Fr Peter's newsletter notes - January 2005

1st Week of Ordinary Time - Sunday 9th January 2005

Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury's office has been busy putting out disclaimers that he still believes in God, a necessary action after the rather mischievous headline in a recent edition of the Sunday Telegraph. The trouble was compounded by the way he described how he would question his faith in the goodness of God following the recent earthquake and tsunami in South East Asia. The unintended impression was given that he, and other Christians, move from a position of clarity over God's existence to one of doubt every time something dreadful happens. This form of thought pattern is also fostered by the media's treatment of the latest natural disaster as always being the 'worst' in living memory, a claim that can only be made by those with no sense of history. Thirty years earlier, a largely unreported disaster struck Bangladesh when nearly half a million people died.

The existence of God is always a mystery even when all is going well. God as the Creator is the cause of why there is something rather than nothing. This philosophical mantra breaks down into ordinary language that the world as it is, and as I know it, is created and sustained by God. No God, no world. Why there is a world, of which I am a weak but conscious part, remains a mystery. All I can say is that whoever created it is greater than I, and indeed greater than any one thing that exists. Did God create the best possible world is a question to which I can never know the answer. He only created this one, along with its physical growth pains, the destructive power of which all can see.

Other religious leaders have also given their interpretation of these formidable events. Different Islamic leaders have explained that the earthquake is either due to God's will, or simply that God knows best. In one respect the Christian can agree, God is all good and all wise, so he knows best. It is also His continuous act of will that sustains the universe in existence. The danger with of such expressions is that they can be easily misinterpreted, and give the impression that God changes His mind in an all too human manner. God moves from mercy to anger in order to punish a particular group or individual for their sinfulness and wickedness. This line of thinking then raises issues as to why the innocent have to die along with the wicked in such numbers. The bliss of the afterlife does not really give an adequate answer to those who mourn their loved ones, if the afterlife of the merciful God is detached from what went before.

The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has explained how he must remain silent on the question why, and instead concentrate on the necessity to rebuild after this disaster, a scenario that the Jewish people have had to face numerous times throughout their history. This attitude forms the groundwork to the Catholic response. The events within creation, even the most destructive, will only reveal their meaning at the Redemption, when Jesus completes His conquest over sin and death. The end of the world gives the definitive meaning to its beginning by revealing its true purpose and identity. A reflection of this may be seen in the drive for life, so evident in the current aid efforts. This is an essential part of the Judaic-Christian heritage. That life takes its meaning from Jesus Christ, who both preached and established the new kingdom of God. Today that kingdom is only partially visible, though it can most definitely be found in the Church and should be visible in the lives of her members. The kingdom is a kingdom of comfort because Christ's Spirit is at work. It is a place of true comfort because with Christ death, however tragic the circumstances, death is never the final word. That final word is God's love which reveals that the barrier of death is porous, and that both the growth pains of the world, and the consequences of sin will in time be brought to an end.

2nd Week of Ordinary Time - Sunday 16th January 2005

It has become apparent in recent months that demonstrating against attacks on faith is quickly growing in popularity. There have been recent demonstrations in Birmingham against a play that depicts immorality taking place in a Sikh Temple. Last week the BBC received 50,000 complaints over broadcasting 'Jerry Springer: The Opera'. All of this is taking place while the government is trying to pass on to the Statute Book a bill condemning incitement to religious hatred. The danger is that in this environment the Bill will become Law, and it will become more difficult to distinguish between legitimate free speech and religious vitriol.

It is important to remember that the Christian Churches have survived over the centuries without such a Bill. The law on blasphemy has very rarely been used. The Bill could well be used to stifle any religious discussion on the more unsavoury parts of some religious faiths, and on those faiths that rely on unverifiable visions. The concept of religious war, or jihad, is an integral part of Islam, and one of its modern manifestations the forcible conversion of British women to Islam. Is to complain about this issue then a legitimate cause for incitement to religious hatred?

The secular state and the average agnostic are singularly ill-equipped to deal with such problems. Their lack of understanding about the religious 'urge' in humanity makes them unable to distinguish between, on the one hand the product of genuine religious inspiration and, on the other, the product of original sin - a flexing of muscles to make a partisan point. To them all such sentiments are irrational and therefore should be legislated against.

Any attempt by a Christian to make such points is normally met with the response, 'what about the crusades, the Inquisition, etc? Unbeknown to the antagonistic agnostic, the Judaic-Christian tradition has a long history of self-examination under the eyes of the God of the covenant who demands the highest forms of conduct. Members of the Church do fail in their witness, but the continual ability to seek forgiveness and engage in acts of humility allow the believer to return to the path established by God, and is, I believe, one of the signs of credibility. The ability to seek forgiveness, and obtain mercy, both recognises the fallibility of humanity and the true mercy of God.

Consequently I think it necessary to distinguish what is truly blasphemous and anti-Christian and what is just offensive. Jerry Springer is certainly in the second category. His show is offensive, and the extensive use of bad language, as always, is evidence of a complete lack of imagination. He is of absolutely no danger to faith, as it quite simple to switch off the television rather than to sit there in spurious indignation. Far more subversive, I feel, was the Christmas edition of the 'Vicar of Dibley', which was timetabled in peak viewing hours. The trivialising of faith and the crudities expressed are much more dangerous in the long term, because it makes the religious life look fit for those with whom one would not wish to associate. Many Catholics enjoy Fr. Ted, and so do I, but I cannot help feel that there was something subversive about its intent. The exile of the three priests to Craggy Island is a true metaphor for the modern secular understanding of the place of faith in contemporary society.

The country neither needs a Law against incitement to religious hatred, which will only be used by religious militants; nor American-style mass-protests, including the publication of personal addresses of TV executives, tactics one normally associates with animal liberation extremists and not rational human beings. There have been far worse programmes on TV, and it is better to recognise that more damage is done in the mainstream than on the 'revolting' fringes of television culture. The trouble is that we find the mainstream attractive, so seek other targets rather than reforming our own viewing habits. We might complain about the secularising of culture, and the inability of society to have a critical understanding of religious inspiration, but the unfortunate thing is that we have so often unwittingly aided and abetted the process by accepting the norms of contemporary society as if they were absolute givens.

3rd Week of Ordinary Time - Sunday 23rd January 2005

The identification of someone else's excessively materialistic lifestyle is probably one of the easiest things to do, fuelled as it is by an inevitable envy. Much more difficult is to identify our own lives as being excessively materialistic. The Church teaches that private property is one of our natural human rights which should be used to secure and protect life. These rights flow naturally from the first step of all moral practical reason, 'choose good and avoid evil'. The good of man is life itself, and this life is only made possible by the protection of each person's 'goods' such as his/her property, his/her name and his/her marriage. The Ten Commandments confirm this with their negative commands prohibiting, in all circumstances, certain actions that attack the 'good' of the person. The only way to love our neighbour is to follow the commandments.

The everyday difficulty with regard to property is not theft, which is always wrong, but what constitute the limits to 'secure and protect' human life. Once we leave home, the decisions become personal, and the only sure matter in this transition is that life will never be as cheap or as easy again! The limits will again change in the transition from single to married life. The Church in her wisdom leaves the individual decisions to the believer as to what constitutes a reasonable limit to possessions, and only identifies the basic principles: those relating to the making of choices, the avoidance of excess, and the recognition that all property ultimately belongs to God. The recognition of God's ownership of creation is not a role that should be usurped by the state, which might naively believe that it knows best how to allocate private property; nor is it a role that can be abdicated entirely to economic forces alone, since of itself the market is always blind and requires conscious guidance.

Instead of giving negative precepts about private property, the Church calls us to individual perfection which, in the case of the rich young man in the Gospel, meant 'go sell everything and come follow me'. Most of us are happy to follow but probably do not want to go that far and to sell everything! Few of us might feel that we can go so far, and indeed, as a parent, one cannot pursue that path in the same way as this would conflict with the fulfilment of the duty to bring up and look after one's family.

It is essential for the existence of the Church, however, that some do give up everything and go follow Jesus. This Sunday's Gospel telling of the call of the first four disciples demonstrates the all-consuming call of Jesus. They drop their nets, abandon their livelihoods, stand up and follow the Lord. The spontaneity and ease with which they did this is truly remarkable. It should serve both as an encouragement and a warning to us. As I sit in my presbytery gazing at my possessions, or in the kitchen looking at a mini-EU wine lake, I wonder how much of all this I really need. The answer is not all of it. Private property is necessary to protect the individual and family, and to allow life to flourish, but ultimately Christ is the source of true protection. He is the one who will allow life to flourish into eternity. The dangers of material excess is that we forget this basic lesson of Revelation, which has confirmed what could be known by reason alone, that God possesses everything. Jesus Christ shows that God loves, and this should give us the confidence not to have to place our hope in the material world.

4th Week of Ordinary Time - Sunday 30th January 2005

This last week has seen a number of events taking place all over Europe on Thursday's Holocaust Day, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The moving pictures of ancient survivors returning to the site of their torture brought to mind something of the horror these people and countless others must have suffered in the death camps. One such survivor had written that she could never really explain to others what had happened, not because she was unwilling but because no audience would ever be able to understand and, however much she explained, her memory could never really be calmed. There is a power in silence, which is not the same as forgetting, but which allows for the situation to speak for itself. Some of us might have met one of those who survived, or members of their families or perhaps a member of the Allied forces who liberated the camps. What struck me about the two I knew well was their reluctance to talk about their experiences. As a young man greedy for knowledge, I wanted to know the details, but now I can see there is a greater dignity in silence and quiet contemplation. There is a sort of knowledge that is voyeuristic, that includes a spurious form of empathy, described today as emoting, that makes no absolute moral demands.

The account in the newspapers of political leaders taking the best seats, and leaving the survivors to sit out in the cold, and of some making a blatant attempt to justify their own political policies, makes it only too obvious that not much has been learnt from this stain on European history. The surviving victims, as representatives of all those who perished, should have taken central-stage. This atrocity took place because of a collective loss of sight over the dignity of individual with his or her inalienable rights. Their silent presence reminds us that the individual should be at the heart of every nation.

It is the failure to see the individual as unique that makes it all too easy to condemn different groups in any society and to dismiss them as in-human or sub-human and thus open to persecution. The intemperate language and actions used by too many single-issue fanatics - anti-vivisectionists and the anti-hunting lobby spring to mind here, together with their government supporters - are not the stuff of traditional politics and are just two current examples of this lack of grasp on the rights of the individual. At the other end of the scale is the genocide perpetrated in Rwanda, and now in Darfur, where whole peoples are condemned for their religion, race or colour.

The beginning of a way out is to recognise that our moral actions have more than an external effect on others, be it good or bad. Our moral actions also form us, and make us the person that we have become. The way we understand and act in relation to others, whether at home, at work, or in society at large, will make a difference to ourselves. To listen to the testimony of those who did survive the death-camps, and who were able to speak of their experiences, must be translated into a change of actions on our part if we wish to ensure that such a collective hatred never takes over in any nation again. The way not to achieve this is by a contentless emoting, an unfortunate trend in contemporary British life, as witnessed by politicians and TV journalists amongst others, wearing red poppies for weeks before Remembrance Sunday as if they were seasonal fashion items.

Instead when we listen or contemplate in silence the horror that these survivors experienced then we can recognise the gift of life that each unique individual possesses, a gift so cruelly taken in unimaginable numbers. This uniqueness will make us recognise, in front of God, that there exists deep within ourselves an internal summons to moral change, to recognise a universal law given to us by God, to do good and avoid evil. This will never remain abstract but instead govern our every moral thought and action. Only then will we become people of truth able to stand up to evil from wherever it may emanate.

The First Readings from the Letter to the Hebrews, 1st Week of Ordinary Time, Year A, Cycle I

The destination of the Letter to the Hebrews remains obscure, as does the author. The letter is composed as an exhortation to a struggling community and must have been written by during AD 70-80 and widely circulated, as Pope St. Clement mentions it in his Letters to the Corinthians. The letter is loosely structured around the Yom Kippur Liturgy (The Day of Atonement) and concerns the role of Jesus Christ as the perfect High Priest.

The Letter begins with a historical perspective that places Jesus as the last in a line of prophets, and the conclusion to a 'progressive education of humanity in the love of God'. The superiority of the Son to any of the prophets, and indeed of angels too, is owing to His exaltation and return to God after His death. (Monday).

God's chosen way of salvation was to send His Son in the flesh and who would be 'the man' presented in the Psalms. The fragility of the human condition, assumed by Christ, and the present situation of believers should not mitigate our belief in the triumph of Christ over death. This victory is achieved on our behalf, but the believer who shares in the same Holy Spirit is not simply a passive bystander (Tuesday and Wednesday).

The persecuted community is reminded under the present circumstances not to harden their hearts in imitation of their ancestors in the desert. The conditions of life might make any victory seem remote and barely credible. The victory is everlasting and the place of rest does exist. To share in this requires a continuous open and loving heart. Those who grow embittered will not inherit the promises. (Thursday).

The author again exhorts the community not to fail and be left behind. The gates of heaven are open to all who persevere. The Exodus was a liberation from slavery, followed by the long march through the wilderness into a place of rest. The believer strives for this place of rest only through remembering and living the liberation achieved by Jesus Christ. (Friday).

The First Readings from the Letter to the Hebrews, 2nd Week of Ordinary Time, Year A, Cycle I

The ritual sacrifices conducted by the Jewish High Priest were the means by which the people cleansed themselves from sin. These earthly High Priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sins as well. Jesus Christ fits into this pattern of priesthood and, though without sin, shared in the limitations of human flesh. Instead of using ritual animals, Jesus offered Himself as the victim through His death on the Cross. He thus becomes both the eternal High Priest and Victim. (Monday).

The victory achieved by Jesus as the perfect High Priest completes God's promise first made to Abraham. Jesus Christ testifies to this unalterable divine bond with His own life. The believer participates in this bond through faith, and the certainty of its strength should give hope when confronted with all the vicissitudes of life. (Tuesday).

The eternal quality of Jesus' priesthood, one of the key concerns of the divinely inspired author, is the perfect embodiment of Melchizedek's priesthood. He was the mysterious figure without ancestry who gave peace offerings to Abraham after the war of the cities. The writer traces the origin of the Levitical priesthood to Melchizedek, as well as that of Jesus, thus validating the priestly actions of Jesus who was not of the tribe of Levi. (Wednesday).

The result of the resurrected Jesus' return to the Father is to validate his priestly actions, and demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the true 'tent of meeting', the place where man encounters God. The Temple extant in Jerusalem in Jesus' day is only a copy of the Temple that is His own person. (Thursday).

The author has demonstrated that Jesus' priesthood is eternally valid, and that He has established a definitive tent of meeting. These actions point to the establishment of a new and perfect covenant, unlike the previous one, and this covenant will be written on the heart rather than on tablets of stone. It is this covenant that forms the foundation for the moral and spiritual life of the believer. (Friday).

The First Readings from the Letter to the Hebrews, 3rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year A, Cycle I

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews wished to demonstrate in a number of different ways that this new sacrifice by Christ is far superior to that of the High Priests offering their annual atonement for sin. (Yom Kippur). He first explains that the death of Christ on the Cross has a double effect. It removes all sin, including those unable to be removed by the earlier covenant, the sins of conscience. It is also a singular event so that, for the Catholic today, the Mass is a participation in the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and not as the Reformers claimed the re-sacrificing of Christ, as though the event at Calvary was insufficient. (Monday).

The efficacy finds its power through the interior disposition of Jesus, as the one who has come to obey the will of the Father. The sacrifices of the past had a too mechanistic feel, actions done without passion or conversion. This emphasis on the interior disposition reflects the concerns of Jeremiah, quoted earlier by the author, and which is perfectly demonstrated in the obedience of Jesus. (Tuesday).

The effects of this sacrifice is to perfect all those who accept Christ as their unique saviour, since He sits with God in judgement over the world. The path to perfection requires our co-operation, but has become possible since a new law, a reflection of the new covenant, has been written on our hearts. (Wednesday).

The shedding of Christ's blood has definitely opened the way to God, and now the author exhorts the community to become remain worthy of such a sacrifice. They are to keep faith through an interior purification, to remain hopeful by holding steadfast to the promises, and to exercise charity and be conscious of the needs of the community. (Thursday).

The persecution of the community has been very public, and they have suffered much already but have triumphed over such adversity. The author encourages them to remember the past and continue to remain faithful as the end is not so far, and God will reward their perseverance. (Friday).

The First Readings from the Letter to the Hebrews, 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Year A, Cycle I

The community is being threatened with persecution and, to encourage them, the writer details the achievements of those who had not yet received the Christian dispensation. Despite their ignorance of things now known, these heroes of faith withstood persecution and suffered death because they believed, in what was to them, a future promise, a promise now known to be true. (Monday).

The cloud of witnesses, mentioned above, who received the testimony on trust now give it to encourage every believer in 'the race of Christian life'. The race is into an unknown future, but confidence can be drawn from the example of Christ who entered the unknown of death on the Cross, but who now sits at God's right hand. The victory of Christ confirms Jesus as the perfect High Priest, the content of the first chapters of the Letter. (Tuesday).

The writer moves from external threats to internal, and now explains that the sufferings undergone by believers may be seen as a form of divine education. This is a deeply personal form of knowledge. The analogy between God and a human father, who both loves and educates his child, establishes our vocation as sons and daughters. The reality of sin both in ourselves and abroad makes our spiritual education a long and arduous process. (Wednesday).

The reasons why the community has been asked to search for peace are now revealed. The destination every believer is struggling to approach is the heavenly Jerusalem where, as a result of Jesus' sacrifice, each one will be able to live in the company of God. This divine and human community contrasts with the terrifying and awe-inspiring encounter between Moses and the chosen people with God on Mt. Sinai. (Thursday).

The path to sanctity is advanced through the conscious and inspired pursuit of small, human scale acts of brotherly love, such as hospitality, concern, absence of greed and fidelity in marriage. This modesty of scope should look all the more possible with respect to the heroic lives of faith visible in the leaders of the community, now the saints of the Church. (Friday).