Fr Peter's newsletter notes - September 2005

Twenty-fourth Sunday of the Year - Sunday 11 September 2005

As he lay dying in the Bishop's palace in Assisi, St Francis asked to be taken in his pallet to the chapel at Portiuncula, his first religious home. On the road down from the town, tradition has it, that he asked the friars' to stop, and though blind, wanted to 'see' his home town of Assisi for the last time, a place which 'has the worst reputation in the whole region as the home of every kind of rogue and scoundrel'. He then begged God to bless the town, and asked to move forward. This gloomy prognosis of the twonsfolk was corroborated in his final days with the unseemly attempt to hustle the Saint back to Assisi rather than let him die peacefully in the rival town of Siena. His tortured body was carried mainly at night so that his home town would become the place of pilgrimage, to the obvious advantage of its citizens. These 'rogues and scoundrels' have now been replaced by the notorious shopkeepers who hawk their wares to passing pilgrims and tourists from tiny shop fronts in the narrow streets of the town.

The picture of St Francis as an simple man of peace and gentleness is only half the story. This saccharine image of the saint relies on the modern clear cut distinction between the spiritual and material worlds, and on the belief that spirituality is one of the more socially acceptable props to life. Spirituality is something to aspire towards rather than be discovered in daily labours of life. The town council, and most of the pilgrim guides emphasise that Assisi is place not just to be seen, thus raising themselves other more secular places as Perugia, a local rival town. Assisi is a place to be experienced, but presumably in a non-threatening way that would not interrupt the flow of pilgrim cash.

This view might seem more sophisticated and scientific, but something vital has been lost, the sense of the world as a gift full of riches, and the drama of life as the battle between good and evil. A world where human effort and progress are seen as the touchstones of civilisation has little time for contemplating the richness of God's gifts. The same sort of fracture between the created world and the individual, through an over weaning optimism in human goodness and achievement can be seen in the question of evil and sin. The force of evil and the work of the devil was never seen by St Francis and his contemporaries as something general and unspecific, as if it were more an academic problem than real life. Instead the work of the devil was individual and particular. The pictures and fresco cycles of the time testify to this view as the artists have painted tiny devils being expelled from both sick individuals and whole towns of sinners through the preaching and teaching of the saints.

The access to the spiritual world, the world of God's love, and the painful death of the Saviour Jesus Christ, is only really possible once we recognise the malevolent spirits that lurk in our hearts. The Gospel message is one of progressive liberation through participation in the life of grace. The images by the painters and preachers of the time might strike us as 'primitive' but it does seem strange that these little images of devils coincides with the discovery of a more realistic depiction of humanity by such painters as Giotto and Duccio. It demonstrates to me that the recognition of sinful folly is the necessary step to discover the dignity of our created humanity.

Twenty-fifth Sunday of the Year - Sunday 18 September 2005

Now nearly fifteen years ago the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the keynote article for a conference about conscience, and in this he referred back to his early teaching days when one of his colleagues explained that those who had not heard the message of Christ were truly blessed, since if they had done so the subsequent demands of faith would have imposed a burden impossible to bear. The future Cardinal and Pope could see that such an argument was fatally flawed, as it denied one of the central tenets of the Gospel, that only the truth can set you free. Such a theory suggests that salvation is made harder with faith, and that our conscience, the created faculty to assess what is right and wrong, rather than being our innermost opening to a common truth shared by all, now becomes a protective shield, sheltering our subjectivity certainty. In his colleague's analysis the relationship between the human person and God, His Creator and Redeemer, has become a burden, and the safe route is not to be open to questions issues about the truth, and instead conform to the mores of the age.

This is a very modern dilemma. The search for meaning in life, a virtually universal human phenomenon, but is has now become united with the desire not to let the discovered truths become a burden. This may be seen most clearly in the question of co-habitation, the pursuit of a warm relationship that is not burdened with the long-lasting and unreasonable demands of marriage. Co-habitation is a delicate flower that could so easily wither under the demands made in life. Hence it becomes no preparation for marriage, and the sad statistic that there is a much greater chance of post wedding break-up for co-habitees than for those who do not live together before their wedding. The Church is thought to be out of step with contemporary thinking because it seems so obvious that to live together before marriage allows the couple to get to know each other. The couple will know each other better, but what sort of knowing, personal and sexual, is being cultivated? It will be a truncated and personal knowing alone that at base lacks public commitment and is thus cut off from it's source of life in God.

The truth about our created nature does make demands upon us, but these demands are not external to ourselves. Their very interiority does anger us, and in our flawed human thinking we turn them into external demands from an unjust authority, so we fool ourselves into thinking that they need not be obeyed. This is the lesson of Sunday's Gospel. The wage is the revelation of Christ. The first workers seek it, as Christ's revelation responds to our search for meaning. However those workers have sought it too much on their own terms. There has been no real conversion, and their life of faith has become one of toil in the heat of the day. Instead of experiencing the revelation of Christ as liberation from sin and access to the truth, they have begun quickly to see their new found faith a burden. Thus they want and expect more for the long hours compared to those who only started working at the end of the day. Yet, as Jesus teaches faith is the reward itself and all that this implies for the role of conscience in our lives.

How a new student might give a lesson in the Christian understanding of marriage.

Last weekend must have seen tens of thousands of parents on the road taking their inwardly nervous son or daughter to their new University. It is a right of passage for the family as nothing will be quite the same at home again. The old routines of school have given way to intermittent lodging and periodic piles of unwashed laundry. Like every rite of passage there is both a sense of loss and a sense of foreboding for the future. How is my son or daughter faring in this new strange environment without all the obvious home comforts? Have they made any friends, and if so the right ones?

Every former student knows all too well the pitfalls of Freshers' week. It was, and still is, never full of the drunken antics of popular imagination. Most students were far too shy, and it comes as a great relief to be given some academic work to complete, rather than suffer an endless number of awkward social events. Every student finds the first term very difficult, especially those who do not make hasty ill-judged unions, or who holdiout for some boyfriend/girlfriend back at home. It can be a very lonely experience because of the pressures but, for most students, the second term after Christmas brings with it a greater sense of peace and contentment. By the summer it is the most natural thing in the world to be a student.

This rite of passage has an equally important effect on parents who now discover themselves to be alone, or at least with fewer dependents, once again. It can be a challenging period, because the modern demands of childhood very subtly make parents strangers to each other. During the early years it all seems to be for the best of motives but, by the teenage years, many parents have become unpaid weekend mini-cab drivers. Hidden amidst all this ceaseless activity is a sense of guilt that one can never do enough for one's children. This is a misguided emotion that is easily manipulated by the advertising industry, and the many modern pundits who use terms such as 'quality time' when describing time spent with children. The result is that few parents think they spend enough time with their children, and remain anxious because of their ignorance as to what constitutes the appropriate mean, between spending too little time or too much. It is not surprising that this rite of passage can become a time of tension between husband and wife as the sorry statistics of late middle-age divorce demonstrate.

This is why the Church in her wisdom has always promoted a fuller vision of marriage than just children. The Church has set the creation and nurturing of children in a wider sphere of the love between Christ and his Church, and the love between husband and wife. The Church never intended her married members to become either strangers to Christ and his Church, or to become strangers to each other. The happens when the family stops attending Church, first perhaps after the children have lost interest (something which mysteriously coincides with entry into a Catholic secondary school), and the second once children usurp the roles of king and queen in the household, and the parents become paying servants. The Church sees the continuing love between husband and wife as the key to marriage, but this requires the conscious co-operation of husband and wife in keeping time for each other while their children are still at home. This might require making a united stand against the more outlandish demands of children and is not about loving them any less than one should.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church: Introduction: no 1-10

The beginning of the new academic year brings a change to the back page of the newsletter. Over the next two years I hope to make steady progress through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, explaining a new section each week. These short commentaries will form the basis of the talks that will take place over the next year in the parish.

The present Catechism was first published by the Vatican in 1992 on the 30th Anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. This work presents the authentic fruits of the Council in an ordered form, and emphasises their essential continuity with the tradition of the Church. Every Catholic should be able to give some account of their faith, 'the hope that is within them' (1 Pet 3:15), and a steady reading of the catechism will allow us to be able to do so. At the heart of every catechetical activity is not a cold assimilation of teachings but a continuing dialogue between God and believer, begun under a prior divine initiative, but one that virtually simultaneously elicits a personal search for God and for a more profound self-understanding. This two sided human search aided under the influence of the Holy Spirit demonstrates that faith is both about God as Creator and myself as created.

This divine initiative reaches its peak with the birth, life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He reveals both the true identity of God as Trinity, but who also reveals every person to themselves, as one who is invited to share divine life but who is presently scarred by sin.

The risen Jesus has entrusted the apostles with the task of teaching the nations about the truth of God and man, and to invite them to share Trinitarian life (Mt 28:20). His promise to remain with them till the end of time through the Holy Spirit emphasises that the Church is the place of truth, and it is only within the Church that one can discover the truth of God and man.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church: Introduction: nos 26-43

The catechism begins with a section on 'Man's capacity for God'. It is a section that would infuriate both the atheist and the Evangelical. The atheist would reject any notion that men or women are open to God as being merely delusional while the evangelical would wish to start with the personal encounter with Christ. The Church's rejects both positions and begins the Catechism at this point to emphasise that its teaching is essentially universal, and that all people are capable of listening to revelation of God.

Any attentive analysis of both the world and the human person demonstrates that neither can be explained through themselves alone. Neither contain the ultimate reason for their existence or for their operations. It seems illogical to suggest an infinite series of causes going backwards in time, or going outwards from myself, and so philosophers such as St Thomas Aquinas shows there must be a first cause, who is not himself caused and this we commonly call 'God'. The same form of argument may be made about our own lives. Everyone wishes their decisions to be taken seriously, thus indicating they possess a vision for their future, even if it might be at many instances most prosaic, such what to cook tonight. Every future possibility decided by ourselves points towards a determined goal, even if our plans subsequently go astray later. Every plan for the future implies some departure from the past. The possibility of these future plans being meaningful ultimately rests on the future determined by God who possesses the past, present and future in Himself.

Lastly a meditative examination of our conscience can demonstrate that the ultimate source of good and evil does not reside in ourselves but beyond in God the Creator. At this stage of investigation, nothing can be said about who God is, or obviously about Jesus Christ, but this investigation does show and so the Church teaches that we are able with our unaided reason to determine that God exists through the contemplation of the world and human nature.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church: Introduction: nos 26-43

The Catechism has so far affirmed that it is possible with human reason to recognise both the world and ourselves as created by God. Hence by implication man becomes culpable if he fails to recognise this, and thus to live accordingly under the natural law. There is therefore no such thing as a guiltless 'default' agnostic.

The catechism now moves to explain how and why God make Himself known. God reveals Himself with the simple intention of sharing His divine life, a life that will prove to be Trinitarian in structure, as the Christian believer in the power of the Holy Spirit will accompany the Son to the Father. God needs to make Himself known in a human way, as He dwells in unapproachable light and so, without a progressive revelation that unfolds slowly in history, no human response could be possible.

The history of Old Testament revelation is marked by three covenants between God and Noah, Abraham and Moses. Behind each of these covenants is the memory of the Garden of Eden, where God, Adam and Eve lived in harmony. After the Fall God's revelation is experienced as the care for His creation and a future salvation. The covenant struck with Noah created all the nations. God allocated each their territory, customs and religion. The effect of sin was to turn this natural religion into the vice of paganism, and they had to wait for the coming of Christ before they would be offered the salvation due to the Chosen people.

Out of these many peoples God called Abraham to become the father of a new unity of peoples. Some of his descendants, through his wife Sarah, become the Jewish people who, under the leadership of Moses, experienced the liberation from Egypt, and who, through the mission of the prophets, began to live in the hope of a new Covenant, that will be written on their hearts. This is fulfilled through Jesus Christ. He is the Word through whom God spoke everything about Himself.