Hello and greetings from Anne and I in 13 Marylands off New England Road where we’re growing in the spirituality of the housebound. I’m grateful with us all to Fr Chris for the online network his gifts have generated. Besides saying the office with a group of us on the phone I’m offering Mass here every day at 715am as a rule and friends at St Richard’s are high on my list of intentions.
It’s Holy Week and we’re trying to get more holy. We’re doing that, most of us, without Holy Communion. How do we manage? C.S.Lewis said ‘next to the Blessed Sacrament… your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses’. I’ve always liked that saying but being shut in for weeks on end seeing our close neighbour as ‘the holiest object presented to your senses’ is another matter. I feel for Anne!
In today’s Gospel we read of Our Lord’s close associates in the days of his flesh, Judas and Peter, and how they failed Jesus their close neighbour. Both had spent years with Christ but when it came to the crunch self-interest triumphed over loyalty. Both were living by their own power with its sinful devices and not by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think better of them a bit because the Holy Spirit was only released as a result of the uncomfortable events of Holy Week they were living through.
To be made holy we need the Holy Spirit and that we have received at baptism and confirmation. Holy Week is a call to renew that anointing which doesn’t just come from above us. It comes also from around us and within us. Those difficult decisions we have to work out with one another being housebound are part of our sanctification. At our family video conferences online we’re struggling to get the quieter members to speak and shine. Not everyone is like you and me - I speak to an online congregation - not everyone is comfortable with being on TV if you like. My youngest son James, like some of you listening working from home, is expert on the protocol of such conversations with ten or more folk on screen. He’s leading our struggle to get the best listening to one another in the fun, chaos and time consumption of video linking.
Christianity is about love of God, neighbour and self. Sin is about falling short in all three dimensions. Sometimes we deceive ourselves through going to Church, praying, reading the Bible, serving others and confessing our sins that we’re getting holier. Those things are good but they can be done in our own power and not in humility with confidence in the Holy Spirit. That’s why having Holy Week on our own away from Church fastened in at home, save for an hour, maybe family members is a God-send.
I dare to say it though I don’t fully live it - the struggle to see God in our closest relations is an opportunity for spiritual growth.
On Friday we come to the foot of the Cross where the ground is level. Corona puts everyone on that level ground in terms of our mortality. As Christians that ground is level in a more profound sense. When you live knowing your need of the Holy Spirit you recognise the sinful shortcomings that put you at the foot of the Cross. Living housebound, alone or in company, can awaken our need for God and loosen us from judging overmuch the shortcomings of others.
On Easter Sunday we’ll renew our baptism promises. In baptism our sinful nature got drowned, in principle, and the new Holy Spirit graced nature came to life, in principle. Christian life, growing in holiness, is about putting the principle of baptism into practice. The sinful nature is still in us but so is the Holy Spirit. Holy Week gives us a chance to put the old nature down and to invite the Holy Spirit to rise in us - so be it even if the Spirit comes as grace under pressure, the pressure of these extraordinary times.
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