St Richard, Haywards Heath Trinity 11(22C) Humility 28.8.22

‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ Luke 14:11

There’s a great deception that humility is something passive. It’s not, it's the most active tendency there is if you’re truly in the business of countering the strength of self-will and we all need more of that.

In case I get praise for this sermon - some of you are very kind to me - the words of Thomas More are at the back of my mind: ‘whoever bids others to do right, but gives an evil example by acting the opposite way is like a foolish weaver who weaves with one hand and unravels the cloth just as quickly with the other’.

Yes, humility is the Christian distinctive and it’s far from making yourself a doormat it's the day by day struggle for holiness commended by Our Lord in the Gospel as a taking of the lower place where we can and by our first reading from Ecclesiasticus as refusal to forsake the Lord. ‘The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker’.

When people live without God they’re bound to centre themselves on themselves though many I know who live without God show immense kindness to others. I put that down to God giving them a better start than I! As a believer I don’t see myself as the centre of the world in principle but in practice to my dying day I’ll be actively countering touchiness, resentfulness against criticism, impatience when I don’t get my own way, eagerness for fame, anxiety lest I miss being thanked and praised and so on.

‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Our Lord mixed with everybody. Today’s Gospel shows him mixing at the upper end of the society of his day at the home of a prominent Pharisee. He felt the need to address people trying to get places near the most famous. It’s a bit like when the Bishop visits - as hopefully he will do soon to inaugurate a new parish priest - when you struggle at the buffet to get near him, sometimes on account of the clergy around him!  

What is it about the human condition that makes us so celebrity conscious, wanting celebrity for ourselves and delighting on occasions we meet real live celebrities? 

I met Edwina Currie on the train a year or two back which got my mind thinking about eggs and other things. What really struck me in this face to face encounter though was the caring way she saw onto and off a busy train a frail man I took to be her husband. ‘Judge not and you will not be judged’. How hard it must be to serve in government nowadays with the relentless unforgiving gaze of 24-7 media upon you!

The deception we live under that humility is something passive links very much to the way our media school us unconsciously or consciously in deriding the weak. We need sermons, retreats, books to read that help undeceive us about the truly active virtue of humility. This sermon links a little to a retreat I took in Lisieux three years ago where I stayed a few days close to the Shrine of St Therese whose life in many ways was quite unremarkable. Born in 1873 she lived just 24 years, the last nine in a convent. When she contracted TB the Convent superior was concerned to get some obituary together and asked her to write it for herself - it became a bestseller - ‘Story of a Soul’ (show) . The rest is history - do read it! Yes, Therese in a way was herself victim of church celebrity cultus, being made a saint so soon after her death, but many are the wiser through her teaching as a Doctor of the Church.

Engaging with Thérèse I find to be primarily engagement with self-acceptance, something built in her by the Lord and her acceptance by a loving family and the community she joined at 15. ‘Story of a Soul’ captures this struggle to welcome God’s love and accept ourselves within its embrace. Thérèse inspires us to talk with the Lord about our difficulties in self-acceptance and how such failings can become happy pretext for looking to him. To know this, to accept ourselves and our life circumstances, helps divert us from these towards the addressing of our deeper needs and aspirations especially the best use of our gifts in God’s praise and service. 

It IS an effort to gain humility even if it's also a grace. We need to ask for it again and again as a grace from God. Secondly, we need to accept the humiliations of life though recognising the world of difference between being humble and being humiliated. How many times do we say the wrong thing and feel the hurt to our pride more acutely than the hurt we did to the person we spoke to or spoke about?

The school of humility is a school of self-acceptance impossible without confidence in God. We live as Christians with knowledge of God loving us through and through and his invitation to recentre our lives on him and our neighbour. Putting that wisdom into practice is the action of humility. 

One day when Therese was nearing the end of her life and feeling absolutely bereft and forsaken by God, she was in the Convent garden, walking very slowly because of her weakness and constant pain. Suddenly she saw a hen at the side of the path, hustling her newborn chicks out of the nun’s way, protecting them with outstretched wings. Therese writes how she immediately thought how God had loved and protected her all through her life and how God wants to envelope everyone with the tender protectiveness of that mother hen. She writes how she was so moved her eyes filled up with tears and had to look away from the scene. 

THAT’S HOW GOD LOVES US TOO - no matter what we feel like, no matter what kind of personal history we have. If we want holiness we build our foundation on this rock of God’s love and acting with humility is the master builder. We may be strong willed but such strength is a perilous gift since it links to the desire for the self to triumph over others including God. In holiness the will yields first place to love by always seeking a lower place so as to put no unnecessary obstacles in love’s way.

‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

To be a saint - and we should all aspire to be saints - is to keep in tune with our deepest needs and aspirations by actively countering our lower impulses, that  attention-seeking insecurity, touchiness, impatience or whatever. We're the ones who block our way to holiness, to the joy of becoming what God made us to be, by remaining slaves to these lower impulses.

With me, I invite you to pray for humility, not to be a doormat people walk over but to have active determination to counter self-centredness and get better centring of our lives upon God and neighbour, whose eternal fellowship in the communion of saints we anticipate at this Mass, with angels, archangels and all the company of heaven. 

St Bartholomew, Brighton Feast of Curé d’Ars 4.8.22

‘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.

Intercessions

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 Bartholomew, 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, hear, accept and answer these prayers we make in the glorious name of your Son, our Saviour Christ the Lord. Amen

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 Edward, Burgess Hill Trinity 5 (16C) 17th July 2022

 

   

Martha and Mary – who chose the better part?

Our Lord’s commending Mary is a clear statement that contemplation beats activism. Not that practical work, of which St Martha is patron, has no place, only such work shouldn’t eclipse the priority of resting in the Lord.

The preacher’s danger - my danger especially - is Mary’s. In thinking out and handing on what should be we priests run more risk of neglecting to act out our faith in good works. As if saying what’s right is complete without doing it. So many scriptures warn how faith without works is like a flabby muscle needing strengthening by exertion.

Our Lord’s favouring Mary is less of a challenge to Christian thinkers and contemplatives than to Christian activists who forget to root their good works in prayer. It's an English heresy - Christianity is doing good, as if that were unique to Christianity. When we abide in God, God abides in us, steering our lives towards fruitful action, action that points people back to him

God desires mortals to have intimacy with himself - this is the central truth of Christianity.

I wonder if you saw on television the first pictures from the new James Webb Space Telescope? What beauty! Yet even with binoculars or naked eyes we can look up in awe at the night sky, discovering facets of the moon and planets and stars beyond these.  We look up at them and think, the God who made the immensity of the cosmos desires intimacy with mortals!

We heard in the epistle from Colossians of the majesty of Christ ‘in [whom] all things in heaven and earth were created…’ (Colossians 1v15-28)

In the Gospel His Majesty, Our Blessed Lord, addresses us through his rebuke to a dear friend: 

‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10v42)

God desires to have union with us, intimate union, heart to heart.

Today’s scripture ponder the majesty and yet the availability of God.

How is this intimacy brought to us?

On God’s side by the gift of the Spirit - on our side, we receive his friendship by humility and expectancy.

On God’s Side - how can God be one with us? The Maker of the stars hold me close, answer my prayers, guide me, free me from fear, heal me, forgive me? God is after all different.

The answer is by the Holy Spirit who is God and who through Christ brings God in his fullness to fill my heart. 

The ocean is no less for filling a pool. So it is with God, as St Paul explains to the Corinthians: ‘the Spirit searches the depths of God… (and) we have received the Spirit… who… interprets spiritual truth’ (1 Corinthians 2:10)

On my side intimacy with God is established as a gift that is welcomed. 

How? 

By humility and by expectancy… the two balancing Christian virtues commended by St. Francis de Sales.

To be humble like its etymology ‘humous - of the earth’ is readiness to see our nothingness before God and our less than nothingness through sin.

 

Humble and, besides that, expectant on God, confident in God. 

St. Therese of Lisieux lived as a nun in the late 19th century when she pondered the invention of the electric lift. We have her Story of a Soul, a Christian classic, read with profit across Christian traditions, first commended to me by a Baptist minister. In her story Therese tells of her confidence God would make her a Saint. As surely as we enter an electric lift to be raised effortlessly to great height we can put our whole life into God’s hands seeking to be made holy. This is her so-called Little Way.

Intimacy with God is God’s gift by his Spirit. It is welcomed by humility and expectancy.

The eucharist is the great parable and seal of all of this...here God gives his Spirit, his own Life, par excellence… here we come empty-handed, in total humility before the Lord and yet with expectancy...

‘Lord I am not worthy...but only say the word’

Ronald Rolheiser in his book ‘Forgotten among the Lilies’ writes: ‘Perhaps the most useful image of how the Eucharist functions is the image of a mother holding a frightened, tired and tense child. In the eucharist God functions as a mother. God picks us up; frightened, tired, helpless, complaining, discouraged and protesting children, and holds us to her heart until the tension subsides and peace and strength flow into us’

Such is the intimacy we are privileged to share this morning and day by day in the Lord’s Presence.

‘There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’ Luke 10.42

‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him’ John 6.56

St Bartholomew, Brighton 14C 3rd July 2022

 

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest Luke 10:2

The French have a military saying ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ – retreat, coil up, draw back in order to better jump forwards.

Each Sunday St. Bartholomew’s has work ahead, Gospel work, and she needs our labour – so we need to prepare, to get ready. 

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs..

There’s work ahead. We need to prepare, ‘reculer’, to draw back somewhat into ourselves, to retreat before attempting an advance for God in our community

Two thoughts first on ‘reculer’, on retreat – and they are about seeking deeper humility and confidence in God.

Then two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation as joint scissor blades that will cut a way ahead for us.

First then thoughts about how we might need to ‘coil up’ in readiness for effective outreach. St Francis de Sales taught two essential virtues for Christians which we are always in need of deepening.  They are humility and confidence in God.

1. Humility

To go into ourselves, ‘reculer’ must be about deepening our humility as individuals and as a Church.

Don’t you feel humbled at the very idea of mission?  Who are we to commend Almighty God to folk at a time when religion to many people is more source of evil than good?

Who are we to tell Brighton it needs Our Lord? 

Good thinking – our greatest resource for mission as Christians must be humility, a sense of our own inadequacy.

The more we’re aware of God’s mercy to us in all humility, the more we’re able to reflect it towards others – and the more affinity we have with our fellow human beings.

Just as our flesh literally weighs us down there’s a gravitational field of self-centredness that makes human life without God the burden it is. When we discover mercy we discover our nothingness and our less than nothingness through sin. [Picture from ‘Gravity’ film promotion]

It is precisely in owning that nothingness in the virtue of humility that we grow wings that lift us away from self towards God and neighbour.

Freed more and more from taking ourselves so seriously we take flight. Here supremely at Mass, week by week, is a school of humility. We’re humbled by an ever-fuller vision of God in his magnificence and mercy – and we indeed take flight.

2. Confidence in God

A second virtue for us to work on is confidence.

By confidence I mean confidence in God and not self-confidence. To ‘coil up’ and gain energy as Christians preparing to spring forwards we need to renew a different sort of confidence – confidence in God.

God, Almighty God, is far worthier of our trust than we will ever believe on this earth. 

Through our occasional study groups, through our forthcoming pilgrimage, through our own reading about the faith or through conversations with one another including our priests we build confidence in Our Lord, his promises and his possibilities so as to be in a better position to bring in the new Church members we hope to see in St. Bartholomew’s.

We need confidence in God coupled to humility – it is this combination that resources us for outreach. Our admission we’re nothing before God saves us from being presumptuous in witnessing to others. Our confidence that God desires to be everything to us and to everyone balances this and helps put spring in our steps as we commend Christian Faith.

Lastly two thoughts on ‘sauter’, on jumping forwards – the need to work at prayer and invitation.

3.  Prayer

These two things - prayer and invitation are like two powerful blades in a scissor action lying ahead for St. Bartholomew’s as we work for yet more effective outreach.

As Hallesly wrote: ‘It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness ...the powers which can awaken those who sleep in sin and raise the dead, the power which can capture strongholds and make the impossible possible’.

Thousands around us are living and dying without Christ and we want them to discover a purpose for living and a reason for dying - the very purpose and reason we have as Christians here at St. Bartholomew’s. As today’s Gospel implies we’re called to act - you are called to act.

I am asking you each day to pray for the growth of the Church mentioning particular individuals known to you upon whom you desire God’s richest blessing. It may be a matter of praying the Our Father slowly, ‘Thy Kingdom come in Brighton, in Sussex, in the life of my friends, or of taking up afresh the parish monthly intention sheet, or of saying a prayer of our own like, ‘Lord Jesus draw her to Yourself with a special intention for particular friends.

We have an ongoing Mission -  and you and I are on its executive Committee - we are to act - by the prayer we offer day by day and by the invitations we give out to our friends for special events, especially special events at Church like next month’s patronal festival - I’m making a phone call to someone who’s lapsed about that.

4.  Invitation

Invitations for people to join in some of our events requires forethought.  The idea of inviting folk must be around as we make new friends or as we relate to our existing friends and family members. We need a whole attitude of ‘invitation’, to make ourselves, or let the Holy Spirit make us more and more a living ‘invitation’ to meet with Our Lord and his Church

Both our prayer and our invitation require a right attitude, one of wholeheartedness.

So we move back from ‘sauter’ to ‘reculer’, from planning our advance to planning the right sort of preparation. 

Do you think it is the will of Our Lord for his Church to grow? Today’s Gospel says yes, it is!

Do you think we at St. Bartholomew’s have something the friends we are called to pray for are missing out on?

We need to believe this if our prayer and our invitations are to be wholehearted.

Let me put it the other way around. How will you feel when the friend or neighbour you are going to pray for comes with you to Church? Will you feel embarrassed? If so, why should you feel so? 

Is the celebration of your own faith helpful to your human and social flourishing? How good is the gospel to you - good enough to be worth sharing? Or is your faith something private, something weird and wonderful, special for Sundays but nothing you would dare to trouble your friends and neighbours with?

May the Lord touch us this morning as we welcome Him in the Blessed Sacrament - touch us in our heart of hearts, so we can touch others for him! God refresh in us the purpose for living and the reason for dying given to us in our Risen Lord. As God is so near to us may he make himself near to all whom we entrust to him in the weeks ahead. 

The Gospel is good! This Church is a place of purpose in a confused world, a place of belonging in a lonely world. May more belong here with us to Jesus!

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