate that of Christ who laid down His life in a continuous act of service to others. Jesus has demonstrated the reality of that love through the washing of the disciples' feet, and through this action incorporated the apostles into His mission and destiny. The Apostles remain both servants to the truth but become friends between themselves and Jesus.

This love that will bring others into the new community will generate hostility from the world, just as it did for Jesus Himself. However like Jesus they must not shrink from their mission nor be overcome with fear, as there are those who will listen to the Word and enter into the community. The deep-seated cause of persecution is an ignorance of God that is both unconscious and wilful, a situation that remains valid today as it did in those first years of the Church's mission.