Eucharist of St Giles celebrated for St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath & St John, Burgess Hill 1.9.21

We know little about Giles save his being a French Saint whose cult was brought to England by the Normans and that he is paradoxically the Saint of cripples and hunters. St Giles, Horsted Keynes, of which I am former Rector, has a wooden medallion where he is stuck with an arrow.  The story runs that 7th century Giles lived in southern France as a hermit in the forest and there was a deer who sustained him on her milk. Hunters one day tried to kill the deer and shot an arrow at her but Giles jumped over the deer and took the arrow. This is why he’s patron Saint of both cripples and hunters. 

Giles reached out to the deer at a cost to himself. Christians reach out to the vulnerable and get wounded. We are active symbols of Christ who reaches out to sinners and suffers on their behalf. St Giles encourages us to serve the Lord who died in our place to live in our place, who died for our sins so we can live with new life by his Spirit.

That sacrifice renewed for us daily at the eucharist is captured in the fine painting of ‘The Mass of St Giles’ in the National Gallery (picture) painted about 1500 by the anonymous Master of Saint Giles. The scene is set before the high altar of the royal abbey of St Denis near Paris. The king, Charlemagne (kneeling left), is unable to confess a sin and asks Saint Giles to pray for him. As the saint elevates the host during Mass, an angel appears with a paper explaining the king's sin is pardoned.

As we offer the eucharist this morning on the Feast of St Giles angels in heaven indeed surround us, carrying our requests and relaying answers to the specific prayers we offer. Those prayers will include, if not hunters, certainly the disabled and, the people of France, the people of Horsted Keynes down the road, and all called to the contemplative life.

Father through the example of St Giles help us to be ready to risk ourselves in reaching out to the vulnerable in our circle. Lord, hear us.

Lord, we pray for the sick and those who live with disability, their carers and  supporters. Mindful of the threatened closure of Hollyrood residential home for adults with autism in Lindfield, we pray for all involved and the best outcome for the residents. Lord, hear us

Devotion to St Giles bridges the English Channel. We pray for President Macron and the people of France especially for an effective partnership with them in stemming the flow of migrants across the sea. Lord, hear us

At the prayer of St Giles, Lord, bless this deanery and especially the people of Horsted Keynes. Raise up among us fuller contemplation of you and Christian service of the needy. Lord, hear us

With Blessed Mary, St Wilfrid, St Giles and all the saints we pray for the faithful departed and those whose anniversaries of death fall at this time. Lord, hear us.

 

St John, Burgess Hill Trinity 13. True worship 29th August 2021

 

I want to think with you this morning about true worship.

The thought is implied in our Gospel from Mark 7 where Our Lord makes a stinging attack on lip service.  He draws on Isaiah: This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me.

There’s always lots of talk about renewing worship. This, as Jesus says, is primarily about renewing hearts and secondarily about changing outward forms. Impatience with outward form can be godly, but it can also be ungodly. It’s a godly motive to make worship accessible to outsiders. It’s ungodly to make worship bespoke.

Bespoke is all the range. Some of you may be wearing bespoke clothing which has been custom made to your own specification as opposed to being a ready to wear item. Bespoke is no longer just about tailored clothing. It’s about all sorts of things.

Worship though can’t really be bespoke! It’s rather the opposite. The Anglo Saxon means to give worth to something beyond you. Worship is, to quote Evelyn Underhill, the adoring acknowledgment of all that lies beyond us – the glory that fills heaven and earth. It’s very ‘unbespoke’ and hardly consumerist

Worship is about centring on God rather than self though its agenda is mixed.  The word adoration means from the Greek submission and from the Latin ad-oratio, literally, mouth to mouth, the kiss of love.

Renewing worship is about building Godcentred-ness in the church and in individuals through personal prayer. Accessibility is very important. It’s not Christian to be an élite community. Yet, at the heart of Christian worship there is awe before God drawing us to submission and loving devotion. We don’t want our church to be élite and inaccessible but we do want our church to be awesome – awesome, not awful. There’s quite a fine divide here for young people I’m afraid. 

I remember preaching in a church in Lewes where there were a good number of teenagers kneeling with everyone else through the Prayer Book Holy Communion. Talking to them afterwards I learned how they found this traditional worship authentic and intriguing. It intrigued, it drew them to a God beyond this world.

Sometimes we lose confidence in the power of the age old liturgy. People see this loss of confidence in anxious attempts to provide novelty in Church.

Other times, of course, we shirk the duty to make this liturgy accessible. Newcomers to the prayer book get hopelessly lost without page numbers! Our parish eucharist here at St John’s is greatly facilitated by the service booklet though making worship accessible is far more than making the words intelligible. Even the truths of the faith can be made as plain as can be and worshippers, this one included, fail to act on them. This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me.

The role of the sermon in worship is both to touch on what is awesome, open up some windows to the resurrection world we enter on the Lord ’s Day, and to serve access to scripture. The role of ceremonial around the proclamation of the Gospel and the consecration of the Eucharist is to herald and make accessible the Lord in our midst. If we want to renew worship at St John’s we’re not going to find anything ready built other than what the Lord has provided in word and sacrament and his call for us to participate actively in it. 

Just a suggestion. Free your eyes on occasion from your papers and hymn books. Don’t feel obliged to follow every word in the booklet as if you were word checking a proof. Try closing your eyes or looking up at the east window. When the priest takes, blesses, shows and breaks the elements, watch. Jesus didn’t say read this in remembrance of me – he said do this. The Eucharist isn’t something read out of a book. It’s a sacrificial action. As Christ was taken, broken and shared in his passion so is the bread – and so are you and I. 

The church teaches that there is a change, a real happening, in the worship of the Eucharist. It’s a mysterious change which affects the bread and the wine and the worshipper and the world they come from.

Here is a poem that expresses what I am saying:

I lift this bread/and lift therewith the world, myself and Thee.

Hast Thou not said/‘I, lifted up, will draw the universe to me?’(Martindale)

Attendance at this service is about lifting ourselves and the world on our hearts with Christ to God. I lift this bread and lift therewith the world, myself and Thee.

As the bread is offered at the Eucharist see your life and the lives of all those on your heart as being placed on the altar. As the wine is mixed and offered, see your sorrows and those of the world that are on your heart as being offered. 

Why not look as you sing the offertory song – it’s not just your money that’s going to that altar but your whole life – if you want it so! There’s the rub for you and I!

When the priest says over that bread and wine on our behalf and on behalf of Christ himself This is my body…my blood see your life, your body and blood, taken up into his life and his love.

The love that descends anew upon the Altar, to draw us moth-like, into its celestial flame.

After the words of the Lord and at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer priests lift the consecrated bread and wine upwards as a sign of hat drawing up of that love towards God through with and in Jesus Christ 

True worship is about submission, and the adoring kiss of love. It is about our love for God and God’s for us and our love for one another in the body of Christ.  Accessible worship is worship that helps a congregation see such a vibrant flow of love from their joined hearts through the externals of word and sacrament to God and back. 

There should be enough organisation for people to hear the word and lift up their hearts in the Eucharist but not so much as to distract and deaden things. Priests are there for us but with a brief not to get in the way. They represent Christ, of course, as our two small west windows indicate, one of the cross and one of the priest at the altar. Priests are also, so to speak, midwives, bringing things to birth by coordinating a prayerful liturgy. Part of that birth giving is the call to repentance we have already picked up from today’s gospel about worshipping from the heart. We are also warned of prayerful participation at the Eucharist by St. Paul when he says in 1 Corinthians 11v28 examine yourselves and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Self-examination has two aspects – negative and positive. As we celebrate the Eucharist we are to do so confessing our sins. We are also to do so, more positively, through offering the Lord all our positive aspirations. Are you there now – before the altar? Are your joys and sorrows, your family and friends, your ambitions and frustrations – have you put them there yet as a living sacrifice?

I lift this bread and lift therewith the world, myself and Thee. Hast Thou not said ‘I, lifted up, will draw the universe to me?’ Coming to the Eucharist is a lot more than taking a piece of blessed bread and sipping consecrated wine. Sometimes the consumerist streak in all of us sees Holy Communion as the important thing – what we get out of the Eucharist. No, it’s what we put in as well! 

True worship is about our souls and bodies being made a living sacrifice with those on our hearts, part of the universe that is ours, being drawn through our devout prayer into true worship of God, into the celestial flame of love which is his, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Eucharist Wednesday 18 August 2021

As we follow the daily Eucharist lectionary through Judges and Matthew both sections read today converge in speaking of how being a Christian believer flies at times in the face of the world.

Take the Gospel reading we just heard from Matthew 20:1-16. The early birds get paid the same as the slackers in Our Lord’s parable against the presumption of the religious leaders of his day. To be a Christian believer is to trust a God who is gracious and not to be tied down to any worldly reckonings. 

Or, look back to that passage from Judges about the trees. The prophecy of Jotham in Judges 9:6-15 warns against power structures. The trees, wanting a king, offer a crown to the olive, the fig tree and the vine but all are too busy being fruitful to want to wave their branches over their fellows. This task is eventually welcomed by the thorn bush and everyone suffers. People who seek power are prickly and we are to be wise of them.

The Gospel works back to front and turns worldly thinking upside down.

In his book ‘What’s so Amazing about Grace’ Philip Yancey refers to ‘the atrocious mathematics of the gospel’ which reverses the question ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ with the question ‘Why do good things happen to bad people?’ like the slackers in today’s passage.

When it comes to living our Christianity comparisons are invidious. Why? Because God has the right to do as he likes with those he owns – which is all of us – so that he can disturb our worldly reckonings. Thus the last will be first and the first, last.

In the same way the all-powerful One we worship is not interested in power. He is, to coin a phrase, downwardly mobile. He blesses those who will be servants like Jesus. His blessing is held back from the self-important – we can see that from the consequences that flow from self-important leadership.

How can we live the Gospel? Can we attempt to go back to front and upside down in the way Christ teaches?

Not deliberately - but as the Spirit leads. He can be very surprising - a God at work in lowly places and people, One who is at work to turn worldly thinking about people’s value on its head.

I suppose being the best sort of Christian is to be one who is less and less surprised by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

Like the telling question ‘are you more surprised when God answers your prayers than when he doesn’t?’

We have a God of overflowing goodness more eager to provide for us than we are to seek such a provision.

In this Eucharist we come once again to meet with him in the bread of life and the cup of salvation which are the mystery of Christ’s logic-defying love. 

We come like the workers in the vineyard to this feast. Some of us are more early birds but most of us are towards the other end of the spectrum. All of us are welcomed with the same grace.

We do not presume to come to this your table trusting in our own righteousness, Lord, but in your manifold and great mercies for none of us is worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under this table.

St Gabriel, Pimlico Churchill Gardens Assumption 15th August 2021

 

When we look at human origins we enter troubled waters for those who stick to biblical literalism. Sometime back I read Douglas Palmer’s book Origins – human evolution which provides a fascinating summary of the 20 million year evolution of the human family going from the Proconsul plant-eating monkey to chimpanzee-like descendants up to 2 million years back. Then homo habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis and sapiens. Here above is an illustration capturing the sense of this.

The issue of creation versus evolution has been a consuming issue for some but the main flow of Christian biblical interpretation goes hand in hand with God’s other reference book, the book of nature. We expect truth from both sources, God’s written word and the study of the creation we call science. The truth about salvation is, of course, only in one of those books. Christians believe the Bible can’t be mistaken as it presents the good news of Jesus to honest seekers but we don’t claim its infallibility as a science text book.

When we look back at human origins we’re bound to the biblical doctrine of our being created in the image of God and human beings’ fall expressed in the poem of Adam and Eve and in the doctrine of original sin. ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ we read in the letter to the Romans 3v23. How we see the emergence of consciousness, the soul and its capacity to be both one with God and to sin is an important question that needs setting in perspective and the best perspective is to look forward from our origins to our destiny. Today’s Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary provokes above all days the thought of human destiny as we ponder the first of the redeemed.

God gave us life through the great chain of being described both by science and by Genesis. This chain started with one cell organisms and moved through multicellular organisms to plants, reptiles then mammals climaxing in the human family. 

God gave us life so he could give us his life. It is a difficult question to answer, exactly when the human soul first emerged, exactly when a human being first welcomed, worshipped and sinned against God.

If the supposed 4.6 billion year history of the earth is crammed into a single day, the whole of recorded history is compressed into one fifth of the second before midnight, a blink of an eyelid. 

In that blink we have the emergence of the soul and human sin.

In the same blink we have the emergence of a soul perfectly open to God.

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman… so that we might receive adoption as children. (Galatians 4v4)

The process of creation, the evolution of the human race, led to the woman ‘fairest of that race’ whose soul opened to welcome the life of God and its consequences so that we might receive adoption as children of God.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God...(who) for us and for salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. (Nicene Creed)

Through Mary the Son of God became the Son of Man so that children of men could become children of God.

God came into the soul and body of the Blessed Virgin forever. It was a new creation as important as the first. God, who made all out of nothing, who set up and steers the chain of evolution, went deeper with the world. 

Having established by his grace perfect obedience in a human heart he entered the depths of that heart and opened up a new chain of being that we’re part of, the communion of saints.

In Christian tradition we look backwards to Eve. We look forwards to Mary.  The greeting of Gabriel, Hail, in Latin Ave can be written backwards, Eva, Eve. Mary is the new Eve as Christ is the new Adam. The great Anglican hymn writer Bishop Ken’s hymn speaks of this:

As Eve, when she her fontal sin reviewed, wept for herself and all she should include,

Blest Mary, with man’s Saviour in embrace, joyed for herself and for all human race.

Then speaking of today of Mary’s heavenly birthday the hymn goes on:

Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced, near to his throne her Son his Mother placed;

And here below, now she’s of heaven possest, all generations are to call her blest.

We see the exaltation of Mary in all our scripture readings today. It’s an exaltation to be the lot of all who welcome Our Lord as she did. Mary is first redeemed and first fruits of the harvest of souls God planned when he made the world and re-made it through her.

This feast of Mary, Mother of the Lord, centres on human destiny.

We came to this day through the animation of the material world, the evolutionary process from cells to plants and animals to monkeys to homo sapiens.

We can head from this day towards the fulfilment of the new creation beyond this world in heaven for God who gave us life has given us his life which is immortal.

That life first planted in Mary is open to all who’ll direct their attention away from self-indulgence and self-centredness to let Jesus make them members of his family of redeemed humans we call the church.

We were made, however that may be, in God’s image.

We are destined, however that might be, for God’s glory.

The ‘how’ of our creation is beyond us.  Not so the ‘how’ of our redemption. 

Just as Mary cooperated with God, so must we. This is the only way for human nature to flourish as it’s meant to. 

Salvation is human flourishing in this world and the next. It’s  communal, being one with the church in this world and the next. 

God gave us Jesus through Mary and with Mary he gave us a new destiny that we need to choose and own. 

It’s not what you have been or what you are that God looks at with his merciful love but what you would be. So wrote the author of the medieval book, The Cloud of Unknowing.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly says Mary in today’s Gospel.

God lifts those who’ll let him lift them - like Mary herself, those with a heart for God’s future.

Mary stands close to us and to the whole church as an example and as one who prays with the company of the saints that surrounds us for all of us to reach the destiny God has for those who’ll be uplifted.

We can’t save ourselves. God can but without us he cannot. Without our permission God can’t get his life into ours nor join us to the company of the redeemed.

Getting that Christ-life into our hearts is what Christianity is all about, what the bible’s all about, what the eucharist’s all about, what Mary’s all about and what the church is all about.

That all comes down to obedience and discipline, as it did for Our Lady, Blessed Mary. 

She was supremely anointed by the Spirit and she was supremely obedient. There’s no anointing, no heavenly joy without earthly devotion.

God grant us such devotion, with and to the Blessed Virgin, and grant, that we who are redeemed by his blood may share with her in the glory of his eternal kingdom. Amen.

St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath & Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Mount Nebo 11.8.21

‘Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land… The Lord said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, "I will give it to your descendants'; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there." Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord's command. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab… but no one knows his burial place to this day’ (Deuteronomy 34:1-4).

One advantage of visiting the Holy Land is that for the rest of your life scripture passages come alive in a special sense as you recall the geography. Today’s first reading is such a passage for me. In May 2005 I took part in an ecumenical pilgrimage to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria which has placed those troubled lands much on my heart.  The Jordan leg of our pilgrimage led us to Mount Nebo where Moses viewed the Promised Land as recorded in today’s reading from Deuteronomy 34. He is presumed to have died near to this visit and indeed ‘no one knows his burial place to this day’. If they did Jews, Christians and Muslims would flock to it.

Today people talk of Moses’s Promised Land as the ‘over-promised land’ of which you become very aware from Mount Nebo as you look down from Jordan across to Jericho in the State of Israel. At night the lights of Jerusalem are visible. As pilgrims, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican within the True Life in God network we concelebrated Mass in the excavated basilica on Mount Nebo, an extraordinary privilege allowed on the retreat. I recall being in the midst of scores of priests looking down from the altar across something like a five hundred strong assembly of God’s people towards the west door and the Promised Land beyond. My thoughts and prayers were of how the Lord was to lead us forward from that place as individuals, Christian communities and denominations aspiring for the promised land of heaven. 

As we reflect on our scripture for today we are reminded that we are God’s people in succession to those Israelites and we are more fully so as we look to what God has on the horizon for us as churches and individuals. We attain that in company with one another, looking to the faith of the church through the ages and to one another right across Christian traditions. As we heard in the Gospel from Matthew 18:19-20 ‘Truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’. 

We are gathered this morning as if on Mount Nebo sensing God’s leading in our lives and in our Christian community, straining forwards to the promise of glory anticipated through the eucharist. ‘O Christ whom now beneath a veil we see may what we thirst for soon our portion be to gaze on thee unveiled and see your face, the vision of your glory and your grace’ (Thomas Aquinas) 

Father we are your people, called by you and destined to inherit your promises. As you kept faith with Moses keep faith with us as trust you for the best future as individuals and as a Christian community. Lord hear us

We pray for Martin our bishop, [the one destined to be our parish priest/Michael our priest] and all Christian leaders especially Justin our Archbishop, Pope Francis, Patriarch Bartholomew and the leaders of the Evangelical Churches that together they may steer your people towards the best provisions on our pilgrim way. Lord hear us

We pray for the Christian communities in [Cuckfield/Haywards Heath] that leaders and members will connect up more so that our joint mission of service and witness to Jesus our Saviour may be the more effective. Lord hear us

Remember, Lord, all those in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness or any other adversity, especially those who have asked our prayers. Lord hear us.

Joining with Our Lady, [St Wilfrid], St Clare and all the saints we commend to you those who have died and all whose anniversaries fall at this time. Lord hear us.   

Merciful Father accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

St Bartholomew, Brighton Feast of Transfiguration 6.8.21

 

The whole Christian world rejoices, East and West, in the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ we anticipate today.

We mark the ascent of Jesus with Peter, James and John up a high mountain. While praying there the Lord’s face glowed with the brightness of the sun and his garments became white as snow.

The splendour of Christ’s divinity penetrated through his human body as the Son of God appeared in his splendour and glory.

This Feast is especially dear to the eastern Church. Whereas holiness in the west in saints like Francis links to the passion marks called stigmata in the east holiness is more linked to luminosity. 

St Symeon who lived in 10th century Constantinople describes a day at work in the emperor’s court in Constantinople and going to his lodgings for prayers at home when he poured out tears and prostrated. He was saying the Jesus Prayer but with mind more than heart, and then had a bright light shining at him on every side and was wholly united with non material light and felt greatly exalted. In another light close at hand there appeared a holy old man equal to the angels teaching him. When he came to himself he was filled with joy and wept with all his heart and his tears were filled with joy. The Constantinople bells rang for morning office so he turns to say psalms which means he has ended up praying through the night. 

One of St Symeon's hymns expressing devotion to the divine light of God in Christ runs: ‘O light in three persons non can name, with many names at work in all things, light one in will and thought, strange energy dissolving rocks and hills by your very sight - how do you mingle yourself with grass (humanity) in a union without confusion transfigured yet unchanged?

In the Feast we’re keeping, the disciples were shown as much glory as they could bear. Saints like Symeon build the expectancy of experiencing God as light yet in a way that builds our faith. 

Just as in a transit of Venus across the sun years back people were warned to view the event indirectly so it is when God shone in Jesus on the earth and as he sometimes shines in holy lives. Disciples fall to the ground and hide their faces.

At the heart of Christianity is a yearning to see God as he is. This has sprung up from the days Jesus walked and shone on earth with the promise we could see God. 

Not with mortal eyes but in the resurrection.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord anticipates both his Resurrection and our own. As children of God we are heading for the full, glorious sight of God and we gain glimpses of that radiance on earth..

Beloved we are God’s children now; what we will be has not been revealed Saint John writes. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2)

Lord may we see you glory, become like you and praise you for ever. Amen.

St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath & Holy Trinity, Cuckfield Feast of Curé d’Ars 4.8.21

‘If you are afraid of other people's opinion, you should not have become a Christian’. So warned today’s Saint. As a child John Vianney went with his family to Mass in a barn because the French Revolution had banned worship. A shepherd boy of firm faith he struggled to get ordained. Though his faith was clear and his prayer was deep he had little learning. This he acquired through saintly sponsors and became not only a priest but after his death in 1859 the patron saint of parish priests.

What I like about today’s saint is his fearlessness and humility. He lived at a time not unlike our own when Christianity was despised but made no apologies for God and would encourage us to be fearless in championing our faith in the face of opponents. ‘The sun never hides his light for fear of inconveniencing the owls’ he said. Most of his life was spent in the village of Ars in the south of France near Lyon where he raised the banner for God in the wake of the French Revolution not using arguments but by holy living. He became an attractive figure because like his patron John the Baptist he ‘constantly spoke the truth, boldly rebuked vice and patiently suffered for the truth’s sake’ (Collect for the Birth of St John the Baptist). That truth telling came from a priest who lived close to his people in humility and simplicity. ‘Remain humble, remain simple; the more you are so, the more good you will do’ he used to say.

When people came to him, and they came in tens of thousands, he exercised the Holy Spirit’s gifts of knowledge and discernment cutting to the chase. Henri Gheon writes of his encounter with an intellectual approaching him in Church and how Fr Vianney pointed him mistakenly to the confessional stool. ‘Monsieur le Curé, I have not come to make my confession but to discuss things with you’. ‘Oh, my friend, you have come to the wrong place; I have no skill at discussion. But if it is consolation that you want, kneel there and believe that many another has knelt there before you and has not regretted it’ said the Saint. ‘I have not the faith. I do not believe in confession any more than the rest of your doctrine’ complained the man. ‘Very well, kneel there. I shall hear your confession, and afterwards you will have the faith, just as I have’… the persuasiveness, the sweetness, the tone of authority tempered by grace with which these words were spoken, brought the man to his knees almost without knowing it, certainly with much reluctance…. He arose, not only comforted, but a firm believer’.

The Curé d’Ars was a powerful apologist. This unlearned priest gave forceful reason for belief by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who showed him again and again the emptiness of souls like this man awaiting the planting of faith. In Gheon’s story there is emphasis on the Curé’s humility as the clue to the atheist’s surrender. St John Vianney tried to live humbly as well as fearlessly once comparing humility to the chain that holds a rosary together: ‘Humility is to the various virtues what the chain is to the Rosary; take away the chain and the beads are scattered, remove Humility and all virtues vanish.’

John Vianney read hearts like a book and brought healing to many. He experienced visits from the Blessed Virgin as well as from the devil who did his best to annoy the Saint by waking him in the night by loud knockings on the clergy house door! Thousands flocked to him and he was made a Canon and given the Legion of Honour none of which he could make out by all accounts attributing the miracles around him to God and the prayers of the Saints. This misunderstanding of the way he got famous is the best proof of his deserving his place today in the Calendar of Saints.

St John Vianney pray for us, for priests especially, that we may be fearless yet humble instruments of God.

We thank you, God our Father, for those who have responded to your call to priestly ministry. Accept this prayer we offer on their behalf: Fill them with the sure knowledge of your love. Open their hearts to the power and consolation of the Holy Spirit. Lead them to greater union with your Son. Increase their faith in the Sacraments they celebrate as they nourish, strengthen and heal us. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, at the prayer of St. Jean Vianney, grant that your priests will be inspired to strive for holiness by the power of his example. As people of prayer, may they ponder your word, follow your will and faithfully lead the flocks you have entrusted to their care. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.

We pray, Lord, for Martin our Bishop and for our Diocese, for vocations to the sacred priesthood. May many more faithful people hear your call, and respond with courage and generosity. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.

Recalling the fearlessness and humility of today’s Saint we confess the fear and pride that hamper our Christian witness. Come, Holy Spirit, and work a new work in us so we may constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.

We commend to you, Lord, those in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness or any other adversity, especially those who have asked our prayers. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.

Joining with Our Lady, St Wilfrid, St John Vianney and all the saints we commend to you those who have died and all whose anniversaries fall at this time. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.   

Merciful Father accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen