St Richard, Haywards Heath Commemoration of St John of the Cross 14 Dec 2022

 Introduction to Mass

Today, with some deference to Advent season, we commemorate St John of the Cross who lived in Spain during the 16th century and helped reform the Carmelite religious order. As a contemplative he wrote ‘It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others’. As we begin Mass by calling to mind our sins we might recall our failure to refrain from judging the remarks, deeds and lives of others. Such refraining, however difficult in the judgmental culture of the 21st century, is part of loving our neighbour. As we reflect we might recall another saying of John, ‘In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone’.

Sermon

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled, I form the light and create the dark’ (Isaiah 45:6) Those words of prophecy spoken through Isaiah in our first reading capture something of the spiritual invitation of today’s saint. Spaniard John of the Cross was a man of his times, the troubled times of the sixteenth century with reformation and counter reformation shaping the Church. With his near contemporary Teresa of Avila John was about shaking Christians out of complacency, even Christians living under the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. It's almost unbelievable that his attempts to reform religious life led to his being imprisoned by fellow monks in a tiny cell in Toledo for nine months!

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled’. John saw this and taught the need for Christians, even monks, to work for detachment, emptiness and poverty, before God. ‘Desire to possess nothing’ he taught, ‘in order to arrive at being everything’. God is the greatest good to which all other goods must be subordinated. Through worship, prayer, study, service and reflection we are to shake off inordinate desire for trivial pursuits and see growth in our desire for God’s agenda in our lives and the working out of that for the good of the world around us. As a smartphone user I am challenged by that teaching on detachment as, like many, I feel the grip of electronic media as a world of sensory addiction tantamount to bondage. I try to break this bond, especially as part of my Friday fast. St John of the Cross encourages decisive action here. The soul that is attached to anything however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union he teaches. ‘Whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly’.

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled’ writes Isaiah. ‘I form the light and create the dark’. A second aspect of St John is the insight he gives in his mystical works: ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, ‘The Spiritual Canticle’ and ‘The Living Flame of Love’. Complementary to his call for detachment from worldly concerns we read here invaluable teaching on purification of Christian aspiration towards God. His teaching gives unique insight into times of spiritual desolation. What do we make of times when God seems absent or far away? ‘I form the light and create the dark’. To Saint John of the Cross times of darkness - and he had a lot of them - are God-given and can be precious times if we keep looking to the Lord. His poem title ‘The dark night of the soul’ has entered Christian vocabulary. Through faithfulness in times of hardship, looking to God for being our loving God rather than for the consolation he gives on many occasions, we prove and we forge our love for God. 

‘Apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord, unrivalled, I form the light and create the dark’ May the prayers of St John of the Cross help deepen our dependence upon God through consolation and desolation, summer warmth and winter chill.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Feast of St James 2022

 

19 years ago my then 12-year-old son James and I completed a foot pilgrimage to the Shrine of St James in Spain’s Santiago de Compostella covering the minimum distance required to attain the Compostella. This is the scallop shell pilgrim badge (show)

The 100km hike required weeks of preparation including walking with packs on the Downs.  We had no back up team so all we would need had to go on our backs as we travelled from refugio to refugio on the ancient pilgrim way.

The most important part of our preparation was deciding what not to take!  Trial walks with laden rucksacks helped sort our priorities.  When you're a beast of burden with a choice about that burden you soon thin your load!  Though I'm an avid reader I was forced to shed all books but the Bible.  James and I settled for little more than one change of clothes.  My luxury was a short-wave radio.  His was a Gameboy Advance.  Off we went to Santiago de Compostela, or rather to the 100km point from which we hiked day by day along the pilgrim route and with much lighter burdens than we’d first planned.

One of the great things about being a Christian pilgrim is you travel light!  Preparing to go on our pilgrimage gave me an enduring spiritual lesson.  We brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing out of it.  The lighter we travel the easier and more joyous our tread on life's pilgrimage to the city of God!

The call to detachment is part of the call to poverty intrinsic to the Christian Gospel. It goes alongside the confidence we should have as children of God in Our Father to provide for us in all circumstances.

Although today’s Gospel includes a rebuke for St James and his brother we assume that he took the message: whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.

Or, as the Lord puts it elsewhere, blessed are the poor in spirit – those who have a right and humble assessment of themselves before God. Such folk see what they have – including any worldly status – as counting for nothing other than when it is used for service. They are detached from material possessions

Here at the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving sacrifice of the Church we can admit this truth – all things come of you and of your own do we give you.. through Christ and with Christ and in Christ!

We are to welcome Jesus in a moment in the Blessed Sacrament. God in the material order, hidden in bread and wine. As we welcome him here may he open our spiritual eyes to see him elsewhere in the material order – particularly in the run of our lives in the coming week that we may encounter him in the needy. The needy in body, mind and spirit – those who are enduring personal ordeals and badly in need of attention – our attention, our time, our money if needs be.

On this feast of St James God free us to travel lighter in our Christian pilgrimage with deeper detachment from material things, abandoned more and more to his purposes.

The Lord deepen our confidence in his provision and also our humility. We need both confidence in him and humility before him to serve him aright.

As we own up more and more to our own spiritual need and poverty may we see Jesus – Jesus on his throne in glory, Jesus in the sacrament of the altar and Jesus in the hearts of the poor and the hearts of all his faithful people! 

St Wilfrid & Presentation, Haywards Heath Trinity 14 (23B) Poverty of spirit 5 September 2021

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?  James 2:5

There’s an obvious link between today’s Old Testament and Gospel reading about the unsealing of the ears of the deaf – it’s about Our Lord fulfilling the Old Testament as Messiah, the promised one who comes to help people hear the word of God.

I felt God lead me though to the reading that stands rather on its own – the epistle of James Chapter 2 which speaks of the blessings of poverty. It seems as if James’ church had rather forgotten what Jesus said about the poor since the rich were getting the best seats in church! At any rate the apostle makes a striking point that it’s those who are poor according to the world…God chose to be rich in faith.

What do we make of this? Or for that matter of the blessing Jesus himself announces upon the ‘poor in spirit’ in his Sermon on the Mount.

Seeing all those refugees and would be refugees from Afghanistan puts in your mind’s eye how, faced with the need to flee, what would you take with you, or even, less emotively, faced as we often are with short breaks what not to take!  That sort of review touches on a key feature of spiritual poverty, the call to detachment which goes alongside confidence we should have as children of God in Our Father to provide for us in all circumstances. God bless the many migrants across the world who are fellow believers and victims of international unrest with such confidence and provision.

There’s a school of Christian faith that speaks of abandonment to providence. Jesus is said by St. Paul to have ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’ in his abandonment to God’s will. It is this sort of poverty that’s in Christ himself that’s spurred on his Saints all through the ages. St Francis of Assisi is the great example, casting even his clothes to one side to belong wholly to the church as servant of God! There’s a story of how the Bishop of Assisi one day said to Francis: ‘Your way of life without possessions of any kind seems to me very harsh and difficult’. ‘My Lord’, Francis answered, ‘If we had possessions we should need arms for their defence. They are a source of quarrels and lawsuits, and are usually a great obstacle to the love of God and one’s neighbour. That is why we have no desire for temporal goods’. There’s wisdom there! The migrants on TV again speak of this!

The wealth of the rich is their strong city we read in Proverbs 18:11-12, in their imagination it is like a high wall…but humility goes before honour. The ‘high wall’ riches can literally raise up can all too easily put worldly honour before humility. This ‘honour’ is also the false lure of materialism into which we are brainwashed day by day – the valuing of people for what they possess rather than for who they are as those loved by God bearing his image!  

What does it mean to be ‘poor in Spirit’? It means to have a true knowledge of God for who he is and of ourselves as who we are. To know God in his infinite grandeur is to know oneself as a child of God yet materially nothing and less than nothing through sin. 

We all want progress writes C.S.Lewis but if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back on the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. To be poor in spirit is to be progressive in that you go further when you’re travelling light. When you repent of ‘seemingly little sins’ and turn back from an alluring path you’re not regressing on your spiritual journey but progressing. You’re seeing all sins are great and you’re moving forward in the knowledge of God as the great God he is and as his beloved daughter or son.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? Job 38:4,5,12 Words from God provided through the poetry of the book of Job. If you’re ever feeling self-satisfied pick up your Bible and turn to Job 38 – it puts you in your place more than any other passage I know and moves progress for you in the sense we’re examining! What must he be like who made the earth, who provides the dawn new every morning? Who stretches out the stars above? 

From our town we enjoy splendid views of the South Downs and have ready access to the beauty of Mid Sussex which motivated my ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath’ with its quotes from scripture and the Sussex poets. What must he be like who designed the grandeur of the Downs? 

When James warns being ‘rich in faith’ means poverty according to the world this must be at the heart of his concern – that a true knowledge of God in his infinite grandeur brings with it humbling recognition of one’s inadequacy! Our capacity to do harm is a deadly quality even though balanced by capacity to do good things.

As someone put it, our poverty is like that of a song compared to the singer. We are like a song of the Lord – he is the singer, we are the song. How can the ‘song’ compare itself to the singer?

Yet it is our privilege to be able to live in the praise of God! Here at the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving sacrifice of the Church we can admit this truth – all things come of God and of his own do we give him… through, with and in Jesus Christ!

If poverty of spirit is about detachment, abandonment to providence and humility it is also a whole sphere where we find Christ in this world. In Matthew 25 Our Lord’s picture of the Last Judgement portrays the poor as manifesting his own hidden presence. As C.S.Lewis again wrote, next to the Blessed Sacrament your neighbour should be to you the most sacred object on the earth. 

We are to welcome Jesus in a moment in the Blessed Sacrament. God in the material order, hidden in bread and wine. As we welcome him here, may he open our eyes to see him elsewhere in the material order - particularly in the run of our lives in the coming week - that we may encounter him in the needy - those who are enduring personal ordeals in need of attention - our attention, our time, our money if needs be, especially to serve Afghan refugees. 

God free us to travel lighter in our Christian pilgrimage more detached from material things, abandoned more to his purposes. The Lord deepen our humility, strengthen confidence in his provision and set our hearts more into the praise of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion and power now and henceforth and to the end of the ages. Amen.

St James Feast at St John, Burgess Hill 25 July 2021

When the Feast of St James falls as it does this year on a Sunday it’s a very big day in Spain. Indeed its part of what they call a Holy Year, defined as the years their Patron Saint’s feast falls on Sunday. The King and Queen go to the Shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela for High Mass during which the famous Botafumeiro, the giant Thurible is allowed to swing up and down the Cathedral nave.

The origin of the Thurible or incense burner is in thousands of sweaty feet. Santiago de Compostella is at the end of the world’s most famous Christian pilgrim route.

Eighteen years ago there were two extra pairs of sweaty feet in the Cathedral – those of my then 12-year-old son James and I. We had completed a foot pilgrimage to the Shrine of St James covering the minimum distance required to attain the Compostella, the Latin certificate you receive from the Cathedral Office at the end of your journey, wearing our pilgrim badges (show) - scallop shells - linked to the legend of St James’ relics being washed up on the sea shore at Santiago.

The 100km hike required weeks of preparation including walking with packs on the Downs.  We had no back up team so all we would need had to go on our backs as we travelled from refugio to refugio on the ancient pilgrim way.

The most important part of our preparation was deciding what not to take!  Trial walks with laden rucksacks helped sort our priorities.  When you're a beast of burden with a choice about that burden you soon thin your load!  Though I'm an avid reader I was forced to shed all books but the Bible.  James and I settled for little more than one change of clothes.  My luxury was a short-wave radio.  His was a Gameboy Advance.  Off we went to Santiago de Compostela, or rather to the 100km point from which we hiked day by day along the pilgrim route and with much lighter burdens than we’d first planned.

One of the great things about being a Christian pilgrim is you travel light!  Preparing to go on our pilgrimage gave me an enduring spiritual lesson.  We brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing out of it.  The lighter we travel the easier and more joyous our tread on life's pilgrimage to the city of God! It served us well when we had to move 4 years ago from Horsted Keynes Rectory to our little house in Haywards Heath and let go of an enormous amount of stuff!

The call to detachment is part of the call to poverty intrinsic to the Christian Gospel. It goes alongside the confidence we should have as children of God in Our Father to provide for us in all circumstances.

Although today’s Gospel includes a rebuke for St James and his brother we assume that he took the message: whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. Or, as the Lord puts it elsewhere, blessed are the poor in spirit – those who have a right and humble assessment of themselves before God. Such folk see what they have – including any worldly achievement or status – as counting for nothing other than when it's use for the praise and service of God. They are detached from material possessions

The wealth of the rich is their strong city we read in Proverbs 18:11-12, in their imagination it is like a high wall…but humility goes before honour. The ‘high walls’ riches can literally raise up – you see them scattered around Mid Sussex – can all too easily put worldly honour before humility.

This ‘honour’ is the ultimate evil of materialism into which we are brainwashed day by day – the valuing of people by what they possess rather than for who they are as those loved by God and bearing his image!

What does it mean to be ‘poor in Spirit’? It means to have such a godly value system, to know God for who he is and ourselves for who we are. To know God in his infinite grandeur is to know oneself as loved deeply despite being a relative nothing and a less than nothing through sin. 

When Our Lord spoke in the Gospel to James and John he was asking for poverty of spirit.  

When attained this would be the sign of discipleship since a true knowledge of God in his infinite grandeur brings with it a recognition of one’s nothingness!

If we were but ‘nothings’! Our capacity to do harm brings us down one peg further, even if it is balanced by the capacity to do beautiful things as well.

Our poverty is like that of a song compared to the singer. We are like a song of the Lord – he is the singer, we are the song. How can the ‘song’ compare itself to the singer?

Yet it is our privilege to be able to live singing God’s praise - very much this morning as singing returns to St John’s! Here at the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving sacrifice of the Church we can admit this truth to God our Father: all things come of you and of your own do we give you… through Christ and with Christ and in Christ!

We are to welcome Jesus in a moment in the Blessed Sacrament. God in the material order, hidden in bread and wine. As we welcome him here, may he open our spiritual eyes to see him elsewhere in the material order and in the forthcoming run of our lives this week, that we may encounter him especially in the needy, those enduring personal ordeals and seriously in need of attention – our attention, our time, our money if needs be.

God free us to travel lighter in our Christian pilgrimage with deeper detachment from material things, abandoned more and more to his purposes. May Our Blessed Lord deepen our confidence in his provision and our humility before that grace. We need both confidence in him and humility before him to serve him right. Not just confidence in self - that is good of course - but it comes and goes, as the widespread reality of depression shows us. Deepening humility goes hand in hand with building confidence in God as author and completer of our lives 

As we own up more and more to our own spiritual poverty we see Jesus more and more working around us, within us and through us. May the prayer of St James and St John our patron be with us so that like them we see Jesus so at work. Blessed, praised and hallowed be Our Lord Jesus Christ, upon his throne in glory, in his holy word, in the most holy sacrament of the altar, in the hearts of the poor and of all his faithful people now and for ever and to the ages of ages. Amen! 

Trinity 14 (23B) Poverty of spirit 6 September 2015

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?  James 2:5

There’s an obvious link between today’s Old Testament and Gospel reading about the unsealing of the ears of the deaf – it’s about Our Lord fulfilling the Old Testament as Messiah, the promised one who comes to help people hear the word of God.

I felt God lead me though to the reading that stands rather on its own – the epistle of James Chapter 2 which speaks of the blessings of poverty. It seems as if James’ church had rather forgotten what Jesus said about the poor since the rich were getting the best seats in church!

At any rate the apostle makes a striking point that it’s those who are poor according to the world…God chose to be rich in faith.

What do we make of this? Or for that matter of the blessing Jesus himself announces upon the ‘poor in spirit’ in his Sermon on the Mount.

Seeing all those refugees puts in your mind eye how faced with the need to flee what would you take with you, or even, less emotively, faced as we often are with short breaks what not to take!  That sort of review touches on a key feature of spiritual poverty, the call to detachment which goes alongside confidence we should have as children of God in Our Father to provide for us in all circumstances. God bless those many migrants who are fellow Christians with such confidence and provision.

There’s a school of Christian faith that speaks of abandonment to providence. Jesus is said by St. Paul to have ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’ in his abandonment to God’s will. It is this sort of poverty that’s in Christ himself that’s spurred on his Saints all through the ages. St Francis of Assisi is the great example, casting even his clothes to one side to belong wholly to the church as servant of God! There’s a story of how the Bishop of Assisi one day said to Francis: ‘Your way of life without possessions of any kind seems to me very harsh and difficult’. ‘My Lord’, Francis answered, ‘If we had possessions we should need arms for their defence. They are a source of quarrels and lawsuits, and are usually a great obstacle to the love of God and one’s neighbour. That is why we have no desire for temporal goods’. There’s wisdom there! The migrants on TV again speak of this!

The wealth of the rich is their strong city we read in Proverbs 18:11-12, in their imagination it is like a high wall…but humility goes before honour. The ‘high wall’ riches can literally raise up can all too easily put worldly honour before humility. This ‘honour’ is the ultimate evil of materialism which we are brain washed into day by day – the valuing of people by what they possess rather than for who they are as those loved by God and bearing his image!  I am appalled that European leaders can repel the needy on account of non-Christian faith, in contrast to others who are reminding us Christ’s way is hospitality.

What does it mean to be ‘poor in Spirit’? It means to have a true knowledge of God for who he is and of ourselves as who we are. To know God in his infinite grandeur is to know oneself as a nothing and a less than nothing through sin.

We all want progress writes C.S.Lewis but if you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back on the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. To be poor in spirit is to be progressive in that you go further when you’re travelling light. When you repent of ‘seemingly little sins’ and turn back from an alluring path you’re not regressing on your spiritual journey but progressing. You’re seeing all sins are great and you’re moving forward in the knowledge of God as the great God he is.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know!

Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? Job 38:4,5,12

Words from God provided through the poetry of the book of Job. If you’re ever feeling self-satisfied pick up your Bible and turn to Job 38 – it puts you in your place more than any other passage I know and moves progress for you in the sense we’re examining!

What must he be like who made the earth, who provides the dawn new every morning? Who stretches out the stars above? Who can tell the greatness of the Lord? 

From this village we enjoy some splendid views, of the South Downs and Ashdown Forest especially. What must he be like who designed such grandeur?

If he is the ground of all being we are as nothing compared with him – and worse than nothing in our ingratitude for all he gives us! Nothingness deserves nothing – this is the ground of humility.

When James warns that being ‘rich in faith’ means poverty according to the world this must be at the heart of his concern – that a true knowledge of God in his infinite grandeur brings with it a recognition of one’s self as an utter nothing!

If only we were but ‘nothings’! Our capacity to do harm shows the opposite even if it’s balanced by the capacity to do beautiful things too.

As someone put it, our poverty is like that of a song compared to the singer. We are like a song of the Lord – he is the singer, we are the song. How can the ‘song’ compare itself to the singer?

Yet it is our privilege to be able to live in the praise of God! Here at the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving sacrifice of the Church we can admit this truth – all things come of God and of his own do we give him… through, with and in Jesus Christ!

If poverty of spirit is about detachment, abandonment to providence and humility it is also a whole sphere where we find Christ in this world. In Matthew 25 Our Lord’s picture of the Last Judgement portrays the poor as manifesting his own hidden presence. I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink God says to the blessed. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me.

As C.S.Lewis again wrote, next to the Blessed Sacrament your neighbour should be to you the most sacred object on the earth. We are to welcome Jesus in a moment in the Blessed Sacrament. God in the material order, hidden in bread and wine. As we welcome him here, may he open our spiritual eyes to see him elsewhere in the material order - particularly in the run of our lives in the coming week - that we may encounter him in the needy. The needy in body, mind and spirit - those who are enduring personal ordeals and badly in need of attention - our attention, our time, our money if needs be. Those who invite our action through the collection of clothes, tents, pots and pans for the Calais refugees

God free us to travel lighter in our Christian pilgrimage with deeper detachment from material things, abandoned more and more to his purposes. The Lord deepen our confidence in his provision and also our humility. We need both confidence in him and humility before him to serve him and his world aright.

As we own up more and more to our own spiritual need and poverty may we see Jesus – Jesus on his throne in glory, Jesus in the sacrament of the altar and Jesus in the hearts of the materially poor and the poor in spirit!   

Blessed, praised and hallowed be Our Lord Jesus Christ upon his throne of glory, in word and sacrament and in our hearts now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.