St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 18(27A) Suffering and the Supernatural 8 October 2023

There are two main ways God manifests himself. 

These are through the supernatural and through suffering.

These two ways are the trademark of Jesus Christ who both suffered and rose again.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord speaks of both, coupling his retelling of Isaiah’s parable of the vineyard we heard as the Old Testament reading to predict his sufferings, to a quote from Psalm 118:22 to predict the supernatural intervention of God which would effect his resurrection: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?’

As Christians we have the same dual trademark so St Paul writes in our second lesson from Philippians in Chapter 3 verse 10: ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’.

When we were baptised we gained that trademark with the cross on our forehead and the promise of resurrection - Holy Spirit - empowerment. For us, bearing suffering makes sense on account of Jesus as he again and again opens up a forward vision in our lives.  

Christianity is less a moral code than supernatural empowerment through faith in Jesus Christ, ‘the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’. Once our faith gets woken up - and that happens repeatedly - we find ourselves loosened from the pains of life into achieving wondrous things through the supernatural working within us of the God who raises the dead.

There’s a lot of pain involved for any family afflicted by Alzheimer’s. You are dealing with relentless frustrations as domestic routines falter through increasing forgetfulness. These hardships bring people down. I observe, though, that where there is faith in Christ the sufferings that bring you down bend you like grass in the wind which is capable of springing up again. The truth of Easter comes real in life through sufferings born in faith, through spiritual perseverance. Christians are Jesus-shaped, J shaped irrepressible folk – you know if you press an I down it becomes a J - and a springy, irrepressible J springs back again. To be J-shaped, to be Christian, is to be on the winning side of life through the inner spring of perseverance.

‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord spoke of his suffering and resurrection in the parable of the wicked vineyard workers who killed the owner’s son. That great poet and priest, Fr. Raneiro Cantalamessa writes of the Cross in these words: ‘In the Alps in summer, when a mass of cold air from the North clashes with hot air from the South, frightful storms break out disturbing the atmosphere; dark clouds move around, the wind whistles, lightning rends the sky from one end to the other and the thunder makes the mountains tremble. Something similar took place in the Redeemer’s soul where the extreme evil of sin clashed with the supreme holiness of God disturbing it to the point that it caused Him to sweat blood and forced the cry from Him, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death...nevertheless Father, not My will but Yours be done’

‘O generous love!’ wrote John Henry Newman, ‘That he who smote in man for man the foe, the double agony in man (that is of body and soul) for man should undergo, and that he should do this, ‘in the garden secretly, and on the Cross on high.  Praise to the holiest in the height!’

Suffering is close to the supernatural action of God - this is Christ’s experience and ours. 

I remember my parish priest when I was an Oxford student evoking the victory of the Redemption in these sorts of words. Imagine, he would say, the immense pressure on a point in space which had the whole force and weight of the universe upon it.  Then imagine the moral universe and the weight of sin from the creation of the world up to now and beyond to the completion of things.  Then imagine that moral weight pressed to one point upon the heart of Jesus in Gethsemane.  Then see the value of the sweated blood and the victory it attains through a disposition of one human heart totally transparent to the love and power of God. It attains the resurrection.

I was once a Missionary in Guyana, South America where I worked among the native Amerindians. These indigenous people believe in many evil spirits, above all what they call ‘kenaima’. A youth around 18 was fishing one day and felt kenaima attack him from behind. The evil spirit is said to go up the rectum. Whether it was a physical attack by the demon or psychological I do not know. What I can tell you is that when I came to his hammock the life was literally ebbing away from him and his family were planning where his grave should be. To be attacked by kenaima was a death sentence without respite in the old village religion.

Praise God for the new religion and for the Cross of Jesus and his Sacraments that take their force from him! 

We encouraged the youth as we prepared him for Anointing and Holy Communion in words from St. John’s first letter: ‘Jesus in you is greater than kenaima’. Most of the village gathered into Church  for a prayer vigil for the boy during which a priest took Holy Communion to him. A vigil of prayer and praise to God continued all night as the boy’s strength returned. The next Sunday he was with the Music group playing the guitar at Mass.

I am convinced his right understanding of Holy Communion as bringing the power and presence of Jesus right into him saved his life. We saw a remarkable testimony to the victory of Our Lord over evil powers. Those words from St. John’s first letter chapter 4 verse 4 have never lost their power over me: ‘He who is in us - Jesus - is greater than he who is in the world - the devil’.

‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’.

Do you want that - to know Jesus? His resurrection power is here among us as the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day gathered around the Lord’s table - and - here’s the rub - in your individual life and mine, in our sufferings, not resented but born cheerfully with the Holy Spirit’s assistance. 

As you share the joys and griefs of your circle and carry their sufferings to Our Lord in prayer you will bear the irrepressible trademark of Jesus, J-shaped and on the winning side of life through him who ‘was sorrowful unto death’ and rose to make this day ‘the day of resurrection’. Alleluia!

 

St Richard, Haywards Heath Feast of the Holy Cross 14th September 2022

Today is kept as the Patronal Feast of the Society of the Holy Cross to which Fr Chris, and Fr David and Fr Ian before him belong as do Fr Gordon and Fr Clay as well as Fr David King our parish priest designate.  

In a profound sense though all Christians are part of such a Society. We come together this evening as a community defined as a society of the holy cross.

In words from a passiontide hymn: The Cross! It takes our guilt away; it holds the fainting spirit up; it cheers with hope the gloomy day, and sweetens every bitter cup.

Jesus crucified is in our midst – the source of forgiveness, upholding, good cheer and transformation that the hymn speaks of. We are the dying and rising people of a dying and rising Lord.

“J shaped people” as someone put it – and if you see a J as an “I” pushed down ready to spring up you’ll get the idea of that. To live as a Christian is to live with the sanctification of passion, of pain and suffering. You can’t put a Christian down because the things that bring people down are endured with Jesus who cheers with hope the gloomy day, and sweetens every bitter cup.

The making of a woman or man is suffering and how we bear it. Is it taken fearfully or as part of sanctification? The Cross makes the coward spirit brave, and nerves the feeble arm for fight; It takes its terror from the grave, and gilds the bed of death with light.

What a fruitful thing it is to be one with Jesus crucified who promises Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). It’s a countercultural thing to be one with Jesus who is one with suffering humanity but it is also something freeing since by his cross he lifts our burdens day by day!

Holy Cross Day celebrates the symbol of our faith. It is a reminder to honour that symbol by living it as a society that’s one with the holy cross. One with Jesus crucified and risen. The history of this Feast is associated with the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine. It was his mother, Helena that uncovered the True Cross and lifted it up for the veneration of the faithful.

So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life we heard in the gospel (John 3v14-15). 

To live as the church is to live as the society that lifts up Jesus: in his word, in the Blessed Sacrament and in the hearts of all his faithful people. In the eucharist we lift up the consecrated Bread and Wine and we lift up the Gospel book. Such liftings place us with Mary and John looking up from the foot of the Cross to the breadth and length and height and depth and … the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3v18b).

The church as the society of the holy cross is also the society of the resurrection for the two cannot be separated. “J shaped people” with the “I” pushed down ready to spring up as surely as Christ is risen! For if we have been united with Jesus in a death like his Paul writes to the Romans (6v5, 8) we will certainly be united in a resurrection like his…if we have died with Christ we believe we will also live with him. 

My friends, sisters - and brothers - of the society of the holy cross Jesus does not ask us more than to come close to him in his passion so that our service of and our dependence on others becomes invested with his presence, the presence that draws the whole world. 

Into that presence we now enter in this Holy Mass.