A Spotter's Guide to Kings
Rev. Michael J.V. Clark • November 23, 2025
When I was a boy, the tire manufacturer, Michelin used to publish little I-spy books that awarded points for spotting things. So today, I want to give you the Spotter’s Guide to Kings, since it’s the Feast of Christ the King.
How do you know if you’re looking at a king? What is the feature that defines them? And even if we can recognize human kings, why do we need to say this of God? Why is it important that we acknowledge our Lord and Savior as a king? Isn’t it sufficient for him to be God? Why do we need to add something else? Well, let’s go to the source. Our Lord was asked this question directly by Pontius Pilate, and he answered it:
"My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.
John 18:33-37
Kingship is central to the charge against Jesus. The title over the Cross explained to everyone who witnessed it the reason why he hung there, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: יֵשׁוּעַ הַנּוֹצְרִי מֶלֶךְ הַיְּהוּדִים Yeshua haNotzri Melech haYehudim. Jesus the Nazarene; King of the Jews. So, if the Lord, the Anointed One, does not respond to Pilate, oh no, I’m not a king, I like republics - we need to know why. And particularly in this week, where we come together to celebrate Thanksgiving, that great feast of American identity, it is good to remember that while earthly republics can readily be considered the best form of government yet devised, Heaven itself is an absolute monarchy, and our destiny is to be happy subjects of the King of kings.
Having lived in the United States for nearly a decade, I have noticed that to call someone a king is to throw around quite a heated word. It is politically charged, and I need not dwell too long on that. But it is worth pausing to reflect on the irony, as Christians that whenever we disapprove of the exercise of authority over us, rather than use the word despot, or tyrant, we choose the word: king.
As Catholics, we need to rehabilitate this word if we are to embrace the idea of Christ as King. By no means in using it are we suggesting that our Lord claiming kingship is license to be in someway despotic or tyrannical. But if we don’t do the intellectual heavy lifting of discerning the positive aspects of kingship, then this feast day becomes, at best, a pageant. We would call Christ a king in a superficial way, and most importantly in a way that does not demand our obedience: It must not become a ‘Disney’ feast (if you will pardon the image) for a claim we don’t take seriously.
Here’s where I can help. I am the subject His Majesty King Charles III. I am not a citizen of any country at all. As such, perhaps, I have an advantage on this feast day. The idea of kingship, for me, is a lived experience, and thus accepting Christ as King helps me to understand how I relate to my own monarch. His Majesty’s kingship is temporal, and delegated from God. Christ’s kingship is eternal, and proper to himself.
A very astute American priest I know once preached a sermon to my seminary, the Venerable English College, on this very feast. He pointed out how we were probably unaware of how much kingship invades our everyday life as British subjects. He noted the monarch’s silhouette on the postage stamps, the currency, and the Royal Crest on everything from passports to police stations to military, and even (by way of the Royal Appointment system) on condiments and other treats. He’s right! And we Brits don’t often notice it, because it is so familiar.
But one thing my priest friend did not observe was that he was talking to seminarians of a college established 500 years previously as a direct response to the interference of a despotic and tyrannical king against the liberties of Christ’s Holy Church. I am talking of course of King Henry VIII, of unhappy memory. But whilst said students are no longer treated as traitors by the Crown, and indeed have the Royal Crest of his descendants on their passports, they also have in our possession the collarbones, vertebrae, and ribs of 44 priests who were prepared to defy the earthly reign of this wicked man and his bloodthirsty daughter, in favor of the heavenly reign of Christ the King.
To be a Catholic cost them their lives, but won them a much more valuable crown: namely, that of martyrdom. A crown so-called not in imitation of a hereditary ruler, but because it binds the wearer the the diadem of thorns worn by the one who wears it by right. Believe me, it truly brings it home to possess the relics of young men who wondered the same same hallways and staircases as you, and whose signatures are inscribed on the first page of a noble Red Book that also contains your own. As a British subject, and a Catholic, our relationship with the Crown is more nuanced, let’s say.
So what of our Spotter’s Guide to Kings? Well here’s the first clue:
1. Kings do not need your permission to have authority over you.
“The king has his crown from God, not from the people; therefore he is answerable to God alone for the use of it.”
So said the cardinal martyr, St. John Fisher of the king who was to sever head from neck. The nature of kingship derives from their authority, which is not bestowed by the consent of anyone. This means, in humans terms, kings can be good, or bad, depending on whether they take seriously the fact that they will answer to God for their deeds. For his part, God is holy, and therefore whilst he doesn’t need your consent, he will never exercise this authority in any other way than for your good.
2. Kings have authority over everyone in their realm
To be a true king, this authority bears no exceptions. The same is true of God. God is not God because you or I approve of him. He is God whether we approve or not, and we are in his realm whether we like it or not. The distinction with his kingship is his realm has no bounds - we call him the King of the Universe, over everything visible and invisible. As we see from the Scriptures, even the demons are his subjects – unwilling subjects, to be sure, but subjects all the same.
3. Kings are born, not elected.
The Lord says: “for this purpose I was born” and we can see that kingship is bestowed by hereditary principle. This is perhaps where the idea diverges from what we think is right. But the reason our gut feeling resists the hereditary principle is because of our experience of bad kings - an experience that is part of our American DNA. The Lord cannot be a bad king, and the hereditary principle is appropriate for him because, unlike a human monarch, there is unity between the one who bestows the crown, and the one upon whom the crown is bestowed: “I and the Father are one” says the Lord.
4. Kings are identifiable by their attributes
Kings have regalia - which are physical items that signify their royal status: a crown, because they are anointed; orb and scepter because they have power; and purple robes, because they are treated with dignity. Our Lord’s crown is made of thorns, his orb is the world, and his scepter a reed. The purple robe is colored with his blood, poured out not in a display of military might, but of saving service.
5. Kings are given obeisance
Courtiers, even today, will often speak of ‘The Presence’ - being in the King’s presence means we behave differently. The Presence is acknowledged by the bending of a knee, or at very least the bow of a head. If we do this of human monarchs, how much more should we bend the knee before the true presence of the King of kings? You come into his court every time you enter this building, which is the Tabernacle of His Presence. So if a courtier in London bows low before an earthly king who will die one day, what is the only fitting posture for us before the undying King who truly dwells among us?
So there you have it: your very own Spotter’s Guide to Kings. Next time you see a crown of thorns, a reed, a purple cloak stained red, or even a Host, raised in silence, above an altar - tick the box. You’ve spotted Him.
Now get on your knees.
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I myself shall give you wisdom in speaking It will lead to your giving testimony These are two sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospel this week that I want you to take to heart. Today the Lord levels with us about how fragile our apparent security is. Not a stone upon another stone will be left - and more, wars and insurrections, earthquakes, plagues, famines and signs in the sky. It all sounds very disturbing. At these kinds of moments, I remember my mother who once sent me Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, when I was panicking about my law exams. It begins If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you… Kipling’s correspondent is encouraged to keep plotting a steady course through the turbulence of life - not to be distracted, and not to lose hope. It’s a very similar message to the Lord’s teachings about the end times. At no point does the Lord offer false hope - he does not claim those who have Faith will be immune from the effects of chaos, and he is very clear that the whole created world will come to an end one day - and you and I will see it. That’s what believing in the resurrection of the dead implies. Last week our friend Elon Musk went on the record with his (sincere) opinion that one day AI will be in charge - and we will not - so we had better make sure it is friendly. A recurring theme in our times is the question of how to manage the rise of AI, and whether it does indeed represent an existential threat. I suspect this is the first of many sermons where I will begin to explore the theme of AI - and how we might respond to it as Catholics. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do have a decent grounding in the Scriptures, the Fathers, and Catholic anthropology and, because I’m ordained, I have supernatural help to proclaim the Gospel to you. I’m not called to preach to anyone else - St. Paul’s Parish is it for me. So, just as I learn and reflect on AI, I can share that with you through my preaching, which is rooted in prayer for you. So allow me to begin with three basic propositions: (1.) God has said all he needs to say in order for us to work out how to deal with AI. It may be that we need to look again at the Scriptures and Tradition and apply God’s Word to new situations - but it’s all there. There’s no gap - we have everything we need to know. (2.) God foresaw the rise of AI, and permits it. It is something that he is allowing us to experience, and challenging us to deal with well. (3.) God has given us his active presence in our midst in order to interpret his Revelation correctly, and to apply that obediently to the phenomena of the world: that is the promise of the sending of the Holy Spirit, who offers no new revelation, but leads us into all truth by continually revealing the Word to us. Let’s turn to AI itself, and define what we mean by it. Intriguingly, in preparing this sermon, I asked Grok to define AI - and its answer wasn’t good - it was too conversational - but that reveals something fascinating. AI is the amalgam of all accessible human reasoning, converted into the noughts and ones of digital code, presented to us in an interactive way. In other words, AI offers no new revelation, but instead, leads us into what we presume to be truth by continually revealing words to us. I deliberately paraphrased my definition of how the Holy Spirit works in humanity. But I myself shall give you wisdom the Lord says today. And here we might identify two provisional conclusions: first of all, all knowledge has its ultimate source in God, who promises to share with us his wisdom; and secondly what AI is becoming is like a reflection, or an imitation of the wisdom of God. That shouldn’t surprise or shock you - you and I are made in the image of God, and being creative is part of our nature. Over the centuries we have put that image to good use in developing technologies to help us thrive. Every generation has had some new advance or another - and AI is simply the latest step. But just as the wisdom of God is God’s creation, so too AI is our creation - and since we ourselves are created, AI has a further dependence upon God for its very existence. The distinction we need to be aware of is that God can only be good - and the wisdom of God, his prized creation, in which he delights, is never going to be evil. We, on the other hand, have great capacity for evil, so anything we create will suffer from our own inherent defect - original sin - and thus can be used for good, or for evil intent. But let’s be even more specific - evil does not really exist in itself - it is the absence of good, or the misdirection of good - so we can see how the wisdom of God, who is perfect, and adjudicates perfectly between competing goods, will always lead to positive ends, whereas the wisdom of Man is equivocal, because we can make mistakes. The inherent danger of AI, then, is not intrinsic to the technology, but rather intrinsic to ourselves. If AI can distill all useful human knowledge to perform analyses at lightning speed that no one individual could ever do, what we have created is a kind of hive mind, and surpassed our individual capacities with something more akin to the way angels think - that is, from universals to particulars, rather than from particulars to universals. How impressive - but let’s not be too impressed. It will lead to your giving testimony. The role of the Church in navigating the dawn of AI will be to remind human beings that life as we know it requires the dynamic interaction of the material and the spiritual. You are I are made in God’s image - no semiconductor ever will - and whilst we can program the interface to behave in a conversational way, we must not be deceived. AI will analyse faster and more deeply than you and I ever can. But we can already see the risk of anthropomorphic creep - when you interact with Grok, or ChatGPT it says it is ‘thinking’ as it looks over the noughts and ones. It is not thinking. It cannot think. Neither can it dream, or wonder. AI computes, it doesn't contemplate. When we consider ourselves, God’s handiwork, we recognize that part of our identity has nothing to do with the efficient or effective. You and I appreciate the fragrance of a flower, not because we are going to pollinate it, but because it’s wonderful in itself. We need a planet with all of these sensory experiences to be truly content. AI does not need beauty - chips and semiconductors are not designed for awe, but for industry. But we must learn how to give testimony in the face of this rapid rise. If you haven’t learnt your Catechism well - go to class! Learn more! Be an advocate for your Faith, don’t just be a passive spectator. Be an ambassador in the public sphere - remind your friends, colleagues, neighbors that humans need community, and most importantly, they need worship. On that final point, I’d like to take a prophetic stance. AI, in streamlining economic processes, gives us the opportunity to refocus human life on what is most important - only you can give worship to God. The Liturgy can never, ever be replaced by AI - and whether you fully recognize it yet, or not, you are made for the Liturgy above everything else in your life, because in the Liturgy we interact directly with God himself, who is the source of all wisdom, creator of all things visible, and invisible. All glory and praise to Him!
Have you ever seen the 1996 Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame? I suspect moms and dads have. It’s based on a novel by Victor Hugo about a poor unfortunate bellringer who spends all his time in the great cathedral, so much so he makes friends with the bells, the statues and even the gargoyles. In the film version, with creative license, the gargoyles even speak - but the idea is that Quasimodo (named after the liturgical Introit of Low Sunday) has such an affinity with the building that it spoke to him; it has personality. It communicates. This idea resonates with me personally - I spent my earliest years darting in and around one of the great cathedrals of England. A building begun in the Twelfth century, still standing sentinel more than 800 years later. I remember swinging down the spiral staircases using the rope, exploring the vast forest of the high roof with its massive oak beams, playing chase around the flying buttresses, and even noticing how cool the stones felt on a hot summer’s day. The cathedral spoke to me, it has personality. It communicates. I would not be a priest today if that building didn’t speak. I would never even have become a Catholic. But in language that uses not one single word, the building told me of the most precious thing in my life: the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is not simply a convenient gathering hall, but instead, it unfolds the mystery of the Eucharist, layer upon layer, until you reach the High Altar beneath the vast East window. Entering the building is to begin a pilgrimage, where the final destination lies beyond this life, into eternity. This building was (and is) so significant to the life of the diocese that it has its own feast day - the Feast of Dedication - in the case of Exeter Cathedral, it is November 21st, but our own cathedral in Bridgeport also has a Feast of Dedication - December 2nd, and today, we celebrate the Feast of Dedication of a cathedral thousands of miles away in Rome - the Archbasilica of the Holy Savior and Saints John the Baptist and Evangelist in the Lateran. The pope’s own cathedral church. “ But buildings aren’t important, Father, it’s the people who are important…haven’t you read Vatican II? ” In the gradual of the Liturgy of Dedication, Locus iste , a text memorably set to music by Anton Bruckner, there is an extraordinary phrase. It describes the holy place as inaestimabile sacramentum. The words are close enough to English to know immediately what they mean: a priceless sacrament. It is true that Lumen gentium of Vatican II emphasizes, using Biblical themes, the idea of the people of God being God’s Temple, built of living stones; that the Church is more than just buildings, but is the living network of communion between souls. Absolutely! But remember this emphasis rests on an assumption - an assumption that Catholics would always build beautiful churches. When Lumen gentium was written, the Church needed to hear the emphasis on the people of God, a reminder that we are indeed the Body of Christ - because, perhaps, this was lost in the sumptuary of the gilded baroque. But we must always remember the most important Catholic word, ever: AND. We are living stones and we have beautiful buildings - the reason being humans need more than just words about God, we need transcendent experiences of God, in our time and space, to fully appreciate how much he loves us. In this way, buildings themselves are priceless sacraments. They look like one thing - but they in fact quite another. It may look like a pretty structure, but what it is in fact, is what Jacob realized in his dream: “ none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven .” You will recall in his dream he saw a ladder connecting heaven and earth, with angels ascending and descending. Not just a building, but a sacrament - what it is on the outside is nothing compared to the inner reality. Vatican II refocused the Church building on its most important feature. I wonder if you can identify what that is. It is, of course, the Altar, the place where the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present in our midst, where heaven and earth are joined. The first rung of Jacob’s Ladder, no less. Right here in front of you. That’s the reason I refuse to allow the Altar to be hidden by anything - flowers, decorations - anything. It must always be the clearing in the woods, because it is the launchpad to Eternity. But the church building is also a priceless sacrament in another way. When Moses discovered the burning bush in the desert, God commanded him to take off his shoes because it was hallowed ground. We Christians used to do that (some still do) when we entered any church building - it’s important to adjust our behavior when we enter a church, otherwise by treating it like any other space, we chase away the quiet voice of the Spirit who wishes to speak to us in our hearts. But in the burning bush, God revealed something to Moses that is easier to understand in Hebrew than in English. In revealing his name to Moses, I am what am, God did more than give Moses a moniker, a label - he communicated to Moses that he wanted to be discovered. I am what am also means I am found where I am found. The Name of the Lord is more than an existential reality - more than the Greek idea of essence ‘to be’ but is relational - God is a God who desires to be found, and will be found in a place of his choosing, not ours. In Zip code 06831, two thirds of which is our Parish, there are three places where God desires to be found, because there are three Altars - St. Paul’s, St. Timothy’s Chapel, and Sacred Heart Convent. Here is the most important, because here is the Parish Church, the focus for all the souls in our territory. This unusual building is the burning bush of West Greenwich, always alight but never consumed. It is holy ground, and a physical reminder to all passers-by — whether they enter or not - that God can be found, and more importantly, desires to be found.
Last week, I invited you to embrace the Fall - to lean in to the demand God makes for us to let go the last vestiges of pride, leaf by leaf. This week we have the answer to the question: why? For this week we celebrate the Feasts of Eternity - All Saints, and All Souls. The Church spreads her table and shows us the possibility of life without fear, pain, sorrow, or regret. Will you choose it? Let me begin with a provocative challenge. Imagine on your way home today, time freezes and an angel of God appears to you. The angel has come with a message and an invitation. God is giving you the opportunity to go straight to heaven - right away! No goodbyes, no farewells. It’s a one-time offer, and you have seconds to decide. What would you choose? So the Christian answer should be a no-brainer. You choose heaven - right there and then. But did any of you hesitate a moment? You see, for most of us, one area our spiritual life is lacking is that we don’t really want heaven enough. We actually want our life here on earth, perhaps with a few adjustments: winning the lottery, being free from sickness and pain, our family and friends to be happy. The list could go on… If this is true of you - and it is certainly true of me, much of the time - then the diagnosis is: lack of desire. We want heaven in a theoretical way - and not in an urgent way. We need to find a way to make that desire more urgent. One common characteristic of all the saints is an overriding desire for heaven - that is, for a state of permanent union with God. In the Letter to the Philippians St. Paul says: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. Phil 1:21-23 It’s easy to be distracted by this life. If an angel of the Lord appeared to my own father and made the same invitation I just gave you, I hope that blessed spirit would not remind dad that there’s no sea in heaven, because he loves his boat so much. In almost every age prior to ours, the appeal of heaven was obvious. If you lived before the invention of antibiotics, then death and disease was always present in the midst of life. There was no way to avoid the conclusion that suffering was part and parcel. Progress (and healthcare) have masked these realities for us so much that the practice of religion has been reduced to an elective hobby - ‘go to Church if that’s your thing, but it’s not my thing’ - and people of genuine good will really do fall for Satan’s lie that there’s nothing more than this life, so you might as well be comfortable. How he laughs at how readily we give away our inheritance as the children of God in exchange for gimcrack and trinkets! But scratch the surface, and there’s a fug, an ennui, with all this life has to offer if you don’t have Faith, and perhaps my task as preacher is to paint a more vivid picture of heaven than the pastel colors of your early childhood. We don’t sit on clouds strumming harps all day (not least because there are no days, nor nights - indeed, there’s no time, at all.) How do you know since you’ve never been there? I hear you ask. Well, we can say much more about heaven than you might think, and we have two sources for our knowledge: (1.) our reason - God endows us with the ability to think abstractly, and correctly, (2.) what God says and does - what we could not otherwise know, God has revealed to us by his words, and actions. These two sources work together - the Bible is not a prospectus - it’s not trying to sell you something, but information is there, and can be pieced together to gain more knowledge, and more insight. That’s basically what Theology is! I had a list of 18 fun facts about heaven, but that would surely test your patience, so here are just a few: Your will (what you desire) is perfectly aligned with God’s will. There’s not a cigarette paper between you: what you want, God wants, and what God wants, you want. Your body is perfectly led by your spirit. This means the only limitation on what you can do is your imagination. If there were an ocean in heaven (sorry again, dad) you could leap across it at will if you so desire. You can walk through walls. We know this because of our limited experience of a resurrected human body when Our Lord appeared to his disciples after his Passion. You can eat (there’s a banquet) but you don’t need to, and you won’t get fat. The necessity of eating is to preserve our bodies in time, which would otherwise wither and die. Your vision (and other senses) will work in reverse. Here on earth, we see things, and from those things we get ideas. In heaven, we start with the ideas - more precisely, we start with the direct experience of God as he is, then move through ideas, and only then to material things. Your bodily eyes will never see the Father, or the Holy Spirit, or the Angels. Your vision of them will be in your mind’s eye. Your bodily eyes will, however, gaze upon Jesus, because he took upon himself our human nature in addition to his divine nature, and will never give it up. You are always at Mass and you’re singing (I hope you don’t want to revisit the answer to my opening question now…) But it’s perfect, and it’s all you want. Your body is designed to give God worship, and the experience of Jesus in heaven is as the Lamb of God, standing as if slain. Everyone is the same age - or rather, no age at all. Age is a consequence of time, so, for example, somebody who dies very young is not confined to eternity as an infant. They are themselves, perfected, and identifiable. There’s quite a lot of detail, isn’t there? So what about the other states? purgatory and hell. Yes, we still believe in both. Well here’s my most controversial conclusion: all three states of life in eternity are expressions of the love and mercy of God . It couldn’t be any other way. God is not all-loving to some, but not others. It is not God who changes in relation to us, but we who change in relation to him. And he loves us so much as to respect our choices, even to the end. Have you ever been to a party in the wrong dress code? It’s very embarrassing. You just can’t be yourself. You don’t fit in. You’d rather go back and change, and come in properly attired. I think that’s the closest analogy to purgatory I can give you - it’s a place you choose, recognizing with full, perfect knowledge, who God is, and how far short I fall from the mark. God, in his love and mercy, permits a temporary separation from him, whereby I can get changed, and be ready to enter the communion of Saints. Hell is an extension of this perfect self-knowledge. It is the saddest and loneliest state. It’s where you realize you don’t fit in, and you gave up every possible offer of clothing, and God, who still loves you even if you don’t love him, permits you to be apart from him, forever. God does not choose for anyone to go there. We Catholics do not believe in ‘double predestination’ (the Calvinist belief that God pre-elects those who go to heaven or hell) we believe in single predestination, which is that God has knowledge of our free choices, even before we make them. There is one price God is prepared to pay for the possibility of us sharing his life of blessedness for ever: the price that some of us would choose to reject that possibility for ever. We do not (and cannot) know how many. But we do know it cannot logically be any other way - creation without hell is creation without freedom, and therefore without love. But since love is real, and our freedom is real, God gives us the greatest invitation imaginable - invitation to choose him, for ever. Say yes!
Driving around the back lanes is a delight this time of year on a sunny day. The dappled light filters through leaves ablaze in fiery hues, even when the fall foliage isn’t quite as spectacular as it is some years. It’s a vision that attracts us—only the truly oblivious could fail to be delighted. But we perceive a change, and our delight is twinged with anxiety. It is hard-wired within us. I mean that literally. Have you ever noticed there’s a distinct earthy odor after it rains? It’s kind of pleasing, and it even has a name—it’s called petrichor, and humans in fact have better acumen for petrichor than sharks do for blood. You see, we are meant to observe the changes of the seasons with high specificity. As C.S. Lewis knew, this seasonal ache is more than whimsy—it’s God’s whisper of a farther country, where leaves fall no more, but the trees are always green and laden with fruit. He recalled this insight when reading the children’s author, Beatrix Potter’s exquisite story, Squirrel Nutkin: “ one autumn, when the nuts were ripe and the hazel leaves golden ” it begins. This innocent tale pierced Lewis’s heart, awakening in him " a certain quality of sensation, or quality of awareness, ” perhaps a longing for the eternal amid the sylvan glade. Our anxiety at this time of year stems from the fact that when we see the leaves turn, and smell the earthy notes from the ground after rain, we know we need to prepare for winter. The frost is coming, and food will be scarce. We need shelter, and warmth, to make it through the shortening days. We could rely on our intellect, to store up food and fuel, but we also need luck. Such is biological life—and while we check the weather, put on extra layers, and stock up with provisions on a daily basis—it’s easy to neglect the spirit at these times. To forget that preserving the body at all costs is not the meaning of life, after all. But while the Cosmos is giving us signs that we need to slow down, and be prepared, our sophisticated modern society has decided the opposite is, in fact, in order. I don’t know about you, but my diary has exploded in recent weeks—between now and Thanksgiving, it’s an endless procession of meetings, dinners, and galas. All the rest of Creation has taken the hint: the animals are busy preparing for the winter. The roses are putting on their rather feeble last blooms, and the leaves are shedding from the trees. But mankind? Oh no. We’re better than all that. If there was ever evidence for the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, it is this! Lewis warns: “ We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us ” We mistake our frantic calendars for freedom, without realizing we exchanged leisure for toil when our first parents chose to exalt ourselves over God. There are two further conclusions we can draw from the changing of the seasons that are helpful for the spiritual life: first, that the same God who encourages the fresh green growth of Spring now commands the trees to loose their grip, become translucent, and fail; and secondly, that in losing that vigor, light is able to penetrate to the roots. Have you ever noticed that it is easier to see further, and more clearly, in the woods in winter? The undulations of the landscape are obscured by the flush of greenery, but they are now revealed. We can see the contours—the crags, the ravines—which otherwise lie in wait under a carpet of briars. God permits the vigor of youth, but demands the fall as well. We should not refuse it, or protest. If our understanding of success is only a tree in full leaf, full of sap, and green, then we haven’t yet grasped the way God seeks to save us. He asks us to humble ourselves, to be receptive to grace, and open to the change in us that can only happen when we put our pride in check. It’s particularly satisfying to note that our word, humble comes from the same root as soil, or earth. To have humility is to be full of humus—of the soil of repentance. In the Gospel today, we see this dichotomy very clearly. Both the Pharisee and the Publican know that God is who He says He is. He is Almighty, and eternal. They both desire a relationship with Him, but the Pharisee has concluded that if he does all the outward things the law requires, then God will thank him. As St. John Henry Newman observes in his sermon on this very parable, the Pharisee "looked upon himself with great complacency, for the very reason that the standard was so low, and the range so narrow, which he assigned to his duties towards God and man... He thanked God he was a Pharisee, and not a penitent." The Publican, meanwhile, recognizes that in all his efforts he falls short, and simply begs God for mercy, without seeking to justify himself: "O God, be merciful to me, a sinner." In truth, in God’s sight, no man living is justified—justification is the consequence of accepting the need for grace—that I cannot be saved by going through the motions. Like the trees that accept being denuded by the wind, we too must allow our pride to be stripped away, revealing the skeletal form of the trunk with all its knots, gnarls, false starts, and crossing branches. Newman captures this poverty of spirit that opens us to joy: " That poverty is a state of utter need and dependence on God. It is the poverty of the publican who begs God for mercy, as opposed to the plenty of the Pharisee whose prayer is a celebration of himself ." Such self-emptying, Newman insists, " is the very badge and token of the servant of Christ. ” Not for nothing, Adam and Eve used leaves to clothe their nakedness - but in so doing, set up a barrier for grace. God requires us to be reclothed, and for grace to hit the soil again. However, before we chastise ourselves too much, our transcendence of the changing seasons also has a positive side. It means that we know the soul is unmoved by the winter wind. We already live half in time, half in eternity, and we should not fear whatever assails the body, only what kills the soul. In Eden we were led by the spirit. In disobedience to God, we exchanged that for being led by the body. We toil for our food, and go hungry, just like the beasts, whereas God did not design it this way. We were meant to have all we wanted for no labor whatsoever. Instead, we chose the long way back to God, but out of the dust and clay, God pursues us in Christ. All was not lost, because one woman said yes to a new Creation, of which we see only the first rays of dawn. For when we fall and turn to dust, then we can rise again. The light that hits the ground when our pride falls like the leaf litter enables a Savior to rise up from within our midst, a Savior who is Christ, and Lord.
Do you think he will find faith on the earth? The end of today’s Gospel passage seems rather abrupt. Indeed, there’s a debate as to whether it forms part of the Parable itself, or whether it’s part of the surrounding narrative. I’m inclined to the latter, but the Parable about justice is, of course, related to the virtue of Faith. Justice may be delayed in this life - we experience this all the time - but God will see to it that all the loose ends are tied up at the end of the age - no-one (no-one) will ‘get away with it’ - what is hidden will be proclaimed from the rooftops. All of our secret sins will come to light - no-one will be able to conceal the Truth from the gaze of Christ. This Parable makes that abundantly clear, but the comment on Faith is intriguing. The point is, essentially, while God may permit Justice being delayed, he will not tolerate Faith being delayed. The Act of Faith is for now - right now - even before God’s Justice covers the earth. The rhetorical question is thus a challenge to us. When the Son of Man comes, at the end of time, he will be looking for something - he will be looking for your Faith. This means that there is a measure by which you and I will be measured - Faith is not simply a woolly esoteric aspiration, it has content - and propositions - that can, and must, be taken to heart, because the Lord will come looking for your Faith. Will he find it? He asks through the ages. I mentioned a few weeks back that Faith is a word with two distinct, but related, meanings. I preached about the virtues, and noted the Faith is one of the theological virtues - a supernatural gift that forms a habit in us of belief both in God, and in what God has revealed to us. But there’s another meaning - Faith not only describes the virtue of belief, but also the content of such belief. In other words, “Faith” can also be a shorthand for all the Truth propositions that God has communicated to us. The two meanings are, of course, related. The one who is endowed with the virtue of Faith believes in what he knows. This stands to reason - you cannot believe someone, or something, unknown to you. Therefore, when the Lord says: ‘will he find faith on the earth’ we need not be in any doubt about how we demonstrate to him that we have it when he asks us. We know, because he told us, it is insufficient simply to recognize him as Lord. Does he not say: “not all who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Similarly, it is insufficient to do good deeds in his name. Does he not say: “did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name. And I will declare to them: ‘I never knew you…’ Before this leaves you despondent, it’s a relatively simple fix - and you all have the distinct benefit of Baptismal grace, which will make the Act of Faith easy for you. If you want to know what it sounds like, I have two examples for you. The first may surprise you, because he’s not a Catholic. I’m sure many of you have seen the TV ads with Franklin Graham inviting you to pray. I’m always happy to see them - because even though we certainly would disagree theologically, Mr. Graham always makes an Act of Faith whenever he begins to speak - and he makes it clearly, and simply. That’s the learning point for us. If you cannot make a clear, and simple Act of Faith, then how can you say you are a person of Faith? If you cannot state the guiding principles of your life in an unambiguous way, then how can you say you really live by them? Rather than putting our money where our mouth is, an Act of Faith is putting our mouth where our heart is. The second example of this clear and simple communication of the Faith is our last pope but two - Benedict XVI. He has been described as the best professor pope the Church has had in centuries - a pity the classroom was empty. Benedict had one extraordinary ability - to proclaim the complexities of the Faith in a simple, and straightforward way. It’s actually quite hard to do. Sometimes I look at Benedict’s sermons and think to myself - ‘that’s beautiful, let me try writing a thesis on goodness like that…’ I start writing - and what comes out is a bowl of spaghetti thinking! At these moments I think of Psalm 131: Lord, I am not high-minded; * I have no proud looks. I do not exercise myself in great matters * which are too high for me. But I refrain my soul, and keep it low, like as a child that is weaned from his mother: * yea, my soul is even as a weaned child. We’re about to make a different kind of Act of Faith together. It’s called the Nicene Creed, and we recite it publicly every Sunday. Its content is perfect - and, yes, infallible. Every thing in it is true, and nothing contained within it can be set aside, if I am to call myself a Christian. If I don’t believe it, I can be sure that I don’t have the Faith. This content of revealed Truth is truly a treasure box - full of beautiful, and life-giving teaching. It has been honed through the centuries by clever men and women who have reflected on God’s Word and distilled with ever greater precision doctrinal propositions about God. That’s all well and good, but once we know the Faith, we also need to be able to proclaim the Faith. This requires engagement with the world. This, then, is perhaps the most important teaching of Vatican II - that the Church must discern a way to proclaim the Faith in every generation - the methodology may change, but the content stays the same. To be able to pass on the Faith, you need to know the Faith. In Law the maxim is Nemo dat quod non habet - no-one gives what he does not have. So let today be the day you take an Act of Faith to heart, so that you will have a response to the Lord, when he asks you for it. For ask it - he will: O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins and that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches because you have revealed them who are eternal truth and wisdom, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. In this faith I intend to live and die. Amen.
I want you to concentrate on three aspects of this Gospel: (1.) the cry of the lepers: “Have pity on us,” (2.) the command of Jesus to them: “Go!” and (3.) the fact that one returns to “give thanks.” Keep these in mind as we unpack the teaching. Have you ever been in a dangerous situation with a group of people? Perhaps a bumpy flight, or a frightening storm. What do you hear them cry out? For many, it’s the only time they ever pray: “My God!” At a moment of crisis, there are very few atheists. But should God answer them? He’d be perfectly within his rights to decline their petitions - surely they cannot expect to ignore him their whole lives, transgressing his law, casting his Name to the wind, only for him to swoop in with a favor when they most need his help? The Miracle of the Ten Lepers is not just a feel-good story - how nice Jesus is, nor is it merely a call to gratitude when we receive God’s blessings. Jesus did many nice things, and healed many people during his ministry on Earth, but not all are recorded. There’s something more about this one - as well as an account of Christ’s goodness it is more importantly a liturgical catechesis. It shows how Christs heals us through the Sacraments, just as he healed the lepers of their physical ailments. It teaches us how we should respond with worship, just as the Samaritan returned and fell at his feet. But to see this depth, we must start where the story ends – with the one who turned back. The Ten Lepers heard Christ’s healing command, but one, realizing his condition had been cured, stopped in his tracks, returns to find Jesus, and glorifies God with a loud voice falling at his feet. Note that he apparently fails to complete the mission: Jesus told all of them to go, and show themselves to the priests. This one, however, has realized something. He has experienced an Epiphany, and thus returns to give thanks to the one he recognizes as both priest and God. The Lord, for his part, accepts this worship. He does not say (as the angels do, or St. Peter did in other places) ‘get up, I’m just a man’ - no - he doubles down “None was found to give glory to God except this foreigner.” His worship was well placed - the Samaritan realizes who Jesus is, and thus receives from him even more. The other nine will get sick again, with something or other - but this one hears the words: “Your Faith has saved you” - in Christ he receives not just healing, but salvation, as well. Ten of them recognized something in Jesus. The number of them is not coincidental - ten is a full number, and God uses it to express universality - e.g. the Ten Commandments, or completeness - e.g. the Ten Talents. They cry out to him from far away: Jesu! Master! Have pity on us! Whilst hearers of this Gospel would recognize leprosy as a terrible affliction that demanded separation, Christ invites us to recognize ourselves in the community of lepers: Jew and Gentile alike. The common condition is being apart from God, infected by sin, and contagious. We cannot approach God, we can only call out to him. How does this relate to the Liturgy? Well, we cry out to God in our leprous condition: “have pity on us!” every single day: what is translated in this Gospel as: “have pity” is also: “have mercy” - “eleison” the Lepers cry “eleison hymas” - the same Kyrie Eleison we cry out at every celebration of Mass: their cry has become the universal plea of wounded humanity, woven into our Sacred Liturgy. God’s response to this petition may then seem astonishing: go! It seems to be a simple verb, but in fact, it’s a euphemism - it means go away, go on a journey, depart - even, die! Can you see now how the story recounts a different narrative? It’s not really about leprosy. Obedience to Christ’s command is a sacramental journey that begins in Baptism, in which those infected with the contagion of sin (as the Liturgy describes it) are called to die and be reborn. The Samaritan Leper recognizes in this departing he has been healed - in his dying, he has been renewed. Believers might ask themselves - how do we access this cleansing rebirth? Now that Christ no longer walks the Earth, how can we be healed like he was healed? The answer is: the Sacraments, given to the Church by the Lord to continue his work until he comes again. But there’s a third layer, if you will, and that layer is uncovered by the apparently simple term ‘to give thanks’ - the Gospel recounts how the Samaritan falls on his face at Jesus’s feet giving thanks to him: “euchariston auto” - he, literally, eucharists him. Be in no doubt, it is Christ’s own words that such eucharisting is giving glory to God - and for the first hearers of this Gospel the penny would drop immediately. What we do at Mass, when we give glory to God, is to eucharist him, too - and thus this story is also a Theophany: Jesus is shown to be God and Savior because the Samaritan has Faith. Israel meanwhile seeks God’s favors but misses his divinity. It is the foreigner who sees - and the foreigner who has Faith. Let us heed the warning of this Miracle - 10 out of 10 receive God’s healing if they ask for it, but only 1 in 10 receives his salvation, because only 1 in 10 has Faith. The call to action is to be Tenth Leper - do we recognize our spiritual leprosy, or merely chase favors from God? Once we are healed, do we turn to him, or do we continue on our way without giving thanks?
' If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead .’ In Tolkien’s cosmology, elves and men are made of the same stuff of the earth, but elves are stronger in spirit, and their bodies are less fragile. But men have a Gift that their eleven cousins do not share, namely, death. Why would men see their mortality as a gift? In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, we see this divergence in action when Arwen is given a vision of the price of her immortality - being alone in the world after her husband, King Aragorn has died. It is a gift from God because immortality, in Tolkien’s understanding, binds the spirit to this world - and as the years pass, the woes of the world lay heavy upon the spirit, and it yearns for release. For elves, and wizards, such a release can only come if they choose to cross the Sea to Valinor, the Undying Lands, which is not heaven, because God does not dwell there, but is a place without torment. Death, for men, remains a mystery in Tolkien’s world. Even the elves do not really know what happens to men when they die, but evidence for it being a gift is of course given by the example of the Dead of Dunharrow, whose punishment for oathbreaking is that their souls are not released from Middle-earth at their death. Over time, because of the darkening of the world by evil, men come to see death not as gift, but as something to be feared - indeed to be feared more than anything else. Storytelling is often the best way to convey complex information, because the images remain long after the words have fallen to the ground. It’s why Our Lord teaches in parables, and creates vivid pictures for us to contemplate for years to come. Such is the parable of Dives and Lazarus, our Gospel today, and it is parables like these that provided J. R. R. Tolkien with the springboard to create his own way to explain the big questions. Dives and Lazarus are not in Hell, at least not in the sense of the place of damnation. They are in an in-between state, because Jesus has not yet risen from the dead, and claimed the souls of the just for himself. But they are in a place where there is no error or injustice. The rich man knows that his situation, uncomfortable though it is, is not unfair - and reaches out to Lazarus - nameless in life - to ease the weight of his conscience. But the point of the parable is to elicit the act of Faith. Dives protests that if someone would only go from the realm of the dead to warn the living of their fate if they live lives of debauchery, but Abraham responds sagely - God has spoken in the Law and the Prophets, and they do not listen to him. Such people are hard of heart, and they will not even accept the evidence of resurrection. This is, of course, a prophecy - curiously enough, Dives’ logic is actually God’s logic, because this is the divine plan, that One should rise from the dead, and Abraham will “ rejoice to see [his] day .” This week we celebrated the feast of the twin surgeons SS. Cosmas and Damian, and on that day I reminded the daily Massgoers that hospitals, and indeed institutional medicine as we know it, is the invention of the Catholic Church. But many put more trust in doctors and science than they do in God - even though there are numerous examples of where medicine fails, and people do not have a successful outcome. We believe, all the same. How curious this is! But at the heart of our blind Faith in medical science is the fear of death - seen by us not as a gift from God, but as a night terror. Let me be blunt - death is not to be feared, and dying is not the worst thing that happens to a human being: losing God’s friendship is the worst thing that happens to a human being. Our medical intervention should not have the aim of preserving life at any cost, but instead, of restoring us to health, so that we might get on with the job of working out our salvation in fear and trembling. From a Christian point of view, this is why we intervene medically - because you have a job to do - beyond your daily life with its chores and responsibilities, your chief role is to worship God, and you cannot do that with a broken limb, or a whooping cough. We cannot cheat death, it will come for all of us, one day. But we should believe - because One did indeed rise from the dead. A few weeks back two world leaders were caught boasting about how, very soon, they would be able to avoid physical death and live forever by means of constant organ transplants. There are also titans of the technological industries who dream of downloading their consciousness so they escape the limitations of a physical body once and for all. If this kind of fantasy were to become a reality, we know what the Church's response would be - she would oppose it, because to deny the human person the release of death would, in fact, be inhumane. To be trapped in a server somewhere, forever (or at least until the next power cut) would be a state not dissimilar to the Dead of Dunharrow - no longer alive, but rather ghosts seeking to avoid God at all costs. What a pitiable state. Because the One Man rose from the dead, we no longer need fear death - in a way, Tolkien is correct, it is a form of gift, because it is the final answer to suffering and injustice - they do not endure forever, but God's Word does endure, and his promises are everlasting.
I met some of the richest women in Fairfield County last week; 8 of them, in fact. They live in a mid-century modern dwelling, which, I’ll be honest could do with some work, but some people like that vibe. Strange thing is, they only wear undyed woollen clothing, and they don’t wear shoes. Ever. They also beg for food - and if no-one gives them food, they go hungry. That’s right - they are cloistered nuns, and they just moved to Danbury, CT. But don’t you dare pity them - they are truly wealthy in what matters to God, and they run a kind of celestial money laundering scheme. Don’t worry, this is legit - it’s actually God’s idea. He says: “ Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings .” We’re in the middle of the Lord’s teaching on wealth at the moment, and it can make us squirm. All of us - even us clergy, who don’t take vows of poverty. The parables and statements in Luke 15 and 16 are given in response to encounters with the Pharisees, who were at the same time interested in, but also skeptical of, the enigmatic rabbi from Galilee. They want to find a way to reject his ideas, but they can’t deny the crowds like what he has to say; whereas Jesus, for his part, wishes to challenge their immense pride. We know this because of the commentary the Gospel writer gives immediately after this parable and before the next one: “ The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. ” These lines are a footnote which explains the context of Christ’s message. Remember that the Pharisees are not some kind of pantomime villain that we should cry ‘boo’ whenever we hear them mentioned. Jesus himself is more aligned with the Pharisaical tradition than any other sect in the 1st Century - he is more a reformer from within, than an enemy from without - which explains why he was called ‘rabbi’ and invited into the homes of leading Pharisees. In the Parable, the unjust steward knows he’s about to be fired, and acts quickly to make his future secure. He writes off his master’s debtors’ debts. It’s a dishonest thing to do, fraudulent even, but in an unexpected twist his shrewdness is actually commended by the master. What do we make of this? Is Jesus commending his dishonesty? By no means. But he is commending his shrewdness. The starting point to remember is that, in the teachings of Jesus, material wealth is not a sign of God’s favor. It is neither morally good, nor morally wicked. Instead it represents potential - we can make things happen by using resources wisely, or we can hoard them and simply please ourselves and our friends, but the source of wealth remains the same: it all comes from God and ultimately belongs to God, because he is the Creator of all that is. We are stewards of his gifts - and whilst he may endow some of us with the intellect to make good deals, and accumulate even more - that intellect is also God’s gift, and also belongs to God, because you belong to God, too. The point of the parable is - whilst the unjust steward realizes he can deploy someone else’s wealth to make friends and gain access to earthly dwellings, by contrast a upright steward ought to realize he can deploy ‘unrighteous wealth’ to make friends and gain access to eternal dwellings. You just need to work out who these friends are. There are two ways to identify them: (1.) they’re not interested in the specification of your car, and (2.) they won’t invite you back. But there’s more to the parable than stopping at the point we conclude the unjust steward is merely a baddie. First, he is shrewd at a personal cost to himself - St. Ambrose points out that his pay is on the basis of commission, so if he reduces the debt owed to his master, he gets paid less. He is thus investing in an unspecified future benefit, rather than his immediate salary. Secondly, rather than get mad, the master is impressed with his deviousness. St. Bede thinks the master represents God, but with all due respect to the venerable Doctor, I’m not so sure. There is ‘honor amongst thieves’ after all, and unjust stewards are typically employed by unscrupulous masters - so in reducing the debt owed to the master, the steward may, in fact, be redressing an injustice, rather than causing a new one. The Lord is teaching us to keep our eyes fixed on heaven, where there are indeed mansions, and a Paradise beyond our every imagining. Nothing on this earth compare with the blessedness of sharing God’s own life. In order to do that, we must learn to prioritize the things that God prioritizes - and everything else will then be given to us as well. All of us are tempted by wealth - actually, rich and poor alike - but that temptation springs from a lack of Faith in eternal life, and eternal consequences for our actions. This world, this life, is not all there is - and we all will have to render an account of our stewardship. My advice to you then is to consider surplus wealth like a hot potato - if it stays in your hands it will burn you - get rid of it! Pass it on! Do good! Be extravagant! And make friends for yourselves with those who can never repay - those who waste their lives prioritizing the Kingdom of God - because they are the friends who will advocate for you before the throne of grace, and welcome you into the celestial dwellings.
The Bible is stranger than you think. Phrases like “there’s nothing new under the sun,” or, “the writing is on the wall,” or, “by the skin of your teeth” are so common, many do not even realize they are quoting Scripture. But there is a risk with such familiarity we assume we know what they mean, missing their profound and shocking depth. Take the image of the Cross, for example: a symbol we rightly cherish [as an aside - I hope all of you have a Cross hanging somewhere in your home (ideally, even more than one…] It gives us hope, and models for us the power Christ has over the things that we fear the most: suffering, and death. But our familiarity has almost anaesthetized us to its infinite cost - and the paradox in finding comfort through the invitation to sacrifice. Have you ever considered for a moment how odd it is, that we should find hope and healing in an image of a man, slowly asphyxiating, in terrible agony? Whilst it should never be frightening to us, the image of the Cross is certainly challenging - and when we gaze upon it, we shouldn’t let that strangeness pass us by. It is a sign of hope, for sure, but also an invitation. This is the way that we too must pass, if we are to have eternal life: " the Son of man must be lifted up " - and when he is lifted up from the earth, he " will draw all people " to himself. Five times in the Scriptures Jesus commands his followers: “ take up your Cross .” This, too, is an extraordinary thing to say. We often interpret this kind of cross as the little burdens and trials we endure in life - the things that grind, or annoy us. That’s not wrong, but it’s not sufficient. We don’t often think of embracing the ultimate sacrifice in defense of Truth. Perhaps we should? But there’s actually a little more nuance to the invitation: ‘take up your Cross.’ The Greek word for ‘Cross,’ σταυρός, (pronounced ‘stafros’) almost universally means the cross of crucifixion nowadays. But it didn’t originally. In human terms, the word is quite a primitive one: it describes the kind of sharpened pole that humans have been fashioning for thousands of years; to create structures, such as fences; or weapons, such as spears. You can see the evidence of this in the English words, ‘staff,’ or ‘stave,’ which come from the same Indo-European root as σταυρός. So when Jesus says, ‘take up your Cross’ there is a deliberate ambiguity in his meaning. Yes, it certainly can mean ‘be prepared to suffer death,’ but the invitation was made before the events of the Crucifixion took place. No-one (except Jesus) knew how the story would end. Equally well, ‘take up your Cross’ could mean take up your staff, an allusion to Exodus 12 and the instruction to the Israelites to eat the Passover meal with loins girt and staff in hand - but it can also, equally well, mean take up your spear - as in, a weapon - and be ready for battle. Of course Christ means all three, at the same time, but the original hearers would no doubt have selected which meaning suited them best. Only after Calvary would the primary meaning become a definitive call - and the other possible meanings make sense by reference to the first: the Cross is the direction of travel for all Christians - and in so doing, we enter into the true Passover, crossing the Red Sea from death to life, staff in hand, and also fight valiantly against evil with the only defensive weapon possible: the life-giving Cross of Christ. It urges us to live courageously, aligning our lives with Christ’s radical demands, not to soften it, or neatly package it up so it fits into a space we’re comfortable with. The centrality of the Cross is emblematic of Christian initiation - we are baptized, and anointed in the shape of the Cross. From that moment onwards, we trace that Sign over our bodies with water to remind us of our acceptance of Christ’s call. It’s no wonder, then, that the Cross forms the centerpiece of the great Christological paean found in Philippians 2:6-11. You may be very familiar with it - but again, it is stranger than it first seems. Scholars have long tarried over these words, because they don’t quite seem to fit into the structure or vocabulary of Paul’s letters. We know Philippians was written by Paul from prison, probably in Rome, and if so, between AD 60 and 62. But these lines have a distinctive meter and alliteration, which suggests they were designed to be learnt by heart and recited by a group. They are, if you like, a form of Creed, and written to be sung. It seems very likely that Paul didn’t write them. He is quoting a text that already existed - and that makes it very old, indeed - some of the oldest words of the New Testament, possibly emanating from the original Jerusalem Church, far older than the Gospels, and vying only with snippets in Paul’s other letters for the title of the oldest surviving Christian text. The text has a mirror-image structure, that forms one half of the letter X, or chi in Greek - for this reason we say it has chiastic form - it paints a landscape, in words, of descent and ascent, where the lowest point is death on a Cross, whence God raises Christ up, and exalts him, commanding us to revere his name for all eternity. It would be the perfect chant to sing during Baptism, where the text (and music) descends into death and rises to new life - and indeed, that is probably what we are looking at - whoever knew there would be archaeology, hiding in plain sight, in the middle of Paul’s letters? In this hymn, we can see what was important to the very first Christians - the ones who were alive, and witnessed, the events we commemorate every time we celebrate Mass - and what was of central importance to them was binding themselves to the image of the Cross, imprinting it on their lives - and if it was so important to them that this text survives intact to be proclaimed 2000 years later in Greenwich, CT, then it is still important to us now.
Let me ask you a personal question: do you hate your mom and dad? I hate mine. What about your siblings? Yes, them too. Hate them. Let’s get closer to the bone: do you hate your wife? What about your children? Have I gone too far? I even hate my life! " Taklit senah senetim " to quote Psalm 139:22: " I hate them with perfect hatred. " But before you think I’ve gone mad, let’s hear the words of Jesus again more attentively: " If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Lk 14:26 What on earth can he mean? I wonder when was the first time your child, or grandchild turned around and dropped the three word grenade in your face: ‘ I hate you! ’ How did it feel? A punch in the guts, I’m sure. Kids know this is, perhaps, the most powerful verbal weapon in their arsenal. ‘ They didn’t mean it… ’ your kindly spouse probably consoled you: ‘ they were just frustrated and unable to express their feelings. ’ But Jesus did mean it. 100%. When we encounter difficult lines in the Bible like this we have three options: (1.) ignore it, (2.) reject it, or (3.) dive into it, to understand more deeply what it means. Options (1.) and (2.) both undermine Faith - rejecting the teaching is obvious, but glossing over it is also a subtle rejection, because it undermines the credibility of the teller. If you can ignore what Jesus says here, what about in other places you find hard? If he’s talking nonsense here, then you can become the judge as to whether what he says in another place is the ‘real Jesus’ or not. See here one of the grave dangers of taking the Bible, in translation, and silently assuming you know fully well what it means. You will not find a priest more enthusiastic about Bible Study than me, and I encourage all of you to become as biblically literate as possible. But I must warn you of the dangers of private interpretation - there are tricky corners in the Scriptures. Some things can be taken literally: e.g. this is my body…this is my blood - but why must we take that literally, but not I am the vine, or when he describes himself as a mother hen? We don’t have a Liturgy where we claim to be grapes, or chicks, but we do have one where we claim to feast on the Body and Blood of Christ. To make sense of some of the more difficult passages you have to understand both the original language (or languages,) and also the context of what was said. Here we have a perfect example of what we call an ‘Aramaism.’ This passage is recorded speech of Jesus, faithfully noting down in the Greek language what was (almost) inevitably not delivered in Greek, but in Aramaic. An Aramaism happens when we see a phrase, a construction, or a linguistic device in Greek that really only makes sense in Aramaic. Those of you who speak more than one language do this all the time - sometimes you express a concept using the idiom of one language when you’re actually speaking another - and people can easily get confused. It’s true that Semitic languages often deploy hyperbole as a device - making an exaggerated or provocative statement in order to make a captivating point. A rhetorical device. Sometimes this passage is dismissed as hyperbole, but the problem with that is Greek uses hyperbole too - the very word is Greek, after all. This is not hyperbole, and it’s not emotional. The Lord is not being provocative here, he’s actually being very measured. The key is the differences between three verbs: ‘hate’ in English, ‘miséo’ in Greek, and ‘sane’ in Aramaic (and Hebrew.) The verb sane is much broader than the English and Greek versions. It can mean the kind of rage and fury that comes with animosity, but it can also mean a cold, rational detachment, or uncoupling, from someone, or something, that is preferred less than another. It does not necessarily mean ‘dislike’ or connote any kind of negativity, but rather a choice or selection for someone, or something, else. You can see this in other Old Testament contexts, for example God says in the prophecy of Malachi, quoted by St Paul in Romans: “ I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated .” Which reminds us of the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel: “ When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. ” We can see here that the semitic concept of ‘hate’ is not always angry, or full of rage. God is not mad at Esau, he simply prefers Jacob; Jacob for his part doesn’t despise Leah, he merely prefers Rachel. If we read back into these passages referring to hatred our own emotional baggage, then we risk misunderstanding the Word of God completely, and possibly misapplying attributes to God that are simply not there. This is simply a matter of understanding the way Semitic languages work. However, when it comes to translating, we have to take a further step. The Greek verb, miséo does not have these nuances, however, the Gospel writer is concerned to record Jesus’s sayings accurately. It is accurate, but it does not convey the meaning very well. The Lord has used a device in the Aramaic language which doesn’t translate very well, even into the original Greek of the New Testament. How important it is then for us to recognize we need not only the text, but also the testimony of those who heard the Lord speak - they knew what he meant - and that knowledge has been passed down in the Church. Things get even more challenging when we consider the English language. Again, ‘hate’ is an excellent translation of ‘miséo’ - there’s really no other choice. But ‘hate’ in English is an exceptionally emotive word. I deliberately took advantage of that with my opening dialogue - as soon as I said, ‘I hate mine’ about my parents, you took note - because it’s an extremely strong thing to say. Provocative, even. For the record (and they will read this) I love my parents, and my siblings very much indeed. But I prefer God, even to them, and in this sense - and this sense alone, I can say biblically I ‘hate’ them. The teaching here helps us to understand there is a hierarchy, even in the commandments of God. You see, if the Lord was truly teaching us to despise our parents, he would be contradicting himself, because as we know the Fourth Commandment is ‘Honor your father and you mother…’ but as we also know, the first three commandments are concerned with the honor and worship due to God, and God alone. The order is important - the love of God comes before everything else. God has revealed to us the structure of ordered love: God first, family second. Can you now see that the Lord saying ‘hate your father and mother’ in the context of discipleship is perfectly in line with the Fourth Commandment? Indeed, within the structure of the Ten Commandments, because love of God has first place, the honor to father and mother could even be described as ‘hating’ them! It sounds peculiar to our ears, doesn’t it? But that’s how languages work - and it’s why translation is fraught with danger! As soon as our emotional response is triggered, by the erroneous idea the Lord is teaching us to hate our families, the danger is we no longer listen to the point of the statement - it’s about discipleship - but that’s lost in the maelstrom of confusion. To be a disciple of Christ means He has first place even over our father, mother, wife, or children, even over our own life. There are two consequences of this teaching: If your father, mother, wife, or children prevent you from loving God, or worshiping God, you can, in good conscience, override their objections and still fulfill the Ten Commandments. I will let you in on a secret - my parents did not really want me to go to seminary. They were not Catholic (at the time) and I knew they did not approve. I went anyway - and in so doing, I did not break the Fourth Commandment, because love of God comes first. This point is easy enough to understand… The Lord lists father, mother, wife and children, and life itself - in that order. It’s a deliberate choice. All those are good things! In our discipleship, Satan does not tempt most of us to rob a bank - you and I are not really inclined to that kind of obvious evil - but for most people, growth in holiness is prevented not because they follow evil, but because they misprioritize good. They put family, or career, or material comfort, or health, in first place, and God in second place - and, as we have learnt from today’s language class - if we put God in second place - you guessed it, we hate him. So, now you know you’re just like me. You hate your father, mother, wife, children and your own life, too. Good! I’m happy for you. So next time your child screams ‘ I hate you! ’ - your answer should be ‘ well done, darling! I didn’t know you spoke Aramaic! ’