Sermons

Heartburn in Emmaus

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 20:31:19 GMT

Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?

I never used to believe in ‘acid reflux’ when I was younger. I was a heartburn skeptic. I’d listen to adults complaining about it, and quickly conclude they were moaning, or simply weak. Then (well over a decade ago now) I turned 30…and the story of the Road to Emmaus, never quite sounded the same to me again.

Fascinating then: the onset of middle-aged ailments gave me a totally new perspective on the story. When I first heard it, I assumed Cleopas and his companion were describing the fire of unbridled joy igniting within them - the thrill of discovering something for the first time. Perhaps that is what they meant—it could be—but it could also be a different kind of fire: the kind that consumes the chaff and stubble; the refiner’s fire, that strips away what is earthly, and leaves behind what is divine. That kind of refining is never comfortable.

But let’s take a moment to locate ourselves in the Easter story - this week, we are back on Easter Day in the evening. The Lord is risen and has appeared to some of the women, and “to Simon” - but Cleopas and his companion have not accepted their testimony. They are on their way out, to the spa town of Emmaus: the destination mentioned so we know they’re going nowhere good.

Note some crucial details - first and most obviously, Jesus does not introduce himself, he simply draws near and asks questions. Neither do they ask him who he is, but they are quite happy to share their woes with him. Quite a dangerous move, when you think of it - the death of Jesus was viewed by the authorities as a failed insurrection - who’s to say this inquisitive stranger wasn’t a spy? They have identified themselves as part of his group. It’s a remarkably foolhardy thing to do.

Secondly, Jesus walks with them in the wrong direction. He is prepared to head into that ‘nowhere good’ - in fact, he’s prepared to go beyond it. He doesn’t stop until they ask him to. Only then does he reveal himself in the breaking of the bread, and as soon as this happens, he vanishes. Recognizing Jesus means they turn back on their planned itinerary - but Jesus never commands them to do it - they come to that realization themselves.

Thirdly, even though they had rejected the testimony of the women, and of the Apostles, they were still open to hearing the Word. They didn’t try and silence the stranger, but when he opened the Scriptures to them, their hearts burned within them.

St. Ambrose already noted the ambiguity of this burning I alluded to in the opener. He tells us this is the fire of divine love, which has a dual effect - it strengthens and purifies what is heavenly within us, but consumes and destroys what is earthly. Isn’t this often how we hear the Scriptures? Sometimes the fire of God’s Word comforts us, and sometimes it sears what needs to die in us.

But even more - do you think there have been times in your life when the Lord has accompanied you when you were traveling in the wrong direction? Did you feel your heart burn within you as the Spirit of Jesus reminded you of all that he has said and done? You know it’s right, but you don’t want to hear it. It’s uncomfortable - it challenges you to change.

I like to call these ‘2:20 AM moments’ because they often happen in the quiet of the night - but maybe I should call them spiritual reflux instead. Sometimes spiritual reflux, and the Pepto-Bismol kind even coincide these days.

But what does this accompaniment sound like? It’s the ‘still small voice’ gently questioning your assumptions - is that really right? Are you really in the right there? Could there be a better way? It’s those moments where we desperately need to pray our eyes be opened, so we can recognize who it is doing the questioning. These are the ‘Emmaus moments’ that all of us experience in our pilgrimage along the way.

Emmaus is where our disappointments and frustrations take us. Emmaus is being let down when we thought we could rely upon someone.
Emmaus is when God’s plans do not align with our plans, but we stubbornly cling to old ideas, anyway.

To return from Emmaus is hard work. It requires the humility of coming to terms with that fact I’m on the wrong path. But I have some good news for you. The ‘breaking of the bread’ the two travelers mention is, unambiguously, the Eucharist. Breaking bread is a euphemism for the Mass from the earliest days of Christianity and cannot reasonably be understood any other way.

The stranger who walks with you in the dead of night on your road to Emmaus is the very same who offers to break bread for you. He has called you to that table right here, right now. And in the breaking of the bread, even if you are not only on the road to Emmaus, but a fully paid-up, registered citizen of Emmaus - in the breaking of the bread you will recognize the Lord if you believe in his name.

When you see him in the breaking of the bread he will vanish from your sight, not because he wants to hide, but because he wants you to carry him on the way back from Emmaus. As St. John Henry Newman put it: “ He vanished from sight that He might be present in a sacrament… He removed his visible presence and left but a memorial of Himself ”. On the way back from Emmaus, Jesus doesn’t walk alongside you, but within you, instead.

When we recognize the Lord in the breaking of the bread, we also recognize the call he makes of us: to become living Tabernacles of his presence in the world. If we accept that call, we should not be surprised if he also asks our hearts to burn - sometimes with joy, other times with correction. That burning is the Spirit of Jesus stripping away our delusions and false hopes so that truth can take root instead.

Because of the breaking of the bread (which is of course the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ) the stranger who walked beside them in their wrong direction now lives within them. He breaks himself and gives himself to them. The fire that had burned from the outside, in on the road now blazes from the inside, out - illuminating the path back to Jerusalem in the dead of night, making the travelers into torches guided by the inner light of Christ’s presence.

My dear friends, wherever your Emmaus is; whatever disappointment with God, the Church, or life has led you down the wrong path, hear this: the same Lord who met them brings you here. He still walks with us when we’re headed in the wrong direction. He still opens the Scriptures until our hearts burn. And he still makes himself known in the breaking of the bread.

Doubt and Faith

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:07:17 GMT

Let me start today with a provocative statement: I have not yet met a true atheist. The reason for this is because I have not yet met someone who doesn’t rely on faith for their everyday existence. Don’t get me wrong - I’m all too well aware of people who say they don’t believe in God, and reject the truth claims of Christianity out of hand.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a prior commitment to faith as their mode of being - we all do. It is the underpinning of all science - that we trust the empirical results of people we admire and respect. No-one, for example, walks out their front door disbelieving the laws of gravity - not even being skeptical about them - we go about our day assuming that gravity is true, without testing it. This, my dear brothers and sisters, is precisely what “faith” is - maybe with a small ‘F’. We simply don’t have the time or means to test everything, so all of us operate by faith in unprovable assumptions every single day —whether in our relationships, science, history, or moral reasoning.

We live by faith in the reliability of our senses, memory, and often the testimony of others. We trust reports of history; we trust bridges won't collapse under us, we trust our loved ones, friends, and colleagues, which is why it’s so painful when they do. So faith, then, isn’t the exclusive realm of religious people on Sundays - it’s actually how almost all humans operate, every single day.

But there’s more: reliance upon things being as they were yesterday is faith in the idea that things don’t arbitrarily change, and that is actually a form of belief in God, too - albeit a very small god, whose only role is to guarantee the laws of physics. But even that everyday trust in a stable, orderly universe quietly points toward a Creator who sustains all things out of love.

Faith is not the opposite to doubt, either. Doubting is the name we give to the process of assessing truth claims - and even if we struggle from time to time, all of us are here today because, on balance, we find the truth claims of Christ’s Resurrection to be compelling.

So in today’s Gospel, when we meet the so-called ‘doubting’ Thomas, whom we all like to denigrate for his apparent lack of Faith, it is important we define our terms. In demanding empirical data he was not, in fact, denying Faith outright. Before we judge him, it’s important to observe two things: first, he was at a disadvantage in comparison with the other Apostles, because he wasn’t physically present when Jesus appeared that first Sunday; and secondly, the mode of proof Jesus voluntarily offered to the other ten (showing his hands and his side) was the very same condition Thomas required before he would give his assent to the data of the Resurrection.

This means that Thomas wasn’t so different from the others, after all. This forms a neat parallel with Cleopas and the other disciple walking away from Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus. They had heard testimony from the women, and (presumably) the Apostles that the Lord had risen and appeared to Simon but they didn’t believe, either. They had literally turned their backs on the evidence, and walked away. Only after encountering the Lord in person, and recognizing him in the breaking of bread, was their Faith restored.

When we hear Biblical testimony of the Resurrection like this, we must bear in mind that these stories are not provided as a chronicle, (that we might learn the whys and wherefores of our Faith) but instead they build up a picture. But in the process of weaving those threads together we meet the first ‘crisis’ in the Church - how do we pass on the Faith without a personal encounter with the Risen Lord, without seeing his hands and his side? Without pressing our digits into his wounds? How do I know it was a crisis? Well, because John deals with it explicitly in direct terms:

Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.
But these are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

Put aside for a moment clear evidence against Luther’s doctrine of sola scriptura in this passage (I will leave that for another day), this commentary from the Evangelist gives us insight into why the rather embarrassing story of Thomas was recorded and passed down - indeed, why all the stories that show the Apostles in a negative light - Peter’s denials, James and John having their mother ask for thrones at the Lord’s left and right - they are not there for us to think ‘oh, well I wouldn’t have done that’ - they are there so that we might be consoled when, like Thomas, we question our Faith, like Peter, we deny the Lord outright, and like James and John we expect him to do favors for us as a reward for belief.

John’s account of the Lord’s encounter with Thomas points to a different kind of proof. You and I hear the Gospel announced to us each week, and each week, the Lord invites us, like Thomas to thrust our fingers into his side, and draw out from him the living water of the Sacraments. To be a doubting Christian is thus revealed to be normal - or perhaps I should perfect this observation using St. John Henry Newman’s famous aphorism: “ Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. ” Christians who take time to assess the truth claims are not suffering a lack of Faith, because they silently recognize their dependance upon grace for the constant affirmation that the story is true. Indeed, honest ‘doubters’ who bring their questions to Christ often become the most steadfast believers in the end.

But there was another kind of testimony that the Apostles, who saw the Risen Lord, would later be asked to give. It is, of course, the testimony of martyrdom - of shedding their blood because they refused to deny what they had seen and heard on the Road to Emmaus, in the Upper Room, and by the lakeside of Galilee. The Lord also knew that his followers would be asked to bear witness to him, to the end - and for this, he consoled them with the personal proof of his power over death itself.

And this testimony, written in their blood, is the final piece of evidence for you and me that we can rely upon their words: put bluntly - no-one goes to their death for a lie they know to be untrue. No-one. The same men who ran away into the night when the Lord was arrested, tortured and killed - the same ones who betrayed him, and denied him - are those upon whose testimony you and I have confidence to believe, and with Thomas to acclaim: My Lord, and my God when he reveals himself to us in the breaking of the bread.

More than Remembrance

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:02:38 GMT

ܗܳܕ݂ܶܐ ܗܘܰܝܬ݁ܽܘܢ ܥܳܒ݂ܕ݁ܺܝܢ ܠܕ݂ܽܘܟ݂ܪܳܢܝ

[Hade hawytun ‘abdin l’dukrani]

When Christ says ‘do this in memory of me’ (and, assuming he spoke in Aramaic, the passage above is what it sounded like) he does something rather curious. He does not specify how often this dukrana (active memorial; in Greek, anámnesis ) should be - and this was perhaps one of the first things the early Church had to come to a consensus about. Should it be once a year, like the Passover? Or should it be once a week, because the Resurrection happened on the first day of the week? Well, in classic Catholic fashion, the answer is ‘both’ - we celebrate the Lord’s Day - Dies Domini - every week on the day of the Sun, but we also celebrate the dukrana of the Lord’s Paschal Mystery in a special way once a year. And today, we’ve arrived at the gates.

We call the special celebration of the Paschal Mystery Passiontide because it focuses to the exclusion of all else on the events of Calvary. But there’s something you really need to understand at this point. If it’s the first time anyone has ever told you, I apologize - but in the Sacred Liturgy, our remembrance, or memorial of the Lord’s Passion is not simply calling those historical events to mind. It’s not re-enactment either, in the sense of a play or pageant. Instead, liturgical remembrance (which is what we do every Sunday - indeed every time we celebrate the Eucharist) is a participation in those events that happened in history, as if we were there - and not just as spectators either, as if we were Christ.

This is what the Liturgy is. Gathered together, we are Christ’s body, and collectively we undergo what happened to Christ’s body, together. As St. Paul puts it:

The blessing cup that we bless is it not a communion with the blood of Christ?

St. Paul isn’t making the rather obvious point that there’s some kind of link between what we do, and what Christ did the night before he died. He’s saying something else - when we bless the blessing cup, we are in communion with the blood of Christ - that is, just as Christ’s blood was poured out on the Cross, in the Sacred Liturgy Christ’s blood (the exact same substance) is also poured out for the remission of sins.

Dukrana is the way God remembers. When we ask him to remember his covenant, it’s dukrana . It’s not because the idea goes out of God’s mind - he never forgets - but when he remembers, the covenant is actualized in the here and now. In the Liturgy God teaches us his way of remembering - he teaches us dukrana - dissolving the barriers of time and place, in order to allow us to be crucified with Christ, and rise with Him, too.

I’m telling you all this because we have clearly changed gears liturgically this week. The veils on the crosses and images are a signal to you. They insist that you focus on the liturgical rites, and not on any devotions, or imaginations of your own, except the Stations of the Cross. It’s by no means that devotions are wrong, it’s just that now the Church requires your full, conscious, and active participation in the Mysteries. The statues are veiled because for two weeks we come out of the world - what the world is doing right now doesn’t matter, it has dissolved away, it is irrelevant; what matters now is the Passion of Christ, and our taking part in it.

We are two weeks out, and the Church has a preference that we call to mind the resurrection of Lazarus. It’s the Gospel for Year A, but also permissible in the other years as well, because it locates the liturgical action in realtime historical sequence. You see, the events of next week, Holy Week, are historical facts. We know when Passover was celebrated, because it relates to the phase of the Moon; and we know that Jesus was crucified before Passover - indeed, in something of a hurry, so the bodies would not remain on the crosses during the holy day. We know too, because John tells us that Jesus entered Jerusalem to jubilant crowds waving palms six days before the Passover, and we also know that the crowds had very recently been stirred up because many had witnessed the resurrection of Lazarus.

The raising of Lazarus was a crisis in Israel. A full-on crisis. Many people - many Jews - came to believe in Jesus because of the power of this sign. They saw a stinking corpse rise out of the tomb, still wrapped in the ceremonial grave clothes. Can you imagine the scene? It would have been terrifying - not least for Lazarus himself, who woke up after four days swaddled in bands. This was no peaceful party trick, it would have been dramatic - and noisy. Can you picture Lazarus’s panic? He wakes up, but he can’t see, or breathe, properly because of the tight cloths: “unbind him” the Lord commands, “and let him go.”

It’s the same command the Lord gives when you and I were baptized. And I suppose that’s the point. To place ourselves outside the stinking tomb, to witness a corpse come to life is designed to wake us up!

But why did it upset the Jewish elite so much? Well, remember that Roman rule over the Jews was a really rather manipulative play off between three power bases: the Prefect (Pontius Pilate) the Herodian puppet kings (like Herod Antipas), and the religious authorities, most chiefly the Sanhedrin. When the Pharisees heard about the raising of Lazarus, and the conversions of the people, they realized the threat to the delicate balance of power such an uprising would represent, and so they ask the High Priest, Caiphas, to convoke the Sanhedrin - a Greek word a bit like ‘Synod’ that means seated assembly.

In Jesus, the Sanhedrin finds a rare point of unity. Remember, of the 71 members, the majority were conservative Priests or Elders, who quarreled (sometimes violently) with the upstart, but populist, Pharisees, about key points of doctrine. But they found unity in their rejection of Jesus, a man whose face just didn’t fit the image of a Messiah they were looking for. And so Caiphas utters the prophetic line: “it is better…that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” These words uttered, it was only a matter of time before the plot to kill Jesus (and Lazarus) would unfold. Out of grief, then, we recognize that the Lord has been condemned. Despite the palms and the acclamations of next week, from now on, he is a dead man walking. But you and I are here because we know how the story ends…

Now I See

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:06:27 GMT

Do you remember I said a few weeks back together we are going to look again at the Faith we think we know? It’s important we take on board this attitude as a normal way of keeping our Faith alive. It’s not saying we have got it all wrong, but it is saying that God does not want us to get to a certain point and stop. He wants us to continue growing in Faith every day of our lives until that day he calls us to himself. That growth is truly the meaning of life.

Some of you might be gardeners - ‘green-thumbed’ in American parlance, ‘green-fingered’ in mine. If you work the land you know that for the yard to stay the same requires constant change. If you leave it alone, in just a matter of weeks the weeds will begin to spring up, then the vines will invade the beds, the crabgrass will take over the lawn, and the briars will choke the shrubs.

Good gardening is about constant adjustment, feeding the soil, giving the plants light, moisture, and air, and being on the lookout for anything which upsets the delicate balance that order requires. It’s exactly the same with the spiritual life. If you conclude: ‘well, I went to CCD until 8th Grade’, or (my favorite) ‘I went to Catholic school’ but you haven’t re-examined the fundamentals of who Jesus is, who you are, and why it all matters, then maybe now is the time to get the pruning shears out.

So, our Gospel of the Man Born Blind this week invites one of those big questions. I’ll pose it to you: what are the stories of Jesus’s miracles for? Why does the Bible include them? What do they reveal to us of God’s plan of salvation? It’s possible to receive this story (and all the other miracles) as an example of how extraordinarily nice Jesus is - how compassionate in comparison with the mean and nasty pharisees who criticize him for healing on the Sabbath, or an example how powerful he is - he must be God because he can do these supernatural things. After all:

Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind

Those first two observations are not wrong. Jesus is extraordinarily nice, and powerful too. But we must be careful not to stop at this point.

You see, Jesus healed many other people - thousands, probably - and those healings, and the events surrounding them are not recorded. Is that a problem? No. Would we like to hear more about what Jesus did? Perhaps. But the Gospels are not chronicles of Jesus’s actions. They are not a biography. They are a curated collection of sayings, teachings, and actions, presented with necessary context, so that, when made present in the Liturgy, the believer would develop an accurate picture of who Jesus is over a lifetime of repetition.

Most of that happens supernaturally: it’s not because you hear the words in your own language that you come to an accurate picture of who Jesus is - it’s because He himself is objectively made present in the Liturgy for us to discover him. When we proclaim his mission in the Gospels, it is He himself who is acting. Don’t believe me? Well think back to the days before the printing press. How would anyone have known what the Bible said? They could not read, but they did have Faith. If they didn’t - you and I would not be here. Their Faith did not depend upon understanding the words proclaimed in the Liturgy. It depended upon encountering the Author of Salvation Himself, and having that encounter explained to them.

The story of the Man born Blind is not chosen for today’s Gospel by accident. It is associated with the Scrutinies of Catechumens preparing for Baptism at Easter - and the whole Gospel is really a theological exposition of the Sacrament of Baptism. The Blind Man has a disability from birth, which he is not able to solve by his own efforts. He requires intervention and healing. Meeting Jesus, he undergoes two ritual actions - anointing, with mud and spittle, and washing - in the Pool of Siloam. Catechumens would immediately think of the pre-baptismal anointing with oil (that used to be an anointing of the whole body in earlier Christian practice) and the immersion in the font of Baptism at the hands of the priest (again, that used to be a full immersion of the whole body under the water.)

But the focus on blindness is because Baptism was also called ‘Illumination’ in many early sources, because through it the eyes of the soul are opened to sanctifying grace. This Gospel then, explains the Christian understanding of how grace makes us righteous by Christ’s merit converting the heart and renewing us interiorly, and contrasts it with the Pharisees’ understanding of righteousness by human merit in the external observance of the Law, regardless of what’s going on in the heart.

So the Gospel is proclaimed in the Liturgy, but it also needs to be explained. In the Liturgy, Christ himself acts; in catechesis we learn to recognize his action. We need both - the Gospels do indeed record the amazing charity and power the Lord has to inspire us, but in choosing these stories to recall, liturgical catechesis allows us to understand how God has worked in our lives. This Gospel is much more than information about a miracle that occurred to an anonymous man long ago. It’s about us. The man born blind is you and me, unable to see without God’s touch in the anointing and washing in the font of Baptism.

But once our eyes are opened, there’s still work for us to do - notice under interrogation he who was born blind moves from describing Jesus as ‘the man’ to ‘a prophet’ then, finally, ‘Lord.’ The identity of Jesus still needs to be received, even if the eyes of Faith are opened. Thus we recognize our own journey in the story - our need for enlightenment, and a commitment to ongoing spiritual growth, lest we become like the Pharisees who remain in their sins because of their refusal to accept their need for grace.

We must instead ask ourselves honestly: Where am I still blind? Do I trust in my own righteousness because I grew up Catholic, or because of my external compliance with the precepts of the Church? Or instead, am I truly open to the continual pruning that a life of grace entails? Perhaps we could even say, a life of amazing grace:

I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

Not So Scarlet

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:12:49 GMT

Almost every commentary dealing with John 4 draws an inference from the dialogue about the morals of the woman Jesus meets at the well. They observe that the Lord makes a leading request: “Go, call your husband and come here” - knowing that she has had five husbands, and apparently she is now cohabitating with a man who is not her husband. They then note John’s comment about it being the sixth hour - Noon - with a cultural observation, which goes something along the lines of: ‘nice girls don’t go to the well at Noon’.

It’s tempting to do this. But whilst the Bible does provide us with information about the woman’s marital status, we are, in fact, not privy to the reasons why she had five husbands. Could it be that she had been divorced, or set aside, five times? Yes, it could be. Why might that be? Well it certainly wouldn’t be because she was cavorting with another, because if that were the case, she would be dead. Remember, she herself had no power to divorce any of her husbands, but each one of them had the power to put her away.

But there could also be a quite different explanation. Samaritans, like Jews, considered themselves bound by Deuteronomy 25 which commands a brother to marry his brother’s widow if he predeceases her; a ‘levirate’ marriage, although the Samaritan gloss was that it was only possible if the prior marriage was unconsummated. The picture is much more complicated - and what emerges is that we rush to conclusions about her morality. We assume that she was to blame, when the reality is - we don’t know.

Similarly, with coming out to the well at Noon. It is, of course, a practical observation that the onerous work of drawing water is customarily done in the early morning or later evening, when it is cooler, and that during the hottest part of the day people would not, typically, be going to the well. So John invites us to ask why she might be going there at that time.

But it is not true that no-one would ever go to the well at Noon; the text also tells us that the disciples were not with Jesus because they had gone to get food. Sychar is clearly a town that does not fully shut down at Noon. Contrast that with towns even today in the South of Italy: try getting food during siesta time there - the shutters come down - and nothing is open. So at the very same time as noting the unusual timing of her visit to the well, Scripture also cautions us about rushing to conclusions about that fact.

But, even if she were coming to the well at Noon to avoid her fellow townspeople - why must we rush to assume she is in the wrong? Maybe they are in the wrong - maybe she is innocent - simply the complicated circumstances of her domestic life have left her on the outside, a pariah, because of the prejudice of others. We have all been there.

Furthermore, if we assume her reputation is trash, it doesn’t really make sense of the latter part of the store, where she runs into the town and evangelizes the whole place in a matter of hours. If she were the scarlet woman, it’s not so likely this would be possible. So again, the Biblical data tells a more nuanced story than our own prejudices would urge us to conclude.

It is essential we are on the guard for this kind of reading-in to the Scriptures of our own baggage and justments, lest we fall into the temptation to join the baying crowd in condemning a woman whose identity the Bible assiduously protects, by refusing to give us her name.

But at a much deeper level, if we have already made up our minds about the woman at the well, the Scriptures condemn us, by contrasting our fascination with gossip and intrigue to the Lord’s gentle encouragement of her. This is a really compelling literary device - we are given just enough rope to hang ourselves - because the contrast between our assumptions, and Christ’s forgiveness is precisely the message we need to hear.

Speculation about the woman’s morals (a story as old as the hills - why is it always the woman who is to blame for loose morals?) clouds a much deeper meaning of this passage. What is it really about? It’s about discipleship and worship. Jesus tells her the meaning of discipleship is to receive from him the living water that turns us into wellsprings for others to drink from. So far, so good. That’s an interesting, but relatively simple, concept - if we have correct knowledge about God, we will be able to share that knowledge with others.

But this lady doesn’t stop there. She recognizes that discipleship is linked to worship - so she asks a burning question. In fact, the burning question that divides Samaritans from Jews: where, and how, God commands to be worshiped. Samaritans followed the practice of their ancestors and built a temple on Mount Gerizim, whereas for Jews it was of fundamental importance that God be worshiped in the Temple in Jerusalem. In posing this question, she draws something out of Jesus we only know about because she asked. She truly is present at a well, but in a more profound sense - she takes her jar and plunges it into the depths of God; she gets her answer, and so do we.

Jesus uses this encounter to set an entirely new paradigm here. I can’t stress that highly enough. It’s worth repeating in full:

“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Jn 4:21-24

But since this was a private conversation, it is handed down to us because either the Lord, or the woman, chose to repeat it. To cap it off, Jesus also reveals to her (and her first, and her alone) what authority he has to make this change:

“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

Jn 4:25-26

This is perhaps the most direct statement of Jesus’s messianic authority ever recorded, and was given to the woman of Samaria at the well of Sychar. She realized that she needed to ask the question about worship, but Jesus chose her as the first to hear the words “I who speak to you, am he.”

What does she do with that information? She doesn’t store it away, she leaves her water jar and runs back to the same community that shuns her in order to tell them the good news. In a matter of hours her testimony ignites the Faith of the town - many believe because of her testimony, but even more because she brings them to Jesus.

Jesus didn’t choose to speak to someone with a perfect life. He chose an outsider. He meets us when we’re at the well in the heat of the day with our burdens and questions. But when we truly grasp who he is, we stop trying to fill our jar with the water that will leave us thirsty again, instead we bring others to worship - a worship that is not a burdensome duty imposed from above, but a natural outflow of springs welling up to eternal life.

Do you hear him say this to you? What are you coming to the well in the Noonday sun to fill your jar with? How about you put it down, and quench your thirst with living water instead? Leave whatever fills the jar - your commitments, schedules, work, comforts or assumptions - and instead become a wellspring rooted in worship. The Father still seeks such to worship him. He is still seeking you.

Death of Monoculture

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:46:45 GMT

I’m going to make a general observation, which doesn’t fit everyone’s circumstances. It’s just a feeling, or a vibe: people are less happy now than they were, say 25 years ago. Most people are bumping along, doing alright, but it doesn’t take very much for them to lose their cool. When they do lose their cool, it also seems to be wildly out of proportion to the issue or concern that’s irksome. It’s almost as if we want to get mad, like we are choosing to be miserable. And please note, I’m saying ‘we’ - I’m in this with you. I feel the same. In the process of writing this sermon, ‘Pages’ froze, and I lost the whole of a completed draft.

All of this is in the face of hard data that tells a different story. Yes, wealth inequality has risen, but inflation-adjusted household income is 10% higher, real GDP per capita is 40% higher, and household net worth is double or higher than it was in the Year 2000. Productivity has increased, and technology continues to make our lives vastly simpler, and cheaper. When it works. So why are we so frustrated?

In December 2025, an article on Buzzfeed did the rounds. It commented on the ‘Death of Monoculture’ - if you’re not sure what monoculture is, it’s shorthand for describing something we all share in common, as a society, even as a nation. A shared experience, fashion or trend. I can only think of the Superbowl as a remnant of a much wider shared culture, where people watched the same shows, read the same articles, and chatted about them over the watercooler the next day.

The thesis of the article points the finger at algorithms, which rather than inviting us into shared experiences with our friends, neighbors, and colleagues, rather ‘rabbitholes’ us as individuals all by ourselves, pushing content that reinforces the prejudices and triggers we already had, not opening our minds, but closing them in by convincing us that we are always right, and that anyone else who doesn’t agree with us must be a mortal enemy.

The article also made the striking claim that it is simply not possible to be famous any more. Not really, really famous. If you are a fan of Taylor Swift, algorithms convince you that she is the most important person in the world, and that everyone else thinks so too. But I can guarantee you that half of this Church at least has no idea who Ms. Swift is. But all of us have heard of the Beatles.

Thankfully for us, I have the antidote to this restless emptiness we feel - and it is, of course, the person of Jesus. Today’s Gospel we are given a pledge made by the Lord to just a few, select witnesses. The Transfiguration is no cheap party trick. More than a mere vision, it was an encounter with the future of redeemed humanity; what it looks like when someone is fully alive, when someone is a saint.

You see, in the Incarnation, Christ’s divinity remains for the most part hidden. This is deliberate, because we must choose to love him freely and without coercion, but risky, because we can equally well choose to be indifferent. Peter, James, and John will all undergo the crisis of the Passion. The Transfiguration is an exceptional grace bestowed upon them to match the sufferings they will all undergo in their discipleship, but for us, it also serves as a source of hope, that Christ is who he says he is.

They say ‘when your culture is gone it’s not coming back’ but for us Christians, this is too pessimistic. We have the image of the transfigured Christ seared into our collective memory, so whether Rome stands or falls, whether we’re in the Dark Ages, or the Black Death, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, or whatever else challenges us as human beings, we have the ultimate reset button: “this is my beloved Son; listen to him.”

Rather than sink into depression, let’s consider the atomization of monoculture as the opportunity to remake Christian culture, where the worship of God is the center of our being and our lives revolve not around the whims and fancies of viral videos, but the true icon of joy, peace, and truth, Christ our Lord. You and I have the opportunity to become this city on a hill - this beacon of hope. Let it radiate from here, through the power of the Sacraments, to everyone you encounter in your daily lives. May they be transformed because you are touched by the presence of Christ, and maybe, more than a little bit transfigured by him.

Sin is Boring

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:39:39 GMT

I don’t know if you are familiar with the Screwtape Letters. If you’re not - you should be! They are the genius of Charles Staples Lewis, more famous for the Chronicles of Narnia. The Screwtape Letters are a satirical imagining of the bureaucray of Hell called the ‘Lowerarchy’ where the demons, like Screwtape, for that’s its name, gather ‘dossiers’ on us humans they call ‘patients’ in order to plan their strategy for our downfall, lest we adhere to the plan of salvation of their opponent ‘the Enemy’ - who is, of course, God.

Now I know what you’re thinking, your new pastor had the audacity to preach hellfire in his very first sermon, but you see, I really have no choice because the evil one features as the main protagonist in the Gospel - and my boss is here, who will be making sure I preach the Gospel to you.

But Lewis’s vision of infernal bureaucracy is really rather apt, because sin is very boring indeed - and demons, endowed with the same intellectual powers as angels, are sticklers for detail — but they also cannot think outside the box, like God can (and we can). We see this in Satan’s temptations of Christ in the desert. Satan uses the classic trifecta of temptations, helpfully listed in 1 John 2:16:

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

This means the temptations Jesus undergoes in the desert are the same ones that you and I undergo every day: lust of the flesh (in this case, urging the Lord to satisfy his body with bread), lust of the eyes (here, becoming a celebrity, performing a death-defying leap from the Temple parapet), and pride of life (here, Satan offers what is truly his: political power over all the earth).

There are two points of consolation to observe at this point: we know the Devil’s tricks - he does nothing new, or interesting - and, more importantly, in Christ we can overcome them, because Christ overcame them.

But you might be asking - surely Satan knows who Christ is? Why does he have the audacity to tempt him? Not so. It is a noble tradition of Biblical exegesis that Satan does not fully know the identity of Christ at this point. God’s plan is outside of the box - the Incarnation breaks the rules - God becoming man in order to save us was something the Devil did not anticipate, because unlike God, the Devil rigidly insists on the rules.

At this point Satan knows that the Lord is a good man, a very, very good man. He knows all that has been publicly prophesied about him. He knows what Gabriel said to Our Lady about him (and he knows angels do not lie, nor make theological mistakes); he knows too what John the Baptist said about him at his Baptism in the Jordan (but prophets are human, so John could be mistaken); however he does not know what the Angel said to Joseph in a dream about the Lord, and the reason for that is whilst demons know all about us, unlike God they cannot read our minds.

This is fascinating, because the key piece of data, that unambiguously shows that Jesus is both Christ and God was revealed in a dream, and not in speech. The Angel revealed to Joseph, and Joseph alone, that he was to be called Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. If you don’t believe me, check it out: Luke 1:31 versus Matthew 1:21. The Angel tells Mary out loud that he should be named Jesus, but he does not tell her why, only Joseph has that piece of information. When you realize that the Holy Name, Jesus, means ‘God saves’ - you see the beautiful, intricate plan in all its glory.

John the Baptist proclaimed the Lord as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world - so you can see why Satan is worried. Demons don’t make theological mistakes, either. So he tests him, and comes away disappointed. And if there’s nothing else you take home today, let it be the hope that comes from the knowledge that in Christ humanity can pass the test.

Only God knew that his plan would succeed - and it is a plan that opens up a whole new way of life for you and for me. A way of life based upon the New Covenant in the blood of the Lamb; a way of life where the high standards God insists upon are rendered achievable, because at the very same time God offers his grace to meet them.

And my dear brothers and sisters, the way that God chooses to offer his grace is most clearly shown in the Sacramental life of the Church. For that to be alive and at work in you, you need a Pastor! You need a Man of the Eucharist! You have a Bishop, and he is our local successor of the Apostles. There is a golden thread that links him to one of the Twelve men called by Christ to shepherd the Church. But there’s also a golden thread that links me to him - and that is the communion we share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, which makes the Sacraments accessible to you, here in this place.

A Pastor is not a dictator, but a servant leader. He is not a celebrity who rules by his charm or his looks (I would clearly fail on both.) Instead, his leadership derives from his obedience first to Christ, and secondly to the Bishop. If your Pastor is obedient to Christ and the Bishop, then you can have confidence that his decisions will be blessed by God, who chooses to govern his Church through frail and flawed men. And as we know, God writes straight with crooked lines, so he will bring your good even out of my mistakes, as long as I am faithful.

But finally a Pastor is nothing without a flock - and you, my dear friends, are my flock, and I cherish each and every one of you. You call me ‘Father’ - and rightly so, but know that I too am a son, and a brother as well. [How fortunate I am that my own parents are here today to witness this important day.] But this means I know the real struggles of family life, and I am deeply moved by your perseverance amid unimaginable challenges to the peaceful practice of our Faith. In loving you, I share your joys and your trials, and you have come to know that I always tell you the truth. For it is the truth that sets you free.

Clearing the Bar

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:35:36 GMT

Lent begins on Wednesday, and even though in my Bulletin note I cautioned against ‘taking something up’ as a replacement for a Lenten penance, I do think there’s a corner of the Bible that provides very helpful practical insights for the spiritual life - that is the later wisdom literature of the Old Testament. It’s full of wise and engaging reflections on how to balance the pursuit of holiness in a busy world - and the reason it hits home so well for us may be surprising to you.

When we think of the Old Testament, I think many (most?) of us have an inbuilt assumption - that it’s all so terribly ancient. We remember the great and dramatic stories of old times, because they’re captivating, but we make an intellectual fast forward over the ‘boring bits’ and jump from Egypt or Babylon to Bethlehem without a thought for what happened in-between. This is natural, because those stories of exodus and exile are truly amazing, and they tell us a lot about who God is, and his concern to gather a people to himself in order that they might be free to worship him.

But we seem to know very little about the 500 years of history just before the birth of Christ. This is something we need to work on, because the Incarnation did not happen in a vacuum - God’s providence was creating the conditions into which the Savior could be born, and the different sects of the Hebrew religion came into being as a consequence of the shifting power struggle between the Jewish people and successive foreign powers that took political control.

In brief, the exile in Babylon comes to an end because Babylon is conquered by the Persians, who allow the Jewish priestly nobility to return to Jerusalem and restart Temple worship. Subsequently Alexander conquers Persia, and imposes Greek rule over Jerusalem for 170 years, and many Jews adopted customs from Greek culture - for those who like to work out, I’m afraid the Bible even warns against building gymnasiums! For over 100 years, there was a period of relative independence under the Hasmonean kings, and their end came with the rise of Rome, and the legacy of Rome’s client king, Herod the Great and his descendants.

So much for the History Channel - why is this important? Because the Old Testament is still being written in this time - just before the birth of Christ. It wasn’t all ancient history - and to see how God is speaking to his people immediately preparing them to receive Christ in history, we can see how God speaks to us preparing our hearts to receive him urgently today, both spiritually and sacramentally. This fresh perspective is the very heart and purpose of Lent. To see old things with fresh eyes.

Furthermore, this more recent Old Testament literature, basically from Haggai (begun around 520 BC) to the Wisdom of Solomon (completed perhaps just 30 years before the birth of Christ) applies itself to a much more sophisticated, urban society. You and I don’t live in tents, and build pyramids, but we do live in a multicultural society in solid dwelling with roads and water, and political administration. Our situation is much more like the society into which Jesus was born than that of the nomadic Israelites 1000 years previously. Therefore, the practical advice we have from rabbis like Jesus ben Sirach (yes, his name was Jesus) as heard in our first reading really hits home - and let’s remind ourselves what he says:

Before man are life and death, good and evil,
whichever he chooses shall be given him.

ben Sirach knows that the heart of God is freedom is disposed towards maximum freedom. This is both a gift to us human beings, and a responsibility. Last week I mentioned how God sets high standards - and he does - just look at the way Jesus raises the bar in the Sermon on the Mount with the construction: ‘you have heard it said—but I say to you.’ ‘You have heard it said’ relates to the Old Law, ‘but I say to you’ is the New Law in Christ’s blood, which does two things at the same time. Please remember (please) that in raising the bar, the Lord is not making it all more difficult. He is seeking to empower us. At the same time as raising the bar, he offers the means by which we can clear it - not by our own power, but by his .

I wish I could make this case to you even more eloquently, but I’m just one priest trying his best. To raise the bar does not mean to condemn or judge you. Sometimes it can sound like that. God works in a different way - he asks you honestly, and with great humility to try your best - and when you try your best, you will find that his power comes under your wings like a rushing wind, and you will succeed far more than you ever thought possible. He raises the bar, and you don’t just clear it, you fly over it. With grace, you can even loop the loop.

Don’t be put off by high standards, or clear principles. Not one of us, by our own power, can ever fulfill all the demands love places upon us. This is the paradox of humanity - we are made to love like God, but we do not have God’s infinite capacity for love. But because he does have that infinite capacity, he choose to share it with us, and to make us capable of the most extraordinary goodness. But you can’t do it without him, and you can’t do it without the Sacraments.

Finally, think of these exhortations like a good football coach. I have been reading all sorts of handbooks on coaching this week, because in one conversation with a parishioner, I realized that there are some clear similarities between the role of the priest and that of the coach. No good coach is ever content to leave someone where they are, but they must seek the perfect balance between encouragement and correction. An impossible task, but that’s the goal. Put another way, a wise priest once repeated an old, and treasured, maxim of priestcraft: ‘be a lion in the pulpit, and a lamb in the confessional’ - so since Lent is coming, I’ll see you in the confessional…

Link by Link

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:12:30 GMT

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
Is its pattern strange to you?"

This excerpt is, of course, from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol where the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Ebenezer Scrooge to warm him to amend his ways. But it serves as a counterpoint to the vision that Jesus presents in the Gospel today: a vision of radical freedom. Jesus uses striking images: that his followers should be like salt, like light, or like a city on a hill. What these all have in common is that our Christian faith should change us so much that everyone else can see it. It cannot be hidden, or attributed to other sources.

But at the same time, Christianity also presents itself as a set of rules, by which our behavior can be objectively judged. Some of these rules are binding upon all humanity; whereas others pertain specifically to the worship of God. The spoiler for this sermon is: you cannot get to the radical freedom Jesus proposes, unless first you have mastered the rules. As such, there are two fundamental stages to the Christian life.

Sadly, some people who really want to be Christian don't get much further than the first stage, which could, somewhat indelicately, be termed 'not screwing up'. ‘Not screwing up’ is the barest minimum. ‘Not screwing up’ is the least we can do. But in order we might know for certain what the rules, are, we have the Precepts of the Church. These are the specific Catholic application of the first three of the Ten Commandments.

But if ‘not screwing up’ is where your relationship with Christ begins and ends then you’re going to be constantly frustrated at the Church telling you ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do that’, and you will view the whole Gospel as impinging upon your freedom. You will begin to resent the practice of the Faith, and the only way to save face is to take for yourselves the power to judge, whether or not you are in good standing with the Church.

I promise I will always tell you the truth - the hard stuff as well as the fun stuff. In the game called life it’s God who gets to decide the rules - and you have perfect freedom to choose to abide by them, or not. But you don’t get to rewrite God’s rules according to your desires. Jesus is indeed compassion and love. But he’s not on your side if you want to throw away the Ten Commandments, because they’re his, too.

But this same, loving Jesus tells us both how his authority will be implemented, and the consequences if we choose to ignore it. Therefore it’s not arrogant for the clergy, ordained to act in persona Christi, to point that out, because it is revealed by God himself. These are not Fr. Clark’s rules; they are God’s rules. You are still completely free to choose to do whatever you want, but as we learn from a very early age, choices have consequences.

So why does Fr. Clark insist on the rules when other priests never did? Well, quite simply Fr. Clark does’t want you to scrape into heaven by the skin of your teeth - because heaven isn’t a one and done. It’s a kingdom, with Our Lady at the top, and everyone else in order of how much they are capable of sharing the divine life. But let’s take, for example, the 3rd Commandment about keeping the Sabbath - a commandment which relates to the 1st, which is about worshiping God and God alone.

The 3rd Commandment requires us to come to Mass on Sundays, which is the Christian ‘Sabbath’ since Jesus rose from the dead on the First Day of the week. Now we all love the ‘weekend’ - precisely because it makes us feel free. Unlike in the week when I have to do what my boss tells me, or what the public schools schedule tells me, at the weekend I can do what I want, and what I judge to be in my best interests. But if you’ve decided anything else is more in your best interests than worshiping God, you have, in all truthfulness, made a mistake.

You see, having a ‘day of rest’ is not a natural right. It exists because secular world begrudgingly accepts that the worship of God is mandatory. We tell the secular world that we are commanded by our religion to worship God on Sundays, and because freedom of religion is part of the social contract, accommodation is made for Sunday worship. It's not the same if freedom of religion doesn't exist in your society. If you don’t believe me - consider what happened in two notable atheistic regimes. In Stalinist Russia, weekends were abolished by the principle of neprerývka or “continuous working”, and in Revolutionary France, weeks were divided into 10 days in order to disrupt the Biblical pattern and dislodge Christianity from the hearts of the people.

These two examples show that the freedom of the weekend actually depends upon the 3rd Commandment. If we erode the regular practice of religion - and make it just one option among many - we should not be surprised if our day of rest is taken away. Just look to see how much we have already given away in the name of ‘working from home’. What happens when your performance review will show that you are not ‘working from home’ enough? If by your own lips you are not required to go to Mass, because Jesus won’t mind, then why are you not working? In short this can be summed up as: erode worship, erode leisure, too.

Instead, we believe to choose to worship God on Sunday (in the way he asks us to, by "present[ing] your bodies, a living sacrifice" (Rom 12:1), is to choose freedom, not restraint. It’s choosing to do what you are made to do. If you do God’s will as expressed in the Commandments and Precepts, you will soar, free as a bird. If you reject them, and propose a new Jesus who simply allows you to get away with everything, you become like Jacob Marley, forging chains in your life that bind you in eternity: link by link, and yard by yard.

Christ wants to offer you so much more than simple rule-keeping. St. Catherine of Siena said: ’If you find out what God wants you to do you will set the world on fire.’ She recognize the paradox that being a slave to God‘s will was in fact, perfect freedom. She became the salt of the Earth and the light of the world because she was not constantly fighting with God. We come to worship on this day because we need it, and God desires to provide it. As Gilbert Keith Chesterton said:

"God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other."

Bee-Attitudes?

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:31:24 GMT

*Having been asked by one of our junior members - 'why does the Bible talk about 'bee attitudes?' Fr. Clark invited the children to guess how many bees it took to make just one of the Altar candles. The answer is 150,000 - and it represents each one's life's work.

“But you’re a priest. You’re supposed to be nic e .”

My agnostic sister rebukes…

“I wasn’t ordained to be nice, I was ordained to be faithful” I snap back, angrily.

In this spat, we’re both wrong.

I’m not supposed to be nice because I’m a priest - I’m supposed to be nice because I’m a Christian - and if people are moved enough to observe I’m not being nice, then we don’t even need to move on to the question of whether I’m a good priest. I’ve fallen at the first hurdle.

But let’s think about what being ‘nice’ might mean. Being nice does not mean being a wallflower: simpering, shy and retiring. It doesn’t mean being wet, or effete, either. If someone always tells you what you want to hear, and indulges your every desire, they’re actually not very nice at all: because this kind of superficial niceness is not truthful. It leaves you where you are. It actually says - I don’t care enough about you to go to the effort of correcting you. In short - you’re not worth the hassle.

But we have a better vision for what being ‘nice’ looks like: it’s being prepared to die for you. That’s the ultimate standard: “ greater love has no one than this: that one might lay down his life for his friends .” (Jn. 15:13) the Lord says, and this is what he is prepared to do for us - but not just us collectively. Jesus is prepared to do this for you , even if you were the only person alive. That’s what it means to say there is no greater love than this. This choice is not a pragmatic calculation ‘if I die, then millions will be saved’: no. That’s how men think, not how God thinks. You have to acknowledge that Jesus is prepared to lay down his life for you, as if you were the only person in the world, and—that you need him to do it for you.

This kind of love, self-sacrifice, is a different word from the love we have for our spouse, our family, or our friends. In many ways, it’s a shame we use the same word, love, in English, because it just doesn’t have enough power. It comes laden with the burden of emotion - and Christ’s example on the Cross is not about emotion. He doesn’t lay down his life because he thinks warm thoughts about you, or me. Quite honestly, we’re quite unloveable a lot of the time, so that wouldn’t work at all - it would make God a dope. No. The Lord lays down his life because he desires to open up a different way of living for us. A way of living that builds upon the natural law (as expressed in the Ten Commandments) and perfects it (as expressed in the Beatitudes.)

It is this ‘perfecting’ of the natural law that we meet today in the Gospel. God’s moral law, the duties we owe to him, to our neighbor, and to our planet, apply to everyone, everywhere, forever. They are written upon the heart, in that evocative phrase, and they bind everyone. You must abide by them. If you do not, you rebel not just against God, but against yourself. But there is a different, and higher, law that we are called to. This law makes us look like Christ - truly earning the title: ‘Christian.’

The Beatitudes - the eight statements of blessedness that we hear Our Lord state in his famous Sermon on the Mount - are very challenging, and some are not immediately attractive: no-one would elect to be insulted, or persecuted, still less mourn, or be poor. Others we might recognize as virtuous in other people - such as being meek, being pure in heart, or being a peacemaker, but they seem so hard as to be unattainable.

But although the Beatitudes do reveal a law, that law is not a set of proscriptions (do this; don’t do that) but instead a call to bear witness to Christ ever more deeply. So they are not optional guidelines, but they are not rules either [For us attorneys the Beatitudes are ius not lex. For you non-lawyers, they exemplify a binding system of justice, as opposed to giving specific norms.] The thing which unites all of the Beatitudes is refusing to compromise on Truth . So:

The Poor in Spirit receive the kingdom of heaven because they know we don’t deserve it
Mourners are comforted because, like God, they detest sin, and weep that his laws are disobeyed
The Meek inherit the land, because they recognize all material things belong to God, not to us.
Those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness are only satisfied by right relationship with God
Those who are Merciful receive mercy they know they need it
The Pure in Heart see God, because God cannot abide sin
Peacemakers are truly God’s children because they cooperate with him in putting an end to division
Those who are Persecuted and Insulted for Christ refuse to betray him, and thus inherit a place with him where he dwells, because they witness that what he says is true.

Let’s return to my sister’s rebuke. I’ll accept it if, instead of observing I wasn’t being ‘nice’, she said: “But you’re a priest. You’re supposed to become a saint .” Absolutely. I am. And so are you. There are, after all, no ‘non-saints’ in heaven. No-one is in heaven who is not a saint. No one. Becoming a saint is hard work - and you should be relieved that already being a saint is not a requirement for those called to the priesthood, because you would have very few. I have met, perhaps, three people in my whole life I would describe as living saints.

Sanctity is not to be confused with piety, which is the outward observance of rituals and traditions. I know plenty of pious people who aren’t yet saints at all, whose outward display is meant for other people to see, but whose hearts are inwardly dark and bitter. By their fruits you will know them, the Lord also says.

I think one of the most refreshing aspects of Pope Francis’s pontificate was calling out this kind of behavior. He described it as rigid, and whilst I also know many pious people who are genuinely good, and working hard to become saints, for whom such words stung a little; it’s good to be stung sometimes.

So someone who is really ‘nice’ is someone who bears witness to Truth, and refuses to compromise on it. It takes a thousand lifetimes of experience to distill this wisdom using our own power, but we don’t have to, because it is revealed and shown perfectly in the person of Jesus, who is the answer to everyone’s search for Truth. This uncompromising quest is best summed up the Victorian English poet, Christina Rossetti:

What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow:

What are brief? today and tomorrow:

What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth:

What are deep ? the ocean and truth.

What are heavy Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

The Full Paul

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:35:31 GMT

Conversion of St. Paul in St. John's College Oxford. Picture credit: Fr. Lawrence Lew OP

There is no other contemporary Christian we know as well as Shaul of Tarsus, better known as St. Paul the Apostle—and we know him so well because the Church has treasured his personal correspondence from the day it was sent to the earliest communities around the Mediterranean basin. So inspiring, so heartfelt are these letter that they were copied, and distributed to others to whom they were not addressed, that they might sit at the feet of the teacher, and learn how to be a follower of Jesus.

Of the thirteen documents attributed to Paul, no less than seven are undisputedly authentic - that is to say there is academic consensus that Paul, personally, composed them and sent them to churches and people he really knew. Of the others, not being ‘authentic’ does not cast a shadow on them. It means they were either written in his voice, or compiled of fragments and sayings from other letters. They all have a Pauline spirit, and together form what we call the Pauline corpus - the body of teachings that has its origin in this remarkable man.

That’s all very interesting, if you like that kind of thing, but why does it matter? Well, consider how much we reveal of ourselves in our personal communications. There is an intimacy in correspondence (particularly at that time) that is not found in other kinds of writing. Compare how much more we know of the character of Marcus Tullius Cicero from his letters, to the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. They are unedited, emotional and raw. And because of this, they give us hope. Paul is no plaster saint. He’s right there in front of us, and unlike many others he’s not afraid to lay bare his weaknesses, because of his utter confidence in Christ. He is the primordial oversharer - and this is good for us, because it gives us hope that ordinary men and women like us can aspire to follow Christ, and being attentive to his teachings, Paul shows us the way.

But Paul has come under attack, particularly in the last 50 years or so. He is attacked because his teaching is sometimes hard: he is uncompromising, and because of the power of his intellect, he is extremely clear, and persuasive. No misty arguments here. We know exactly what he means, and exactly what he expects of us. So let me be clear too - everything Paul says is correct. Everything. But to focus only on the diamond-edged precision of his teaching is to forget how remarkably compassionate and self-effacing he is too. This is an easy trap to fall into. When someone says something that is razor sharp, and clear, but we don’t like it, our first reaction is emotional - we don’t like the message, and we don’t like the messenger - and nothing else he ever says or does will lift the cloud of feeling.

But Paul is uncompromising in his teaching because he is only too aware of human weakness - and very understanding of anyone who falls short of his ideals, because he admits himself he falls short of them all the time. You must then take the whole Paul, not just bits of him.

When Paul first started writing (well, actually he rarely wrote himself - he had a scribe - and we know this because there are several points where he tells the recipient he has taken the pen himself and is writing in his own hand) but when he first started, it was by no means clear that we would have a New Testament at all. Remember, 1 Thessalonians is the very earliest Christian document - written possibly as early as AD 49 - sixteen years after the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord.

This means there were at least sixteen years of a Gospel that was not written down - “woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” he says in 1 Corinthians about 5 years later than 1 Thessalonians. What is he talking about? Certainly not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They were at least another twenty years into the future. So it is to Paul we turn for the earliest evidence of what the Church was like - and we find it to have been even at that stage both traditional and liturgical. Traditional, because the Gospel is handed down by word of mouth, and liturgical, because e.g. in 1 Corinthians we find the first, ever recorded instance of Christians celebrating the Eucharist.

Let that sink in. Paul is the first to write about the Mass - and the Mass was happening before any New Testament Scripture had been written. Liturgical, too, because Paul quotes hymns in his writings - you could say he bursts into song at points - and these hymns were expected to have been shared, and performed, with the churches he was writing to. Liturgical even more because it is Paul who writes to the churches and recalls the power of their Baptism - he assumes they already know what Baptism is, because they have received it. And no-one has ever been baptized outside of the Liturgy. Scott Hahn, the famous scripture scholar says “[T] he New Testament was a Sacrament before it was a document, according to the document .” We could say the New Testament was liturgical before it was scriptural, according to the Scriptures.

Because we know Paul so well, we have in him a template of how to be authentically Christian. We cannot be Christian and set aside his teaching or example - that would be to reject Christianity, because he was a witness to Christ long before you or I were. But if the whole Church has this template, we have something even more special - we have Paul himself. You see, the Lord, in his goodness, has given us to Paul for his special concern. Being dedicated to him, means this same urgent, intense, generous, passionate saint has a special concern for what we do here - because we bear his name. It’s not that we belong to him - he himself would correct that - but since we belong to Christ, Christ has given Paul to us as patron and intercessor - and you can be sure he takes his job very seriously indeed.

Bearing his name them, let me paint a picture of how a Catholic Parish should be authentically Pauline. It must be faithful, traditional, open, generous, compassionate, giving, inquisitive, and most of all, loving. But there’s one thing it can never be: casual. I don’t know if casual gets you to heaven - who am I to judge - but I do know that heaven is a kingdom, and we are not all equal there, so there is every reason while we have breath in our body to “ strive for the higher gifts ” as Paul says. Together, we have a chance in this life to grow in holiness, and that takes effort and openness to change; it takes humility, and a readiness to be taught. But let’s leave the last word to our heavenly intercessor:

“ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it .”

What's it to You?

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:20:58 GMT

Fr. Clark gave this sermon at Evensong on January 18th for the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City as guest of the Rector, the Rev. Canon Carl Turner. Fr. Clark and Canon Turner are pictured above.

I’m waiting for a call from Rome. I’m sure it’s coming any day now, and the Pope will say to me: ‘Fr. Clark, you’re doing such a great job, I’m going to appoint you as Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity.

I think my first act will be to choose a new motto. I’m not even sure if the DCPU has one already, but it should. But since a motto is part of heraldry - you guessed it - there are lots of rules, so we need to proceed with caution. [I’m sure my brothers and sisters of the clergy could offer some helpful suggestions, but I probably can’t repeat them here.] Best to stick to Scripture. Fortunately our Second Lesson tonight provides the perfect text for the motto, from the Lord’s own lips: tí pròs sé .

What’s it to you?

But let us understand one thing very clearly about these three little words: it is a rebuke - and it was issued to Peter just moments after the Lord gave him pastoral charge over the flock. The same Peter, whose confession of Faith at Caesarea Philippi remains a point of unity for all Christians, is rebuked at the very moment his eyes are not fixed upon his relationship with Christ, but upon someone else’s relationship with Christ.

It’s important to observe two things about this passage: first, we only know about it because Peter was content for it to be shared - indeed, the author of record is the ‘someone else’ Peter was enquiring about, namely John the Beloved Disciple, who is clearly anxious to correct the rumor that the Lord said he would never die. Even though it isn’t a flattering portrayal of Peter, it’s an important one, because it teaches us the futility of comparing our relationship with Christ to another’s.

We must also take heed of the fact that Peter’s temptation occurs after he has turned around. The text is very clear: epistraphèis ho Pétros - Peter, having turned around, or ‘turning about’ as we heard proclaimed, sees John, and switches his attention from the Lord and onto the disciple the Lord loves. So we are particularly susceptible to this temptation to comparison after we have turned to Christ: and therein we see the first seeds of disunity that the Evil One wishes to sow amongst the brethren. Instead of a vertical relationship with the Lord, Peter looks to the horizontal - what about him, Lord?

In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, it is worth pausing to reflect on how far we have come on this journey together - polemic between Christians tends to be reserved these days for social media (God forgive us) and not official channels but there is still much more to do, so let me offer tonight three areas for further reflection:

The first is, to insist upon the vertical dimension with Christ and not the horizontal. Fix our eyes upon him and him alone, so when we quibble to the Lord about our brothers and sisters (whether within or without our own church communions,) let us hear him say: tí pròs sé - what’s it to you?

So what if their pathway is different from yours?
Instead, follow me.

The second is, to recognize that things that are important to us are emotional, but emotion is not always the best barometer of progress. A good example of this concerns Holy Communion. Whenever I attend the Divine Liturgy in an Eastern Orthodox church, I am not invited to concelebrate, nor to receive Holy Communion. There’s a sadness in that, and it’s certainly emotional; but if I dwell on the externals, I fail to see the high degree of communion I already share with my Orthodox brethren. So when we feel despondent: again, let us hear him say: tí pròs sé - what’s it to you?

Are you not able to offer me a sacrifice of praise all the same? Are you not able to present your body a holy, living sacrifice? Of course you are.

Instead, follow me.

Thirdly, and finally, to move from respect for one another’s traditions to reverence for them. God desires legitimate diversity: he does not insist that we all worship him in identical ways. Our unity is not expressed with a liturgical cookie cutter, nor a theological one - and it is through our differences that God can show himself to us to in the other. We need only look to the noble tradition of choral excellence, for which this church is justly famous, as an example of the gold that God is able to create, even out of canonical division. So, if someone prays or expresses themselves in a different way to us: again, let us hear him say: tí pròs sé - what’s it to you?

Do they not come even from Sheba and Seba bearing gifts? They absolutely do.

Instead, follow me.

Water and Blood

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 22:58:58 GMT

Have you noticed we have moved at liturgical lightning speed in just a week? Faster, in fact! Last Sunday, we were at the manger with the Magi, this week we come to the Jordan River, where the Lord is all grown up. Or rather, as Luke tells us, he “advanced in wisdom, and maturity, and favor before God and man” (Lk 1:52.) And he comes to be baptized by John the Baptist.

Wait, a moment. He comes to be baptized? He advanced in wisdom? And favor with God? I thought you said this was the Word made Flesh, God with us? Why does he need to be baptized? How can he advance in wisdom if he is the source of wisdom itself? How can he grow in favor with God, if he is God? These are all excellent objections - and they are precisely what we see in John’s reluctance to baptize the Lord:

John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”

The Baptism of Jesus is more than merely a historical record. The fact the Lord chooses to perform this sign means he wants us to know something. Now, we could just pass it over, shrug our collective shoulders and say ‘I dunno’…or we can delve into the mystery, and discover the sparkling beauty of God’s plan for us.

First, let’s recall the background. Remember, in Advent, we agreed that John’s Baptism was the precursor to the Sacrament of Penance (also known as Confession) rather than the precursor to the Sacrament of Baptism. We also concluded that John’s Baptism was an interior recollection - a desire for a fresh start with God - journeying in to the desert, a ritual dying to sin, and being reborn.But it always pointed forward to something greater. As the Baptist himself said:

I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Mt 3:11)

Now, Jesus, who is perfect and sinless by nature, has taken upon himself our humanity. God has clothed himself with flesh and now dwells among us. His humanity is not wounded by sin, but ours is, and Jesus is the only way that mankind can be reconciled to God, because only his sinless sacrifice could ever be acceptable to the Father.

So in submitting to John’s Baptism Jesus is really putting a definitive end to it, inaugurating a new Baptism into his body - the Baptism that you and I enjoy - that will be practiced by his coworkers, the Apostles, because of the commission Jesus will give to them to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He enters the waters to fulfill all righteousness: to stand in solidarity with us, even though we don’t deserve it, and to bring John’s preparatory baptism to its fulfillment. In that very moment, the old yields to the new.

Secondly, let’s consider the deeper typology. Baptism is a symbolic death - the Hebrew people were culturally fearful of water - they were a pastoral people, not a seafaring people: the sea, and its chaos was something to keep at arm’s length. As an aside we see remnants of this in the early Church - the book of Revelation describes the new heaven and new earth as a place without a sea: something which my naval officer father will definitely have to learn how to appreciate.

If the sea is dangerous, and the waves are frightening, then going underwater is a metaphor for death - and rightly so. By submitting to John’s Baptism, Christ is not signifying his need for repentance at all, but he is pointing to a different sign - that he will have to die in order to save his people from their sins.

It was John, after all, that recognized that Christ is the Lamb of God. Almost nonchalantly, he points to the Lord from afar with words we recall at every Mass: ecce Agnus Dei! Behold the Lamb of God! John’s disciples knew what that implied. The Lamb is always the sign of sacrifice, from Abraham and Isaac to the blood smeared on the Passover doorposts - the spotless Lamb is born to be slain, and therefore the symbolism of the Lamb descending into the waters was even clearer to those who witnessed it than (perhaps) it is for us.

But thirdly, what about advancing in wisdom, and stature, and favor with God? How do we begin to deal with that? Well, we confess that Christ is true God and true man. Not a hologram, or a chimaera. As true man, he chose to experience a defining characteristic for all of us: growing up. It stands to reason that a baby is innocent, but a baby needs to grow…Christ in the manger is all-beautiful, but he cannot preach or teach (at least not with words.) It is his sinless humanity that may advance in wisdom, and stature, and even grace. But remember this - he is at the same time the one who receives this growth, and the one who gives it. The source of his wisdom, and stature, and favor, is the divine life itself, which he shares in the communion of the Holy Trinity before all worlds.

St. Cyril of Alexandria helps make sense of this interplay: “ God the Word gradually manifested His wisdom proportionably to the age which the body had attained .” The divine wisdom was not lacking; rather, in the economy of the Incarnation, it was revealed step by step, according to the Lord’s human nature’s capacity to receive it—so that we might recognize Him as truly one of us.

The Baptism of Christ is that point of recognition. We see him clearly now. For thirty years, in the hidden life of Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, the Lord’s humanity has grown in stature both body and soul. At this point of his life on earth, he is ready to reveal to the world his anointing with the Holy Spirit, and his favor with God the Father. This is why the Baptism is also a form of epiphany - a manifestation of something we need to know and understand about Jesus.

But the revelation of his anointing is not simply for us to marvel at the Godhead. At two points in the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals himself as a wellspring of living water; a source which when we partake of it, becomes a spring in us for others to draw upon. This divine life was imparted to be shared - the living water is the action of grace by the Holy Spirit, that is applied to us because the Lamb of God renders a perfect sacrifice to the Father. He is the one to hand over that life! Just as he hands it over to the Father at Calvary, he hands it over to us in the Sacraments.

You see, the water alone is not sufficient, we need the water and the blood. Indeed the water only makes sense because of the blood. If you drink deeply from this fountain there will be a moment of manifestation, of showing forth, for you - your hidden life will bubble up, and bubble over with living water. Your own trials, frustrations, and sufferings are precisely the Jordan River for you. Imitate Christ in prayer and holiness and you will rise with him from those waters of strife, and advance in wisdom, maturity and favor with God and men.

Chase Herod Away

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:56:45 GMT

Most sermons on the Epiphany focus on the mysterious visitors from the East, or the three enigmatic gifts they bring. For good reasons - in them, we find ourselves, as foreigners come to worship the King of the Jews, and in their gifts, we find the meaning of his Incarnation: he comes as king (signified by the gold;) he comes as God (signified by the frankincense;) and he comes to die (signified by the myrrh.) That’s a summary of the content of most Epiphany sermons.

But today I want to focus on Herod , who is often passed over in the narrative, or reduced to a mere pantomime ‘baddie’ at whose very name you should enthusiastically cry: ‘boo.’

In the scheme of things, Herod is a baddie - he is both a liar and a tyrant, who sets himself against God’s plan because he feels intimidated by its consequences for himself and his personal prestige. But when we reduce him to the comical figure of a clown, we fail to notice the ‘Herod’ in all of us, and, how our response to the Star is not always the trusting faith of the Magi.

Herod is thus an intriguingly contemporary figure. He has everything he wants, and much more than he needs: he has money, power, and prestige. He lives a life of exceptional comfort in multiple palaces, with wine, women, and song. But there's a reason for his success: He’s a skilled politician and military leader, earning the respect of the Roman authorities. And yet he’s cruel, envious, and insecure.

You need to know a bit of historical background to understand Herod and his dynastic ambition, and to understand why Israel had such a strong Messianic expectation at this point in history. It's not very well known, so please indulge me in a history lesson.

In the century and half before the birth of Christ, something extraordinary happened: Israel, under the Hasmonean priestly kings, managed to throw off the shackles of foreign domination, and establish its own empire - conquering territory, and destroying old enemies, like the Samaritans, whose rival Temple at Mount Gerizim was razed to the ground by King John Hyrcanus in 110 BC.

But this successful Jewish kingdom hit the buffers in 63 BC because of a succession crisis, and the rival claimants appealed to Rome for help. They got a different kind of help from what they hoped to receive - on the orders of Caesar Pompey marched south to Jerusalem, laid siege to the Temple, eventually overcoming and defiling even the Holy of Holies. The Romans would not leave Judea for centuries afterwards.

Herod was a young boy when all this happened, and his later rise to power happened because he knew how to curry favor with Rome. He was an Edomite - a race of non-Jewish people to the South who were forcibly converted by the Hasmoneans - and viewed with suspicion by the priestly class in Jerusalem ever since. Their Jewish status was always ambivalent - and we can see from the Gospel that Herod is pretty ignorant of Scripture.

Having been proclaimed King of the Jews by Mark Antony and the Roman Senate, in Rome itself, in 40 BC; three years later, Herod deposed the last Hasmonean king in 37 BC, and began his rule as client king for Rome which lasted 41 years until AD 4. He was an old man by the time Christ was born. But it is the story of his encounter with the Magi, and his bloodthirsty Massacre of the Innocents for which he is remembered in history.

In his Epiphany sermon of 2011, Pope Benedict XVI, with his trademark precision, identifies Herod’s catastrophic failing: he sees God as a rival:

God also seemed a rival to him, a particularly dangerous rival who would like to deprive men of their vital space, their autonomy, their power; a rival who points out the way to take in life and thus prevents one from doing what one likes.

But the truth is Herod’s freedom was always an illusion, because it depended upon his usefulness to a higher power - the Emperor. For as long as Herod kept order in Judea, Rome would tolerate his pomp and cruelty. But the background to the Magi’s arrival showed just how brittle Herod’s position was, and it should remind us how brittle our own illusions of security are.

By supernatural signs in the heavens, God revealed to the Magi, also outsiders, that the true King of the Jews had been born. The one whose claim to kingship was no political expediency, nor military victory, but literally written in the stars. How Herod's blood must have run cold when he realized that the supernatural sign confirmed the Scriptural prophecy of the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem.

But God is never a rival to us. He does not come to take away our freedom. He insists on worship, not for his own aggrandizement or amusement, but because it makes us better. His coming into the world forces us to change, but he also shows us the way. The Magi show us that Christ’s call to humanity is universal - and we are only excluded if we chose to exclude ourselves.

Encountering Christ in the arms of his mother means we have to let go of the petty kingdoms we so easily create. We have to recognize that all we have (money, prestige, intelligence, good looks - whatever it may be) comes from God and belongs to God. We have nothing of ourselves for which we are truly responsible except our sins. The Magi learnt this on the lonely silk road, but, like them, in Christ we have another way (a short cut) by which we should return home. As Chesterton observed:

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

If like Herod, we choose to make God a rival, then this other way is barred to us. So instead let us hurry to Bethlehem, brimming over with joy. Let us like the Magi enter the house . But let us leave the Herod within us outside in the cold - our paranoia, our need for control and our reliance upon ourselves. God has no desire to make us an enemy, he comes as child; innocent and vulnerable, inviting us to seek ourselves in his sweet eyes. So let us surrender our weapons at the Manger and see how he will turn them into gold. Let us choose the Star, and not the throne.

Rooted in Grace

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:44:37 GMT

For this reason I bend my knees to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…

Eph 3:14-17

This, my friends, is the blueprint as to why the Holy Family is so important to our understanding of Christian discipleship: for in these verses we hear three reasons why the family we celebrate today is called holy - (1.) because it honors God the Father, (2.) because grace abounds in it, and (3.) because Christ dwells there. These three components elevate a natural institution into a supernatural one, and the key to all of it, is grace .

There is a danger, you see, with an icon of the Holy Family. Composed as it is of the Incarnate Word, the Immaculate Conception, and St. Joseph: holiness is not simply something this family aspires to, but rather it is intrinsic to the communion they share with one another.

Similarly, the flow of authority in the Holy Family is reversed. We hear in Colossians the proper order of things in natural families - whereas, at least as far as his divinity is concerned, in the Holy Family, the infant is the source of all authority, power, and grace.

We may draw inspiration from gazing upon the Holy Family, but we must firmly resist any temptation to imagine that our own families could ever be holy in the same way or by the same title. The House of Nazareth is not a blueprint for direct replication; it is a unique, divine-human communion whose holiness is intrinsic, immediate, and inseparable from the presence of the Incarnate Word and the singular privileges granted to its members. Our families, composed entirely of fallen human persons, can never claim such holiness by nature or by right.

The Holy Family, you see, is rooted in grace, and grounded in obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father, and thus its holiness depends directly and immediately upon the holiness of God, and the holiness of God is characterized by the outpouring of love between the three persons of the Trinity.

The insight of the Holy Family for us is the presence of Jesus , the mediator and advocate, in such a concrete and tangible way that you and I can begin to relate to him as Mary and Joseph did. We know, of course, that the Blessed Virgin is the Immaculate Conception, and thus full of grace (literally, the already-graced one) and Christ is also described as full of grace and truth - which, you must understand, relates to his humanity, which enjoys the fullness of grace because it is united to his divinity.

So what of St. Joseph? Well I know you will be hosting your Theological Cocktail Parties this Christmas week, perhaps a fun question over the martinis might be: when is St. Joseph redeemed? The Bible does not tell us explicitly, in the way it does Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, St. Elizabeth, and even the Prophet Jeremiah. But by simple logic, he must have been: for two reasons.

First, he is righteous, and God shares details of his plan of salvation with him, and secondly, his marriage to Mary, although it does not involve natural marital relations at any stage, is indeed a true marriage, and thus St. Joseph is granted authority over Our Lord in his infancy. Indeed, Luke tells us directly: “he was obedient to them” (Lk 2:51.) There is simply no way that the Lord, in his humanity, could ever be obedient to anyone who was not full of grace - so, at some stage, Joseph, like Mary, also enjoys the preemptive application of the merits of Jesus Christ, by special privilege.

Let us be precise about the grace at work here. Sanctifying grace is that substance by which the divine life dwells in the soul, making it holy and pleasing to Him. In the Holy Family, this grace was present in an utterly singular way:

In Christ, by the hypostatic union — His human soul enjoyed the vision of God and the fullness of grace from the first moment of conception, by virtue of his divine personhood.
In Mary, by the Immaculate Conception — preserved from all stain of original sin and filled with grace in anticipation of her Son's merits.
In Joseph, we deduce, by a special and extraordinary privilege — cleansed, elevated, and filled with grace (as his righteousness, his intimate sharing in the mysteries of salvation, and the obedience owed him by the sinless Christ all demand).

Thus, the holiness of the Holy Family did not depend on Sacraments; it flowed directly from the presence of Jesus and the preemptive application of His future merits. Their home was holy because God Himself dwelt there in the flesh, and His grace overflowed immediately into Mary and Joseph.

Our families receive sanctifying grace in a different manner: not intrinsically, not by special preemptive privilege, but through the Sacraments, instituted by Christ after His Passion and Resurrection. This is the presence of Jesus for us in our families. Baptism imparts the initial indwelling of the Trinity; the Eucharist sustains and increases it; Penance restores it when lost; Matrimony and Holy Orders confer graces specific to states of life.

Without these channels, our souls remain in the poverty of fallen nature. With them, the very same merits that sanctified Nazareth in advance of Calvary are now poured out upon us — not because we deserve it, but because Christ has opened the floodgates of grace through His Church.

So if the Holy Family is so far removed from our experience, so far above us, as to be beyond our grasp, what hope is there for us? A good question, with a beautiful answer: the merits of Jesus Christ which were made available to the Lord’s family before his Saving Passion, are now freely available to you and me!

It was already by Christ’s power that the Holy Family of Nazareth was and remained holy, and it is by that same power, because of the superabundance of his love for us, that he wishes for your family and mine to be joined to his through the application of the merits of his Cross.

Therefore, to keep your family holy, you need to carry your family to his! The Christchild you see lying in the manger is present in time and space, for a little while only; but that same Christchild is available for you to take home, here today in the Eucharist that he instituted the night before he died. The Christ who made Nazareth holy by His mere presence now makes your family holy by His real presence in the Eucharist, and by the sanctifying grace He bestows through every valid Sacrament. There is no other way.

Only the Sacraments — the ordinary, instituted means — bring the merits of the Passion into your home, into your marriage, into your children, transforming your natural family into a supernaturally enriched one: a domestic church. You can’t do it without the Sacraments, because you can’t do it without Him ; and He who was rich became poor and dwelt among us precisely that our poverty might be transformed by the extravagance of his gift of himself to us.

My friends, do not leave this church today without resolving to bring your family more frequently to the sources of grace that are freely available to you at any moment. That is how the riches of Nazareth truly become yours.

Crib and Cross

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:37:07 GMT

I’m a risk taker by nature. It’s in my personality. If I see a third rail, I’ll jump on it. Looking out at the congregation in Greenwich, CT I daresay I’m in good company. Now, if you’re not so familiar with the inner workings of a Catholic parish, the Christmas Pageant is probably “third rail ++” here at St. Paul’s, sitting as it does at the intersection of 'Christmas traditions' with 'Glenville moms.'

So I rewrote the Pageant. All of it , and my aim in doing so was to be faithful to the Bible story, and in particular the dialogue. I wanted Gabriel to say the actual words to Mary, and for her to respond: I am the handmaid of the Lord . So the Little Drummer Boy had to go. Out he went - of all the stretches I might have tolerated - no. Not him. He didn’t make the cut.

“ Father, we need to talk about the Pageant… ”

The call came later that night. Oh dear. Come back, Little Drummer Boy! All is forgiven…

Thank God they didn’t know I was this close to removing the Innkeeper - and the Inn. That’s right. Here’s the first time 'Father Grinch' can steal your Christmas by telling you - there was almost certainly no Inn, and Our Lady and St. Joseph were not wandering refugees looking for board and lodging (at least not that night, in that place.)

“ And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn .”

So familiar isn't it? As familiar as pageants, tinsel, angels, and presents. The whole heavy lift of our wonderful Christmas traditions. But if we leave Christianity behind in our childhood, with the candy canes and the fairy lights, we will never discover a religion far deeper, and more sophisticated, than we might ever know. If there’s only one thing you remember from my sermon this year it is this: look again at the Faith you think you know .

Come with me a moment - and let’s revisit the Inn. The word Luke uses in 2:7 is fascinating, and deliberate. Not no room for them in the inn , but instead, no place for them in the katalýma .

Luke uses this word, katalýma , only twice in his Gospel; (when you see a word only once in the Bible, it’s a red flashing light; when you see a word used only twice, it’s a five-alarm fire,) Katalýma you see does not chiefly mean 'inn' - it means guest room, or lodging place. Somewhere set apart for visitors. It’s not actually the word Luke uses for ‘inn’ - remember, the parable of the Good Samaritan? It is only found in Luke - and there he uses the word, ‘ pandochíon ’ for a wayside establishment for itinerant travelers.

Luke uses a different word to describe: (a.) the guestroom in Bethlehem, where there was no space or privacy to give birth to a child, and, (.b) the upper room in Jerusalem, where this child, once laid in a feeding trough, would go on to feed his followers with his own flesh, by his own hand. Katalýma , then, is best translated as ‘upper room’ and not ‘inn' - it is related to the Greek verb for loosening, or throwing down, and you can imagine the first thing your visitors do when you receive them into your home is to throw down their belongings.

This all makes so much more sense when you consider the wider historical context. Remember, our religion is a Middle Eastern one, and we may have some work to do to reconstruct Middle Eastern social customs that are implicit in the sacred texts. Joseph and Mary have traveled to Bethlehem, because it is Joseph’s hometown; he is from Bethlehem. It is thus inconceivable that a family member would travel to their hometown and not stay in the family home, particularly when we know that Joseph is of the house and line of David, and is coming home to David’s city.

We don’t know the reasons why the upper room had no place for them. Perhaps the house was full to bursting? Or perhaps the Blessed Virgin retreated to the only space left she could give birth in peace and privacy, but what we do know is that the Lord did not enter into the upper room that night. Not yet. But one day he would.

This is the strangeness of our faith. Christianity isn't a tidy story of a heartless innkeeper or a sentimental stable scene. It's wilder, and more paradoxical: the infinite God contained in a tiny body: the vulnerable one who is invincible, the victim who is a victor, accessible, yet still unapproachable.

You see, what Christmas begins - the upper room completes. There, finally, this child will take bread and wine and say, " This is my body, given for you. " That upper room is truly a place of loosening, or throwing down, because it is here the saving act of Calvary is given as gift to us. Through the Eucharist, Death flees away and life enters in. This is the great exchange - we bring not gold or frankincense, but our broken hearts, our burdens and we lay them at the Altar of the manger, upon the sinless body of this innocent babe. And he in return, will break this tiny body for us on the Cross, and share all he has with us, even though we do not deserve it. So if you cannot love him for his Cross, you must love him for his Crib, for they are one and the same. What Christmas begins - the upper room completes.

The Just Man

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 15:18:13 GMT

If you haven’t ever read Pope Benedict XVI’s addendum to his seminal work, Jesus of Nazareth, called The Infancy Narratives - go out and buy it now. It could even be under your tree by Wednesday night. Beautifully translated from the original German by my own seminary rector no less, it is both scholarly and pastoral, overlaid with a childlike affection for the simplicity of Christmas, and deep wonder at the Christkind lying in the manger.

This Gospel, located after Matthew’s careful recitation of the Lord’s genealogy, tells the story of the birth of Christ from Joseph’s point of view. But here’s the first observation: you must remember it is told with hindsight. We know how the story ends, but we must enter into the narrative from the perspective of the righteous man, Joseph, who did not.

It is interesting to consider two things about this passage. First of all, for us to know anything about the facts recounted, it is Joseph himself who must have told somebody. We are given a glimpse into the very soul of this great saint - how God speaks to him, and how he responds to God. It is a deep privilege - and a point of sober reflection from the outset - do we respond to God in this way? Does God speak to us in this way? If not - we must ask ourselves - why not?

Secondly, an even more remarkable fact emerges, and I will make it boldly. There is a clear mirror image to the more famous Annunciation to Our Lady in Luke’s Gospel. This is deliberate - the narratives form a kind of diptych, where each complements the other from both parents’ points of view. But the information given to Joseph is arguably a more explicit reference to Christ’s divinity than what Gabriel said to Our Lady: i.e. that Our Lord is not simply blessed by God, and holy, but that he is in fact God incarnate. This means that a case can be made for saying that Joseph was the first human ever to receive the explicit confirmation that Jesus Christ is God.

To understand that, you need a bit more background to the names involved. A key assumption of the Gospel writer is a Hebrew audience, one that knows who the Old Testament prototypes who previously bore those names. The famous Joseph of the Old Testament is of course the second to youngest son of Jacob and Rachel, favored by his father by a distinguished coat of many colors, much to the envy of his brothers, who first seek to kill him, and then sell him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph is also notable because God speaks to him in dreams - and his ability to interpret dreams is what really fires his siblings’ rage.

The attributes of the Old-Testament Joseph thus informs our expectations of Mary’s husband. The overlays of Egypt are obvious - and when the time comes, this Joseph will flee with Mary and Jesus to the safety of exile in a foreign land, but it is no coincidence also that the (unnamed) Angel of the Lord speaks to his namesake in dreams, and he has the charism to interpret those dreams accurately.

The Angel also tells Joseph what the child of the Holy Ghost’s name should be: Jesus - although, remember, “Jesus” is the Lord’s name in Latin. His name in Hebrew (or Aramaic) is ‘Yeshua’ - or Joshua. Matthew makes the point crystal clear: you shall call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. But wait. Why is that so obvious? What’s the reason for the ‘because’? Why is ‘Joshua’ such a self-evidently appropriate name?

Well, the Old-Testament Joshua was the chosen successor of Moses, the one who ultimately defeated the Canaanites and brought Israel into the Promised Land, but the reason the name is perfect for the Lord is the key to the whole passage: the name (as I have mentioned a few times before) itself means ‘God saves’ - the Angel then says to Joseph: You shall call him ‘God saves’ because he will save his people from their sins.

They are his people, he will save them, and only God can save people from sin. This is more than an implication - it is an explicit message for Joseph that the child is not only holy, but has the power to save his people from their sins: in no uncertain words: this child is God himself .

Everything that Gabriel says to Our Lady is consonant with this. Gabriel tells her that the child to be born of the Holy Ghost is (a.) great, (b.) Son of the Most High, (c.) heir to the throne of David, (d.) holy, and (e.) Son of God. In that order. Of these, Son of the Most High, holy and Son of God are clearly direct messages of Christ’s divinity given to Mary. However, whilst we know that to be the case, because of subsequent events, the titles themselves are not as explicit as the information given to Joseph. Son of the Most High is a quotation of Psalm 82:6: I have said you are gods, and you are all sons of the Most High, and the line of Davidic kings are described as sons of God, in the sense of adoption.

The difference with the message to Joseph is the explicit prophecy revealed to him that Jesus will save his people from their sins. It’s extraordinary! Joseph is given insight into what it means for the Virgin to conceive, according to Isaiah, what it means for God to be Emmanuel - with us. God is with us because he will save us from our sins. Just as the Old-Testament Joshua went into battle and led us to the Promised Land, so this child, to be born of Mary, will do battle with sin, and death, and lead us over the Jordan into Eternal Life.

Remarkable, then, that Joseph’s reported speech is not part of the biblical canon. We know what God told him, we know his reasoning, and we know his actions, but we do not know his words. In that there is a lesson for all of us, and it is linked to the most important title he has: Joseph is a just man (or, a righteous man.) But being just does not mean you have to be right all the time. Joseph’s conclusion at finding the news that Mary is with child is more than just, it is supernaturally good. He had every right to divorce her with much fanfare, and preserve his own reputation. He chose to divorce her quietly, and take on her (supposed) guilt and shame himself. That’s why divorcing her quietly meant - everyone would conclude that the fault was with him, not her.

But this supernaturally good decision was not correct - not for any deficit on Joseph’s part, but because God had not yet revealed to him the essential component: the child was of the Holy Ghost, and thus Mary was sinless. It is because Joseph is upright, honest, and just that he prays. He involves God in all his decision-making, and thus he has created space for God to speak to him in his dreams. If you want to be sure that you also do the will of God, you must be like him - you must create that space in the silence of your heart. Refrain from broadcasting what you think is the right answer, but instead, tell it to God in the quiet of your conscience, and the Lord, who speaks immediately to the just and upright of heart will respond. Let it be said of you, as of him: he did as the Angel of the Lord commanded him.

An Identity Crisis

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 15:15:45 GMT

Like any great city, London has its idiosyncrasies, and the Underground is symbolic of the hectic busyness of the British capital. Thousands upon thousands crammed into its tiny tubes around corners so tight as barely to keep the cars on the rails. This means the stations are often built on curves with precipitous chasms between the cars and the platform edge: “ Mind the Gap ” the disembodied voice booms at you.

I remember it every year at this time, (and not just because I love trains): it’s an excellent message for Advent.

For Advent reminds us that you and I live in a very particular ‘gap’ - namely, between the First Coming of Christ, and the Second. The gap is the age of the Church, where we recognize that Christ, yesterday and tomorrow, the Alpha and Omega has come, and will come again.

Pope Benedict XVI frequently used the delightful Italian aphorism: già, ma non ancora in his preaching on Advent. A phrase that means ‘already, but not yet' in English. It's Advent in a nutshell. As the Pope reminded us:

The ‘already’ of the Kingdom that is present in the person of Jesus is a gift offered to us, but it is also a responsibility: the responsibility of cooperating with the work of God, of bearing witness to his Kingdom in the world. And this is the ‘not yet’—the journey, the pilgrimage of the Church through history, until the full manifestation of the Kingdom.

We live in this tension, as if the cinematic reel were stuck between the frames. We know that Christ has come, but he seems delayed in his return. This leaves us with a profound spiritual instability that comes in the form of two temptations: the first, to assume we know everything about the Word that God has spoken, and the second, to imagine that God still owes us a different Word, a fuller explanation than he has already given.

The balm for both temptations is to accept Mystery - to accept the otherness of God, and to have peace in not knowing all the answers, and in so doing we realize the spiritual instability is deliberate on God's part. But let’s deal with those temptations to unrest one by one, starting with the second:

You may remember the postwar academic dream of a ‘ Theory of Everything' - one final equation from which the code of the whole universe could be mathematically derived. The late Professor Stephen Hawking once believed we were on the cusp of finding it, and that to find it would be to “know the mind of God” - and surpass it.

Hawking was wrong. And by the turn of the Millennium he had the humility to admit it. As a student I remember watching him going about the city of Cambridge in those very days. I often wondered whether he was disappointed that his great hope had been dashed. He gave no evidence of it. But you see, it's undeniably true that Science has had to give up this grandiose claim, because (in layman's terms) the physics of the very small (Quantum Mechanics) and the physics of the very big (General Relativity) turned out to be fundamentally incompatible. You can follow one, or the other, but if you try and marry them together - you get nonsense. As scientific journalist, John Horgan, concluded:

The universe is deeper and stranger than our minds—made, as the mystics say, in via negativa—can fully grasp.

I don’t think we have yet come to terms with the consequences of this. Many people put their Faith in the progress of Science - many good people, ordinary people. It was almost an assumption that Religion would necessarily have to cede the high ground of Truth to the triumph of human reason. Not for nothing it entered our everyday speech - think for example of the rather impolite phrase: " it's not rocket science " - as if rocket science were unquestionably the pinnacle of human endeavor. However, the more we searched the mathematics for a new Word, the stranger it became.

Ultimately, the Universe will keep its secrets, even from the greatest of minds, even from AI. The self-confidence of the giants of physics of the late Twentieth Century has now all but evaporated - but when we turn back to Religion for answers, we encounter the first temptation I mentioned, the temptation that since we already know everything there is to know about God’s Word, Religion has nothing to say.

Responding to this incredible Post-War scientific optimism, Christian denominations have long been playing catch-up. Rather than proposing the Gospel as something radically new in every generation, we have been tempted to downplay Christ’s counter-cultural demands, and make both Christian worship, and Christian theology, accessible, and comprehensible. And ‘nice.’

But whilst there is a lot that’s good about accessibility and understanding - there is a grave danger of destroying Mystery in the process. Institutionally the Church has not caught up with the reality that Science is no longer proposing a Theory of Everything. Granted there have been no white flags raised from the laboratories, but a distinct lack of confidence in academia is noteworthy. Without most of us noticing, Science is, perhaps, on the cusp of returning to Mystery. It's time for us to regain our self-confidence in an age desperately seeking answers.

You see, Mystery is not deceit, nor is it fairy tale. It is Truth shrouded in Wonder. Whilst we can never fully know the mind of God, we can know that He loves us, because He spoke the Word to us - and there is no further Word coming:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.

Heb 1:1-2

St. John Henry Newman is the prophet of Mystery. Having come to Faith in the crucible of Oxford, that great seat of reason, he recognized the inherent power that comes from believing in the name of the Son of God:

“The most perfect Christian is he who has learned to live upon mysteries, to rejoice in mysteries, to look forward to mysteries.”

So this is why we have Advent; with the Sanctuary stripped back, we carve out a space in our busy schedules to pause and reflect. To learn, and re-learn how to enter into Mystery. To put down the weapons of pride, and instead come to the manger-bed of Bethlehem, where the Lord who made the stars will soon lie gazing in wonder at them. Advent urges us not to fill that gap, but instead teaches us how to live in it. This gap is not a wound, nor a mistake, nor a void; it’s a pilgrimage into Truth.

Locusts and Honey

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 15:13:09 GMT

You’ve heard about him.

His strange, repellant beauty

Almost naked, draped in animal skins

A wild man with long, uncut hair and beard.

His message is blunt and uncompromising.

His words twist a sinew in your heart.

A day’s journey from Jerusalem

Into the wilderness, just to catch a glimpse of him.

He sees you coming.

His eyes flash:
You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?

John the Baptist is not nice. Neither is he comfortable. His words are not warm, and friendly. They are terrifying. But they are also compelling - why? Because they are true. His demeanor, his appearance are no mere life choices. You and I would perish in the desert, whereas he is sustained by locusts and bees; what would ravage or sting us, sustains him. His life has one purpose: to give knowledge of salvation - and that requires us to unpick all we ever thought we knew about God, Faith and the world. Why? Because John's message forces us to confront the deeper order God built into creation

The world, you see was made for order. Out of chaos, God creates light, and from that light you and I, made in his image, are given the ability to see that the Universe has laws. They are, as Jeremiah says, written on the human heart. Knowledge of salvation is the perspective over history, seeing how God has been achieving his purpose over generations and generations. Time and again we fail to lift our eyes to the hills, and return to the same petty concerns and fleeting pleasures, and squandering the great inheritance of eternal life in God’s presence for ever.

With infinite patience, God’s plan required calling a people out of the world to himself. To Israel, God gave the Law, written on tablets of stone. Now, you’ve heard of the idea of engineered obsolescence? Well, our tablets of science suffer from a deliberate choice to make them less and less good over time - they fail, so we have to buy new ones. The Law given to Israel has a similar component: it is impossible to achieve. This was the fundamental insight St. Paul had - as he explains in Romans 7 - the Law tells us what sin is, but does not give us the means to conquer it. “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Rom 7:18

To put it another way, God gave the Law to Israel, not to create an exclusive relationship with a certain race of people, but for this people to be the means by which the universal offer of salvation would be made in Jesus Christ. The temptation Israel faced was to turn inward, to adopt an air of superiority, and to stop looking for the kind of Messiah God wanted. This is why John calls the Pharisees and Sadducees a brood of vipers. In no uncertain terms he is calling out their manipulation of God’s law, and their exclusion of others (the Gentiles) from God’s offer:

Do not presume to say to yourselves,
'We have Abraham as our father.'
For I tell you,
God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.

This is a key temptation of religion; that of presumption. John might equally well say to all of us:

“Do not presume to say to yourselves,
I was raised Catholic

For I tell you,

God can raise up Catholics from among the people you despise.”

John’s message then is to encourage the fresh vision which comes from deep and honest introspection. Not to rest on our laurels - not to say: I’m a good person - the spiritual equivalent of ‘I’m alright, Jack.’ Instead, he proposes two words that are intrinsically linked: Repentance, and Fruit. Mere words are worthless - to say you acknowledge your sins is cheap, to say “Jesus is my Lord and Savior” just isn’t sufficient. The proof of repentance is in the fruit. Indeed, John lays down the gauntlet to the professionally religious: “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.”

John proposed a physical washing to his penitents as evidence of their change of heart. John’s Baptism was symbolic of that turnaround, but it was not a Sacrament. We know this, because later on, John’s followers would have to be baptized with Christ’s Baptism (cf. Acts 19.) John’s Baptism had no power to forgive sins, and did not produce this effect. This is why it’s not a scandal when Our Lord enters into the waters to be baptized by John. He has no need of repentance, but this symbol shows us two things: that He makes the waters holy by his presence, and that his Death (symbolized by going under the waters) is what truly reconciles us to God.

You could even argue that John the Baptist is spectacularly misnamed - he should rather be called John the Confessor because the symbolism of his baptism (small B) of repentance is of a repeatable coming to terms with sin - a going out into the desert in order to be stripped of pride, and reconciled to God.

The Sacrament of Baptism is once and for all; the Sacrament of Confession applies the power Christ gave to the Apostles to forgive sins to their successors, for all time, in a Sacrament of Repentance, of which John’s Baptism is the prefigurement. This is amazing! If you are not a regular penitent - you should be! If you really knew what was being offered in the box, I would never be permitted to sleep for the lines of people beating down my door. As Chrysostom notes:

“The priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels… to pronounce absolution over sins committed after baptism.”

Look in more detail. To go to Confession well, you must examine your conscience, and come up with an itinerary of acts and omissions in which you have failed to live up to your Baptismal calling. You must name those sins before someone who has power to remit them in Jesus’s name, and you must go on your way, back to society renewed by that encounter in the desert.

The confessional, then, is the River Jordan for us. The water is still cold, the prophet may well even be hairy, but probably doesn’t eat bugs. But the mercy is ever new, and available in our church on Saturdays from 3-4 PM and every single weekday at 7:30 AM. If you’re not yet convinced by me, let Monsignor Ronald Knox put it to you even more vividly:

“We were baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire once, on the day of our baptism. Ever since, we have been going back again and again to the Jordan, to the wilderness, to the strange hairy man who tells us uncomfortable truths, because only there do we find the mercy that keeps the fire alive.”

Mind the Gap

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 20:47:37 GMT

I remember it every year at this time, (and not just because I love trains): it’s an excellent message for Advent.

The universe is deeper and stranger than our minds—made, as the mystics say, in via negativa—can fully grasp.

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.

Heb 1:1-2

“The most perfect Christian is he who has learned to live upon mysteries, to rejoice in mysteries, to look forward to mysteries.”

A Spotter's Guide to Kings

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 22:08:41 GMT

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.

The Dawn of AI

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 21:33:53 GMT

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!

A Priceless Sacrament

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 21:30:00 GMT

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.

Made for Heaven

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 23:06:20 GMT

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!

Pride Before Fall

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:00:26 GMT

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.

Faith on Earth?

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:57:47 GMT

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.

The Tenth Leper

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:52:33 GMT

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?

Of Elves and Men

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 20:30:40 GMT

' 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.

A Hot Potato

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:19:34 GMT

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.

Take up your Cross?

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:41:45 GMT

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.

Perfect Hate

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 17:06:30 GMT

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! ’

Come to Mount Zion

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 16:53:51 GMT

“ You have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering. ”

Heb 12:22

This quotation from the Letter to the Hebrews was read every week in my home parish at Benediction on Sunday evenings. I loved that service, it was so calm - after the busyness of the morning, the church retained a thick stillness - the incense sometimes hung in a fog like a layer cake over the Sanctuary. It was holy.

But what struck me then, and strikes me now, is how the Bible was able to describe with pinpoint accuracy something that was unfolding liturgically. It was, if you like, the perfect commentary to the action of the priest, and what it meant to be in the presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

When the Letter to the Hebrews was written, its human author would have had no conception of exposing the Blessed Sacrament for worship - that’s not a disadvantage: the author knew the Incarnate Lord. However, this passage describes perfectly what happens when we are at Mass, and by extension, what happens when the world shudders to a stop whenever the Church exposes the Blessed Sacrament for public Adoration.

It’s this activity, we call Exposition and Benediction I want to talk to you about today. Many times it’s confused with the term, ‘Adoration’ - here’s the difference: you can adore the Lord whether the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, or reposed in the Taberacle - in other words, Adoration is possible 24-7, but Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is a formal ritual, governed by Church law.

We already have Exposition here at St. Paul’s once a month, on First Fridays, but it’s only for a brief moment whilst devotions are recited. I would like to begin Exposition every week, for a particular purpose, that I’d like to share with you, and invite your help in making a reality. I would like to expose the Blessed Sacrament for public worship every Wednesday afternoon, for the intention of our young people in Faith Formation, between 4 PM, and 6:30 PM, and to do that I will need your help: it cannot be done unless we have volunteers to guard the Eucharist - at least three at any one time. So first, I will explain what it is, and secondly, why it is so beneficial to your spiritual life.

It’s important I don’t assume everyone already knows what Exposition is. It’s quite possible to go to church every Sunday, and never really encounter it. In the 1960s, the Church went through a time when Exposition was phased out, it was seen as outdated, and insufficiently participatory. This was a mistake - the difference is the mode of participation.

Exposition takes one key moment of the Mass - the moment when the Host, or Chalice, are elevated and shown to the people, and kind of elongates it - expands it, or, if you like, freeze-frames it. The Latin verb to show is monstro - from which we derive the word, ‘monstrance’ for the piece of equipment into which we place the Eucharist, but the connection between the Mass and Exposition is essential. Even amongst pious people, this connection is not always well understood.

When I said you see the Elevation in freeze-frame, remember that every Host you look at in a monstrance is on its way somewhere. It is not some kind of meta-relic that we stash away in the back, to bring out on special occasions. It is food - the Bread of Life, and every Host consecrated is consecrated for someone - it has a destination - to be united with the body of a Christian believer, known to God from all eternity, in order to nourish them, soul and body, to bring them forgiveness of sins, and healing in spirit, and to claim them for Christ, over and again.

Perhaps you might pray for the person who will, one day, consume each and every Host you adore - it may well be one of you! I’m a priest, and I must have consecrated thousands of Hosts. Sometimes I might know for whom they are consecrated, but most of the time, I don’t - but God does. The Host you consume at Mass today was made from the flour of wheat grown from a seed in field. God knew the destination of that seed before it was ever sown - that it had the blessing of being transformed into the substance of the Body and Blood of the Son. It’s quite remarkable, when you think beyond the topical. Beyond what you’re familiar with. Beyond what you think you know.

That’s where Exposition comes in. During Exposition, nothing much happens, you look at the Host, the candles look pretty, the incense is impressive, and the singing is otherworldly (hopefully in a good way…) but when you look at the Host, you are looking at Jesus. And Jesus is looking at you.

That’s right - since the Host is what Christ is, and is where Christ is, a chance to place yourself before the Lord of All Things, is a moment to see, and be seen. Yes, God is everywhere - but He calls you to himself - he wants to be intimate with you, not just in theory, but in practice. He wants you to present your body a holy, living sacrifice. He wants to know you, and for you to be known. At Mass, with all its distractions, and movements, sometimes the contemplative mode of participation is challenged.

Exposition is a way to regain that contemplative mode, which is in fact superior to any form of activity, because contemplation is the highest form of prayer that exists.

At the end of Exposition comes Benediction, a word that simply means ‘blessing.’ It it special, because the blessing comes from Christ personally - not from the priest acting with Christ’s authority. To be blessed with the Host is to be touched by Christ himself, without any mediation of the priest. For this reason, Benediction has certain rules, and certain vestments. There must be a set number of candles burning, incense must be used, the Collect must be sung, and the priest must put on the humeral veil - a decorated vestment hangs over his shoulders, symbolically separating himself as a person from the blessing that is given with the Eucharist itself. When Exposition comes at the end of Mass, there should be a seamless transition from one liturgy to to other - a segue, for all you professional musicians - and the blessing usually given at the conclusion of Mass is substituted for the Benediction of Christ with the Monstrance.

All these things the Apostles would probably never have imagined the night before his Passion when Christ instituted the Lord's Supper. But they are the organic outgrowth of what He did that night - He handed himself over to unholy hands - indeed, you could argue the first to ‘expose’ Christ was Pontius Pilate - and made Himself vulnerable to us, in order to save us. It’s that saving gift we participate in at Mass, and it’s the saving Person we adore in Exposition. As we deepen our respect and reverence for the Eucharist, let us never forget who it is that comes to us in the form of Bread and Wine.

Blessèd and praised be Jesus Christ
In the most holy Sacrament
Hosanna; Hosanna, Hosanna in excelsis.

First and Last

Sat, 23 Aug 2025 16:22:58 GMT

“ And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last. ”

Luke 13:30

This saying of Jesus has often puzzled me. It makes me think: ‘wait, no - how is that fair?’ and then I remember the golden rule of Biblical interpretation: if your interpretation makes the Lord look like he’s unfair, unjust, or indeed any other negative characteristic: your interpretation is wrong. The Lord’s sayings are often enigmatic - not just does he teach in parables he speaks parabolically - that is to say, when dealing with Scripture you have to sit, and listen…and wait. The answer sometimes takes a lifetime.

Too hasty a conclusion, or too literal a conclusion, often puts you in a pickle. One such pickle I have observed recently is premillennial dispensationalism. On no! Another -ism! Actually this one is not one of ours - this is an Evangelical belief that God’s action in human history can be divided into ages, or ‘dispensations’ - each with their own covenant, that eternally endures. Among the many consequences of this theory is one really rather curious desire: to see the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem rebuilt, and the sacrifices within it resumed.

You heard that right. There are groups of Christians who spend much energy (and millions of dollars) into projects that would facilitate the resumption of Temple worship by Jewish priests, including practical plans to breed red heifers in Texas suitable for ritual slaughter. Let me be plain: God does not want the physical Temple in Jerusalem rebuilt - how can I be so sure? Because to do so directly contradicts the Lord’s own words:

“ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up…but he was speaking about the temple of his body. ”

John 2:19,21

“ Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ”

John 4: 21

Furthermore, since the new Temple in the Kingdom is Christ’s own body, which is in heaven, we recognize that the promises of the Covenant with Moses are fulfilled in Christ, who offers the possibility of right worship for a new Israel constituted of those who believe in him. This means the Church is that new Israel of God - and only in Christ can worshipers offer sacrifice acceptable to the Father in Spirit and in Truth. The old Temple has been destroyed: its sacrifices are not acceptable to God, and cannot save.

This idea is the whole background to today’s Gospel. The Lord is asked a question about how many people will be saved, and he tells us three very important things:

The door is narrow : i.e. salvation is not easy, but instead is a process that happens when we cooperate with grace, and grow in holiness of life.

The house will be barred to some : it is not sufficient simply to profess Faith in Christ and thus be saved - the Lord is clear:

“ We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ ”

The kingdom includes both Jews and Gentiles : this is what it means when he says people from the four points of the compass will “recline at table” in the kingdom.

The objection to these teachings seems to come from a Jewish perspective - this should not surprise us - the idea that the Kingdom would be open to Gentiles as well as Jews is perhaps the most controversial aspect of Christ’s soteriology. The Lord describes those excluded from the house weeping and wailing when they observe Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets eating at table with those from North, South, East and West - i.e. you, and me.

The Kingdom of God is not based on race, but on Faith; there is no privilege given to anyone on the basis of physical or historical characteristics - so, contrary to ‘Simpsonian’ eschatology, there are no Irish, Italian or Mexican neighborhoods in heaven - the only measure is holiness, in which the Blessed Virgin has the highest honor.

So what about the last being first? I don’t know about you, but I learn a lot about myself in airports - specifically that I am not very patient. Take airport barriers - you know, the stanchion-and-tape contraptions that are designed to manage queues: nothing raises my ire more than when security officials open up a new line for those behind me in the queue by a simple switch of the tape - in they all go - filing past in an express lane to the front of the line. The red mist rises!

But this is not what the Lord means here. First of all there’s no queuing for the Kingdom of God - salvation is offered to all in the blood of the Lamb: the only question is - do you remain in his love? Secondly, this phrase is the context of the Lord’s sadness at his non-acceptance by many in Israel, especially the religious hierarchy. Indeed, the following few verses are a specific lament over Jerusalem, which have been extracted from the Lectionary sequence for use in Lent. Here they are:

" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”

Luke 13:34-35

God desires for all to be saved, and for all to enter the Kingdom - but obstinacy on the basis of self-righteousness is, perhaps, the hardest form of opposition to God’s will - when you truly believe you’re doing what God wants. Sometimes it can feel like the Old Testament is someone else’s history - someone else’s story, but it’s not. God called the Hebrew people to himself “to be a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel” - a truth we recall every single day in the Divine Office. The first called are not the last in dignity, but, just perhaps, the long plan of salvation will see all peoples reconciled in the Kingdom when He makes a new heaven, and a new earth on his timescale, not ours.

Feel the Burn

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 22:30:49 GMT

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

C. S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Pevensie children have discovered the wardrobe in the Professor’s attic that leads to another world - a world in which a deep spell by an evil usurper has meant it is always winter, never Christmas. Aslan, in Lewis’s story, is the Redeemer of Narnia - in giving up his life, he exercises the deep magic, which releases the world from the witch’s curse.

Since Aslan is a type of Christ, this quotation exemplifies Lewis’s own understanding of the person of Jesus - not safe, but good. Today’s Gospel, with its startling prophecies is sometimes hard to reconcile with the idea of ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild.’ Where has he gone? Isn’t he supposed to be the Prince of Peace?

Well, let’s start with God’s idea of peace - compared with our more prosaic, everyday notion. For God, peace is clearly not the absence of conflict. The Lord is quite clear that his message is challenging. Coming close to Christ puts us under pressure - and many find that pressure too demanding, and walk away.

Instead, God’s peace is about reconciliation. If we are at one with the Father, have restored our friendship by means of Christ’s sonship, then we experience the peace the world cannot give , that surpasses all understanding . But that does not mean we can take it easy. God’s peace, because it derives from Truth, causes division from anything that is false - anything that is inferior, or inadequate.

The peace the world offers is focused on comfort - but we are not here for comfort, as Pope Benedict XVI once memorably stated. Even more than that, the world in fact offers a false peace - divisions are not reconciled, they are simply ignored, or papered over. The comfortable peace is no peace at all, it is a conditional cessation of hostilities, for a while, - a truce, in other words.

So what of the fire Christ promises? In everyday life you will no doubt have heard that cringeworthy phrase “ feel the burn .” I’m told it relates to the euphoria athletes feel when the lactic acid builds up so much in their muscles their bodies feel like they are burning up. Apparently this is a good thing - but I wouldn’t know, I have not ‘felt the burn’ much recently, perhaps I should take it up?

But I wonder if said athletes would be as excited to feel the burn that Christ proposes today? You see the Word we hear today is the same Word that appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush: Same Lord; same fire. We note, of course, that the Bush burns, but is not consumed. And there’s the key. The fire Christ wishes to cast on the earth is a cleansing fire, a purifying fire.

There are numerous biblical references to the People of God being cleansed as by fire - and they build upon man’s own experience of the phenomenon. We are primordially afraid of fire - rightly so, it is unpredictable, and endangers our lives - but we also like to manipulate it. Capturing fire - perhaps from lightning strikes - was one of man’s first achievements. No wonder so much mythology centers around the idea of stealing fire from the gods. But we need no Prometheus. God, in fact, wishes to give this fire to us.

God’s fire only destroys that which is sinful in us. That which is good is honed, made purer, and stronger. So we see that in this celestial equation, nature+grace=sanctity. Fire, then, is what happens to us spiritually when we say yes to grace.

Don’t fear the fire; feel the burn .

The Perfection of Faith

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:39:16 GMT

“ To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often. ”

Newman’s provocative insight reveals that if we don’t change, we’re not living. A fish that stops swimming is in fact going backwards - but we don’t just want to live, we should want to become saints. But there’s an inbuilt opposition to that growth. You see, man cannot achieve his ultimate goal using his own reason, or under his own power. It’s like the deliberate imperfections of aerodynamics; the instability that permits a plane to fly.

This frustration is what makes us fundamentally religious: we seek answers to big questions outside of ourselves, rather than within. But you see openness to growth is what the virtue of Faith looks like in a concrete way. Why? Because the virtues are the way we chart the operation of God’s grace in our lives. It’s how we measure whether we’re maturing spiritually or not. Faith is, as the Letter to the Hebrews defines it:

“ The assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things unseen. ”

Heb 11:1

The problem with this is we use the word, ‘Faith,’ to describe different things. Here, the Bible is talking specifically about the theological virtue of Faith, which is infused by grace. But all that goes way over our heads if we can’t define what a virtue is, nor what grace is.

Let’s start with the virtues. What we call a virtue is a character or quality that disposes a person to morally good acts. We work out what they are by examining our behavior, and the behavior of others, synthesizing the principles for good living, and putting a label on it. According to Catholic thought, building upon the foundations of Aristotle, we can distill four ‘cardinal’ virtues, that can be known by reason, and on top of these we have three ‘theological’ virtues that God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.

The cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and each of these represents a ‘golden mean’ on a sliding scale between two other characteristics: one of which is an excess, the other a deficiency; and both of which are vices. The golden mean does not necessarily sit in the center between the two - it can be skewed more one way, or another. So:

Prudence sits between Cunning, and Recklessness
Justice sits between Rigidity, and Laxity
Fortitude sits between Foolhardiness, and Cowardice
Temperance sits between Austerity, and Licentiousness

These natural virtues can be discerned by thinking logically and carefully, and they apply to all men, for all time. But they are very, very hard to achieve, and there is a gap at the end of the day. If you practice these virtues, you may be good, but you won’t be perfect. Indeed, you cannot be perfect.

To be perfect, requires God’s intervention - and we call that grace. Here’s where the three theological virtues come in. They are:

Faith
Hope
Love

You already know where these come from. I suspect the majority of you who are married will have heard the verse at your weddings:

“ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. ”

1 Cor 13:13

The theological virtues don’t operate like the natural virtues. They don’t sit on a sliding scale, because each of them is given as a gift from God. They do, however, interact with the natural virtues. In fact, in individual circumstances they alter the golden mean, moving the needle in one direction, or another. It is the operation of the theological virtues that changes us from being good to being perfect, or, to think of it another way, by grace we can be made saints.

The Letter to the Hebrews gives eleven examples of men and women through salvation history that did something different because of the virtue of Faith. God’s action in their lives shifted the needle and they made choices they otherwise would not have made, because they recognized, by Faith, who it was that was doing the asking.

What is true of Faith, is also true of the other two theological virtues, so let’s see how they interact with the natural virtues. Let’s take Fortitude, the mean between Cowardice and Foolhardiness. Faith moves the needle in the direction of Foolhardiness - it makes us do things against the odds, or against the evidence, because we believe God and trust His commands. An excellent example is Peter’s encounter with the Lord walking on the waters: Peter’s Faith overrides his caution, and since it is the Lord who bids him come, he comes - until of course his Faith fails, and he sinks into the waves.

So let’s take another example of Temperance, the mean between Austerity and Licentiousness. The theological virtue of Love may move the needle in the direction of Austerity in specific cases. Think, for example, of the commitment of Carthusians, or Trappists, or hermits, they eschew not just luxury, but even basic human goods. They would not be exercizing the natural virtue of Temperance, except that Love, for Christ, and the salvation of souls, requests it of them - and if it is done out of Love (and not for other motives) the virtue is perfected by being changed .

We have not mentioned Hope yet, which is the confidence that what God promises will in fact be fulfilled. Taking the natural virtue of Justice, we might observe that Hope asks us to move in favor of Laxity - taking a longer view, and showing mercy, rather than requiring a strict application of law in the here and now. How often do parents exercise this quality! A brilliant example is Our Lady at Cana when she says “do whatever he tells you” to the servants. Her Hope modifies what Justice requires, which would be the honest admission that the wine has run out.

So at the heart of the virtuous life is openness to grace. It challenges our nature, and expands our horizon from the topical to the eternal. With the intellect and will that we have by nature, it is possible to be good, but for most of us the report card is mixed. By grace, it becomes possible for us to be perfect - and that works by showing us a deeper logic - the logic best expressed by Christ’s self-sacrificial love on the Cross. This is my body given up for you. Just like the other examples, Christ’s gift of himself on Calvary moves the needle of virtue. Don’t settle for being good enough - be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

A Barnraising Tale

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 16:21:24 GMT

I have a friend I don’t see very often. I’m fond of him. He comes from an African nation, and we have been corresponding for over a decade. He’s also the wealthiest person I know. I won’t say too much about his biography, because I don’t want to identify him, but we first came to be friends because he had questions about Jesus’s teaching on wealth, and a mutual friend thought I might be able to help.

Perhaps the most famous quotation Jesus ever said is Matthew 19:24:

“ [i]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. ”

This is the line that haunts my friend. It haunted Jesus’s followers too. They responded: “who then can be saved?” The Lord’s answer was my starting point:

“ With man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible .”

Matt 19:26

In this reply, the Lord is very clear. Without God’s intervention, wealth presents insuperable barriers to salvation - indeed, to the extent of making it impossible. But it is not wealth per se that is evil; it is what it can do to the soul that is evil. In other words, grace is required. Grace is what alters the natural consequences, because God intervenes, either directly or indirectly. God desires all men to be saved - the wealthy and poor alike - and he offers sufficient grace to all of us to respond to his invitation.

Today’s Parable of the Rich Fool is part of a landscape of comments the Lord makes on economic matters. It is easy to take one, or two verses, out of context and create a false narrative. Groups of Christians have tried to claim His teaching for their own - ‘see - he agrees with us here…’ but that can only be done by selective editing. I’ll say it plainly: Jesus is not a communist, and he’s not a capitalist, either. He is not against wealth, but it is not a sign of God’s favor either. In short, he’s just not that interested in it - and there’s the point. He demonstrates perfect detachment from it.

Delving more deeply into the Gospel story, you might be forgiven for thinking: why does the Lord respond with a parable about a rich fool, when the man in the crowd simply asked him to adjudicate a property matter? It’s a good observation. The parable does not seem to be directly on point.

The point arises because the narrator has not shared any background information about the questioner. He doesn’t even have a name. We only know he is a man because he’s asking about inheritance, and the way the Lord addresses him: simply as ‘man.’

The Lord knows the secrets of our hearts. Looking at the man, he sees the motivation behind the question, and the parable thus addresses what he has not said about himself - that he is greedy, and avaricious. The questioner is, of course, the rich fool building new barns. He is the one who has made himself rich in things that are not of God. He is the one who needs to hear the message of conversion.

To fully understand the parable, however, we need to consider the verses which follow, which are not included in the lection this week. The Lord’s warning against covetousness (which is the excessive desire for possessions) is given because he knows how incredibly strong that drive can be. We may think the problem is about possessing things, but the truth is the things begin to possess us, and blind us to eternal truths.

The next few lines in the discourse are actually about anxiety: “ do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on .” He references the ravens who are amply fed by God, and the lilies of the field whose beauty has nothing to do with how hard they work.

Here we see the heart of the problem - a lack of Faith. We become covetous, and driven by the accumulation of things because we don’t really trust that God will provide what we need, when we need it. And if he does provide more than what we need, we fail to see that is an invitation from God to do even more.

What is a basic truth is that God does not distribute his goods evenly. We are not all equally attractive, or intelligent, or gifted - and the way that he distributes those goods is not an indicator of God’s favor. Wealth then is more of a challenge than a blessing. It can become the instrument of much good in the world, if only we let go, and trust the God to whom it all belongs, anyway. God’s blessing comes in the privilege he gives to choose how to direct the abundance of his gifts. We have no need of barns, because we don’t fear the future.

So we could boil down the Lord’s teaching on wealth to these four principles: (1.) don’t make an idol out of money - the rich fool has become consumed by a fortune he wrongly considers is the result of his cunning and skill; the more he stores up, the more anxiety he has, until the time comes when he ceases to be productive and instead has become fortune’s slave; (2.) don’t be greedy - everything that exists belongs ultimately to God, because He made the Earth, and everything that is in it; we are called to stewardship over the goods of the Earth, and we have a responsibility to direct what we don’t truly need to the propagation of the Gospel, and; (3.) don’t be stingy - the Lord does not want us to be worried about the future; if you have worked hard and done well once, of course you can do it again. If he has endowed you once, have you exhausted the generosity of the Most High God? If anything, God actually encourages us to be extravagant:

“ Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy…For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also ”

Lk 12:32,34

Finally (4.) don’t leave it to someone else to be charitable. All of us have a responsibility to be generous, no matter how large or small our fortune may be. Beware of the subtle cloak of envy - which hardens our hearts by making us bitter and resentful. Instead, fix your eyes on building up the kingdom, and the Lord from whom all blessings flow will satisfy every longing of your heart.

Ask, Seek, Knock

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 17:48:59 GMT

“Father, I pray all the time and God doesn’t answer me.”

I want to say something this week about prayer - and in particular what we can expect of God if we pray. The Gospel message looks superficially simple: ask, seek, knock - and a promise that everyone will be satisfied if they do so. Have we been set up for disappointment? Does God only do this for certain people? Is it a promise without conditions?

Well, the Lord answers that question:

If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

The simple answer is that God, who is supremely good, will not give bad gifts to us, his children, so there is a condition to the triple injunction: ask, seek, knock. The condition is connected to God’s goodness.

Imagine if it were another way. Imagine God simply did our bidding, like a genie in a lamp, granting whatever wish we ask for - what would ensue would be chaotic - no-one would have any stability upon which to base future decisions: or, in other words, we would no longer be free to act, and morality would be emptied of all its content. You could be walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, and, surprise, it disappears and you fall into the East River, just because someone else prayed that God would remove it.

“But I would only ask for good things” - the boast is poor. If that were so, you would become the first benevolent dictator the world has ever seen. To have every wish granted just for the asking would give us limitless power. J. R. R. Tolkein illustrates this beautifully in his famous trilogy when the Elven Queen of Lothlorien, Galadriel, is offered the one ring:

‘You are wise and fearless and fair, Lady Galadriel,’ said Frodo. ‘I will give you the One Ring, if you ask for it. It is too great a matter for me.’ Galadriel laughed with a sudden clear laugh. ‘Wise the Lady Galadriel may be,’ she said, ‘yet here she has met her match in courtesy. […]

And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’

Galadriel contemplates the possibility of limitless power - and recognizes it for what it is - a test. Having passed the test, she must depart. In a nutshell, that’s the story of Redemption.

You see, remaining holy if one were omnipotent is only possible for God, not for man. Our motives are mixed because our perspective is limited. Not only can we not pray as we ought, we cannot see what good we need, either. So why doesn’t Jesus say: ask for good things, seek for good things, knock on good doors? Well, he does, actually.

The disciples clearly catch him praying when they beg him to teach them how to pray like John taught his disciples. He teaches them the perfect prayer: the Lord’s Prayer. You will notice the text is slightly reduced from Matthew’s version which we learn in the cradle. It is distilled to the bare essentials - and the first petition is hallowed be your name.

We say this line so frequently - and by selecting the antiquarian verb, hallow, which in every other context has been entirely replaced by its synonym, sanctify - the meaning often escapes us. It is really rather odd. Its passive construction tells us that we are not the ones doing the hallowing - God is the one who hallows himself, and we merely recognize it.

When we pray, we recognize that God isn’t a genie in a lamp, but instead has a plan for our salvation, the includes working through sufferings. God does not promise that we will never suffer, and whilst suffering is not his direct will, he does permit it to happen, in order to safeguard our freedom. That is to say, suffering exists because people can choose to be good, or evil, and our actions have real consequences.

Prayer then is a name given to a process, or as I like to say, a family of human behaviors, in which the individual will is set aside in favor of discovering what God’s will is - and aligning myself with that will, I have peace the world cannot give. Therefore, in my petitions, in my thanksgivings, in my worship, I set my heart on discovering what is fully good, true, and beautiful. It’s as simple, and yet as complicated, as that.

If I desire to align myself with God’s will, the change I’m asking, seeking or knocking for in prayer is more in me than in the world. We get it wrong when we conclude prayer is going in one direction, from me to God, when in fact it’s much more the other way around. Prayer is opening myself up for God to illuminate my will, to discern what is truly good for me, and for the world. But if God changes me, because I submit to him, then the world changes also, because I become different.

But there is one privilege I will share with you. God’s will is not monolithic - there are infinite possibilities, and multiple ways of reaching the same destination. It’s as if God is constantly rewriting the script, observing the free choices moral agents make, and governing the conditions that permit us to see him for who he is.

If our heart is aligned with God’s, then we can pray that his will be done in a certain way. If I am good, and my desire is holy, then God may hear my petition, and the good I ask, seek or knock for, might come about in this way, so it is worth asking. But if it does not, that does not mean my prayer has not been answered - it often means we simply don’t like the answer.

The Rich Samaritan

frclark@diobpt.org (Rev. Michael J.V. Clark) — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 17:35:18 GMT

“No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions - he had money as well.”

Jesus uses parables to explain deep truths - things that we need to mull over for a long time; things we need to keep coming back to. The word means to throw alongside - it’s the same root as the ‘parabolic’ in a parabolic curve - the kind you don’t want to see in your 401k. You could think of it as a boomerang - instead of giving a direct answer that you might forget, the Lord paints a vivid picture with a memorable story, so you can keep returning to the ideas again, and again. It’s the perfect strategy. But there’s a risk.

Parables, you see, have multiple layers. There’s a superficial reading, perhaps one or two slightly deeper readings, and then there’s the core teaching, which makes all the little details in the story sparkle like diamonds. Only then can you say you have received what the Lord wished to convey. So let me disavow you of the superficial interpretation: the moral of the story is not simply: “be kind to people in need” - that is the most basic teaching, and does not need a parable to convince you of its suitability. Indeed, the Lord teaches this directly on multiple occasions: e.g. “love one another, as I have loved you.” It’s not about being kind.

So what is it about?

Well, to understand a parable, you need to pick it apart, and see the details. There are many, but let us concentrate on a handful:

The traveler’s direction: from Jerusalem to Jericho

The traveler is described as “a certain man” - anthropós tís

The Samaritan is wealthy and generous

He uses oil and wine to minister to him

He takes him to an Inn

He gives two denarii.

He will return

The traveler’s direction is important. Although a journey of merely 18 miles, it involves a descent of 3439 feet to the lowest city on Earth. Jericho is 864 feet below sea level, whereas Jerusalem is on a high mountain. Jericho, in this sense, represents hell - the bowels of the Earth. Man has turned his back on Jerusalem, where the presence of God tabernacles among men, and instead is journeying into the pit. He’s going the wrong way - and thus the victim is not entirely innocent. He is in a bad place because of his previous bad choices.

The Greek word for man here is very broad. Almost every interpretation of this parable assumes that the man going to Jericho is a Jew - and therefore the parable is all about Jews receiving mercy from their despised enemies, the Samaritans. That is there by implication - remember there are multiple layers of meaning - but to conclude this about the parable you have subconsciously imported a detail which is not explicitly there. The parable takes on a very different vibe if the robber’s victim was also a Samaritan, doesn’t it? Who’s to say he isn’t? The Lord just tells us it was a certain man - an everyman. The robber’s victim is you - and me.

The Samaritan represents someone who is entirely different from us - he is not our friend. He is a foreigner in this land - and he is extraordinarily generous and wealthy. The quotation I began with is from the late Margaret Thatcher, quondam Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was manipulating the parable to make a different point - that wealth generation enables us to be charitable. She’s not entirely wrong there, but she misses the point. We don’t actually know why the Samaritan is wealthy - we’re not told he is hard working - it’s just supremely obvious he is able to flash the cash however he chooses.

Note carefully the mention of tending the victim’s wounds with oil and wine. What does that remind you of? Who else do you know of that uses oil, and wine, to heal people’s wounds? Maybe the picture is becoming clearer…but let’s move on.

Next, the Samaritan uses his beast (redolent of the Sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah) to take the victim to an Inn. This is not an irrelevant detail. I have told you before whenever you come across a ‘hapax legomenon’ - a word that is only used once in the Bible - it should scream out at you. Here is such a feature - the word, pandokíon is only found here in Luke’s Gospel. It is a construction from the word pas, meaning ‘all,’ and dechomi, which is the verb to receive. The Samaritan, having tended to the victim’s wounds with oil and wine, takes him personally to a place that receives all. What kind of a place might that be?

The Samaritan, we are told, cannot stay with the victim. He must go away, but he tells the innkeeper he will return, and gives him two denarii to cover expenses. Again, the two denarii are important. A denarius was a single Roman coin. It represents a day’s wages, and thus symbolically, a day. The Samaritan is the one who makes arrangements for two days only. He must return on the third day.

I hope by now the details are coming together to give an accurate picture of who the Samaritan is. It is, of course, Christ himself, and the parable is all about man’s need to receiving the healing that only he can provide and only he can pay for. As St. Teresa of Calcutta once said to a wealthy donor: God has lots of money. But the Samaritan has a place to take us - an Inn, which receives all, and is staffed by people he entrusts to look after us until he returns. This Inn is, of course, the Church. Only here can the oil and wine of Christ’s Sacraments be administered with his authority to raise us up when we find ourselves half-dead on the road to hell.

Margaret Thatcher was right that the Samaritan had both good intentions, and resources, but she failed to spot the sting in the tail. The Lord says at the end: ‘go, and do likewise.’ This is impossible. No-one has the purity of intention or abundance of resources to do what the Samaritan does. Oh no. Instead, ‘go, and do likewise’ is an invitation to assist him in doing it.

Only he will not pass by on the other side; only he will move towards the victim who got himself into a mess by turning away from God; only he has the oil and wine; only he will return on the third day. But there’s a final question. When the Samaritan goes away for three days, where is he going? Well, since man had set out on the road to hell, someone had to complete the journey. The Samaritan is the only one who could go to hell…and back.

Of Flesh and Spirit

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:33:34 GMT

Today’s parable, most commonly referred to as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, found in Luke 15:11-32, is often celebrated as a compelling illustration of God’s boundless mercy. The image of the father running to embrace his wayward son upon his return from a life of dissipation is a powerful testament to divine forgiveness. Yet, while

this aspect of the story rightly captivates our attention, there is another dimension to the parable worth exploring: the contrast between two categories of sin—sins of the flesh, and sins of the spirit—as embodied by the two brothers. By shifting our focus, particularly to the older son, we uncover a deeper truth about human nature and the subtle dangers that threaten our relationship with God.

But first a little theological anthropology. Human beings are a composite of body and soul, a union that gives rise to dual inclinations. On one hand, we are drawn to material comforts which satisfy the body—money, food, and physical pleasures—temptations we might call "beastly" because they align with the instincts we share with irrational beasts. On the other hand, we are also susceptible to spiritual temptations—for example, envy, prestige, or the desire for praise—which we might term "angelical" because they reflect the higher, immaterial aspect of our nature, akin to the spiritual beings created by God we commonly call, angels. All types of sin are serious, but the Parable of the Prodigal Son suggests that the angelical sins, exemplified by the older son, pose a greater peril precisely because of their clandestine nature.

The younger son’s story is familiar: he demands his inheritance, squanders it in reckless indulgence, and eventually returns home humbled and repentant. His sins are of the flesh—self-evident and tangible. When his material resources run dry, he comes to his senses, recognizing the emptiness of his pursuits. His contrition is visible, his pathology clear, and thus, his return to the father is straightforward. He has chosen immediate gratification over lasting good, but his crisis forces him to confront this mistake, opening the door to reconciliation.

The older son, however, presents a more complex figure. Note he too receives his inheritance (so Scripture is careful to stress he has not been cheated) but he remains in his father’s house, outwardly obedient and dutiful. Yet, when the father celebrates the younger son’s return, the older son’s reaction reveals a cankerous, and deeply sinful heart. He accuses his father, saying, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this

son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:29-30). His words betray a relationship with his father built not on love, but on a transactional sense of duty. He does not even call the prodigal one “my brother” but “this son of yours,” distancing himself both from his sibling and the father’s mercy. He is the great accuser, adding salacious detail to the narrative of which the father was previously unaware, as if that might revoke his mercy.

Pope Francis, in his Angelus address on March 22nd 2022, highlights this flaw: “The elder son bases his relationship with his Father solely on pure observance of commands, on a sense of duty. This could also

be our problem… losing sight that he is a Father, and living a distant religion, made of prohibitions and duties.” The consequence is a rigidity that blinds the older son to the familial bond he should share with his brother. His refusal to join the celebration—“he refused to go in” (v. 28)—symbolizes a self-imposed exile from the father’s love,

driven by pride and bitterness, but one that is interior. Outwardly, all is well; inwardly it is a mess.

Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, notes that for such people as the older son: “Their bitterness toward God’s goodness reveals an inward bitterness regarding their own obedience… In their heart of hearts, they would have gladly journeyed out into that great ‘freedom’ as well. There is an unspoken envy of what others have been able to get away with.” The older son’s obedience, though outwardly impeccable, is hollow. He has renounced immediate pleasures but he is angry about it. He harbors resentment, envying his brother’s

escapades while clinging to a self-righteous sense of grievance.

This contrast reveals a profound truth: sins of the spirit, like pride and envy, are actually harder to root out than sins of the flesh. The younger son’s dissipation is obvious and, in a sense, easier to treat because it is exposed by its consequences. He knows he has done wrong and seeks forgiveness. The older son, however, is more

pitiable. His sin is hidden, masked by his adherence to rules, and he feels no need for repentance. He believes he is in the right, yet his heart is further from the father’s than his brother’s ever was. As St. Paul writes, “If I have faith to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2). Without love, even the most rigorous

obedience is empty, and profits us nothing.

Our Lord underscores this in his teaching elsewhere: “The prostitutes and tax collectors are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31), he warns the scribes and Pharisees—those who, like the older son, reduce faith to a rule-based system. Obviously, the Lord does not condone the antics of prostitutes, or tax collectors, but he does note that their repentance is more sincere.

Christianity is not a checklist of obligations but a call to transformation: not “tell me what I must do,” but “tell me what I must be.” One in which the past does not govern the future. The father in the parable goes out

to both sons, offering love and reconciliation, yet only one accepts it fully. The younger son’s childish faith falters under temptation but matures through repentance. The older son’s faith, equally immature, cannot cope with the reconciliation of sinners, trapping him in a cycle of judgment and isolation.

The enduring legacy of Pope Francis’s pontificate may well be his challenge to this hypocrisy—calling out those who cling to regulations while secretly judging others in their hearts. We must repent of both types of sin, of course. The prodigal’s excess is not excused, but his visible struggle allows for a clearer path to healing. The older son’s spiritual cancer, rooted in pride, not unlike Satan and the fallen angels, is more treacherous because it festers unseen. It is a basic fact of pathology that a hidden infection is more difficult to treat.

To live as true children of the Father, we must move beyond mere duty, embracing a faith grounded in love—for God, and for our brothers and sisters, prodigal or not. Only then can we recognize that the Father’s mercy is pure gift; entirely unmerited. He wishes to dress us with robe, ring, and sandals, but we cannot ever deserve it. To be like God is to be extravagantly generous, to give until the pips squeak, and to rejoice at the reconciliation of sinners.