We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.
We just asked the prayers of SS Philip & James for our faith journey, that we be given a share in the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ so we can go to God and behold him for ever. In the second reading we heard how James saw Jesus risen from the dead and our Gospel included Philip’s stated desire to see God. By describing himself as ‘The Way’ Our Lord reminds us of the direction we can find in life that leads to the vision of God.
We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.
As Christians we don’t expect to be dragged backwards to God at our death but to be more and more at ease with the forward movement of life - even if it brings increased frailty, loss of mobility and the need to depend on others. The passion of Our Lord takes the strain as we give our pain to him. I keep Gladys Protheroe in my prayers, regular at daily Mass in my day. How much I learned from her, from her patient struggle with disability, offering it up as she sought Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament.
Fr Pannell and I - he sends his blessing - we live very much apart nowadays with me near his native Brighton and he much more a northerner than I. When I served here with Father within the Company of Mission Priests the most awesome event was that day in November 1978 when our housekeeper Eunice Mitchell came to the door at 7 o’clock to tell me there’d been an accident at the pit and Jim hadn’t come home. I can’t forget her walking that next Sunday in the Blessed Sacrament procession for Christ the King, a widow, Jim killed in the paddy train crash, singing angels saints and nations sing praise be Jesus Christ our King. Or their little Stewart to whom Arthur Scargill sent a miner’s lamp as reminder of his dad’s death, part of the price of coal. On our way to God pains are sweetened as we keep close to Christ in his passion and resurrection. Grant us … a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son that we may merit to behold you for eternity.
We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.
As Christians we travel to God like anyone else through suffering and joy but with the difference of thankfulness for the joy and assurance of God’s love in the suffering. Our Lord who’s the Way has trodden that way before us and expects nothing of us he’s not been through himself which is the message of Holy Week.
Looking back Fr Pannell was more the humorist than I - we’d some good times at the Clergy House then in Daw Wood - and each of us needed cheering up at times. I remember the night I got chased after youth club by wild teenage girls who sprayed me with hairspray! Then in winter when we walked in our cloaks to Church Father got cross when they shouted Robin at him. Being the taller I was always bat man!
When we look back on our faith journey we see suffering and resurrection. Keeping a good sense of humour’s one secret of spiritual resurrection. Two weeks ago I took the funeral in Brighton of Margaret Blewitt, mother of my best friend at Giggleswick School, who was a dentist in Rotherham. One of our confirmation candidates at SS Philip & James was a lovely girl with her pathological fear of dentists clear from the look of her. Fr Pannell and I persuaded Audrey Cull to come with us to visit Margaret. Margaret with her kindness and forcefulness saw to her there and then. Audrey’s faith took a real upturn with her new teeth - she was a new lady - its hard to believe in God unless you believe in yourself.
My faith journey took a downturn my second year at New Bentley. God seemed a long way off. I went to talk to a Mirfield monk. ‘Maybe God’s not gone but your vision of him’ was the advice. ‘Seek the Holy Spirit for a vision more to God’s dimensions and less to your own’. I did seek and I did experience the renewing power of the Holy Spirit which was something of a resurrection of faith. When I came back from Mirfield to the parish I remember Bernard Shaw was touched in the same way - how sorry I am to learn of Anne’s passing - and I remember how it concerned and confused then Churchwarden Doug Clark.
Doug and Peggy, rest their souls, were kindness itself to Fr Pannell and I, just as their daughter Ann and husband John are being to me tonight, taking me in for Bed & Breakfast! Ann’s dad always said those not attending Mass would do so readily if only they realised what they were missing - I know Ann’s taken a leaf out of dad and mum’s books and is like me a daily Mass goer.
SS Philip & James were very tolerant of my fancy vocabulary after 10 years of Chemistry and Theology at University and brought me gently down to earth!
Doug would forgive me telling this story against him. Doug helped me move to Moorends where my new found zeal made me an evangelist for the Catholic Faith. He helped me carpet a Vicarage bedroom to be an Oratory - fancy word for a little chapel. He was heard saying to someone: ‘you should have seen the devil of a job we had getting that carpet into Father’s orifice’!! I still have an Oratory in our little house in Haywards Heath and precious memories of Doug who first set me up with one.
We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.
You and I, each one of us are on that journey with Our Lord who is himself the way. On that journey keeping close to him in his passion and resurrection sweetens our sorrow and deepens our joy, as does the fellowship we have with one another in God’s holy Church. I’ve been blessed over the last 40 years to keep up with and receive such encouragement from Brian and Sue Dutton, who again have always been kindness itself to me, Charlie Brough, rest his soul, his daughters and others from here.
You too have been blessed in the faithful care of your priests and, in the difficulties we all share in the Church of England’s ongoing crisis, of Bishops like Bishop Glyn. I’m so grateful to Fr Dickinson for ongoing news of church members - he has a real heart for you - and once again thank and blame him for letting me loose tonight in my old haunt!
May what I’ve shared hearten us for the ongoing journey of faith which will one day, as it has for many we love but see no longer, vanish into sight. Then, in a prayer I’ve said so many times at the altar in the old translation: when every tear is wiped away we shall see God as he is. We shall become like him and praise him for all eternity. Grant us, Lord, a share in the passion and resurrection of your Only Begotten Son so that we may indeed merit to behold you for all eternity.
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