Giggleswick School OG Day 29.6.19 Isaiah 40:21-31

Life is full of goodbyes and that’s no bad thing.

We’ve just said goodbye to the Upper Sixth who’ve finished exams and left Giggleswick. Goodbye’s been said also to Year 11 already on Summer break after GCSEs and there’ll be more goodbyes next week when term ends.

The influx of OG’s today, including myself, who’ve been saying hello and goodbye to one another for years, demonstrates the truth of my proposal - goodbyes aren’t the end of the world, though sometimes they feel like it.

The etymology of goodbye is a help as well - it’s a shortened form of ‘God be with you’. We’re none of us apart from God the fount of life and love so when we say goodbye we stay with one another in a bigger context.

In 1966 (3) I said goodbye to Blewitt, Haygarth, Miller and Ormerod. We went our separate ways to pathology, teaching, finance and, in my case, research into Teflon then the Church - I’m known as the non-stick Vicar! Those men - we were all men then alas - those men stayed on my heart and we keep in touch. Our lives are intertwined - I’m godfather to some of their children - since that day half a century back when we struggled up Chapel Hill for leavers’ service.

As we leave Chapel today my prayer for you is that Chapel - especially the Dome - will stay in your mind and heart as a symbol of that truth of goodbye - God be with you. As we heard Isaiah reflecting just now: Have you not known? …. It is he who sits above the circle of the earth… who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in… Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Giggleswick School is proud owner of William Morrison’s God symbol bequest in which we gather this morning under the angels in Thomas Jackson’s octagonal dome. The combination of squares and circles in a dome symbolise union of earth and heaven. In ancient understanding the skies were a dome. Domed tents were associated with earthly rulers representing God who sits above the circle of the earth… stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.  Under Chapel dome this morning there’s connection with one another beyond that of pupils, teachers and OGs. Though we periodically say goodbye to one another we remain on one another’s hearts and our prayer for one another seals that union.

A priest associated with a dome more famous even than Giggleswick’s said No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As an aside I find it fascinating that post Reformation Dean of St Paul’s John Donne saw human solidarity crossing the English Channel seeing our land as one with Europe. If and when we say goodbye to membership of the European Union may that sentiment continue. More than that, as Morrison built Chapel to point us east, may our mother Church of England keep solidarity with the holy, catholic church east of Dover. In both Brexits, Reformation and current, we shouldn’t see goodbye as a bad thing.

No man is an island Donne wrote. All of us connect, women and men, through the centuries and across the world. That connection is built from God as fount of life and love whether we acknowledge it or not. Those who do capture the further truth stated by Isaiah: Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

The Chapel Dome has a symbolism rather lost in a materialistic culture, lost as much as the deep meaning hidden in our saying ‘goodbye’ to one another. Last month we were in Venice attending worship in its 5 domed Cathedral when naturally I got thinking about this morning’s worship. Like Francis Jackson the architect of San Marco brought east west in designing Venice’s Basilica. As Latin chant echoed in the main Dome there we sensed God with us, just as today’s Anglican chant rising into this Dome lifts our hearts. Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Life is full of goodbyes and that’s no bad thing.

It’s no bad thing to pray God be with you. Next month rather than looking forward from Venice to being in Chapel I’ll be looking back from our home in Haywards Heath at the experience of OG Day. As I do so Blewitt, Haygarth, Miller, Ormerod and all of you will be on my heart as I continue to pray God be with you for you all. I dare to hope you too look back and pray for me and for us all.

As we reflect back day by day on those we’ve said hello and goodbye to we get  reminded they’re on our hearts and that those on our hearts are on the heart of God in whom we live and move and have our being.

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted… but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles. Goodbye for now - God be with you!

St Barnabas, Hove Corpus Christi 23 June 2019

I want to do some thinking with you this morning about the meaning and power of the eucharist. Since this is at the heart of our life together as Christians, it's good to consider what we receive and what we put into Sunday worship on the great Feast dedicated precisely to such reflection.

The Eucharist is the Hour of Jesus. We come as the Lord's people to the Lord's house on the Lord's day around the Lord's table - to be impressed by Jesus! Just like when you miss your morning prayers the day gets jumbled, when for trivial reasons we miss this Hour, the Sunday Hour of Holy Mass, we find some disarray in our week. It’s as if the attention we give for an hour to eternity brings eternity to bear on our use of time. The urgent things give way to the important!

Nowadays the Church’s Holy Days of Obligation on weekdays run to six: Epiphany, Ascension Day, SS Peter & Paul, the Assumption, All Saints and Christmas Day. Few devout Christians though would omit New Year’s Day, Ash Wednesday and Holy Week as days to find during the week the Hour of Jesus - or maybe a half hour Mass! Some like myself come day by day. When people ask me about such devotion I explain I see the Eucharist as Jesus' embrace. When we were children we received tender loving care from our parents. As a mother consoling a hurting child the Lord embraces in this rite our hurts, as well as joys, along with those of the whole world.

The Eucharist is also the place that builds the Communion which is the church.

It is Christ's Sacrifice and ours, the memorial of his once for all redemption.

It is Christ's Presence at the table of his word and the altar of the sacrament.

The Eucharist is lastly a great Promise, the pledge of glory.

These four headings Communion - Sacrifice - Presence - Promise are  stated poetically in the refrain for Corpus Christi on the pew sheet. Let’s start by looking at and reading the refrain together and see what thinking emerges. Have a look through the antiphon. It was written by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century from a scripture base and possesses noble simplicity.

You might recognise the four themes of Communion - Sacrifice - Presence - Promise

Let me read it: O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ, his sufferings are remembered, our minds are filled with his grace, and we receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours.

Let’s look more closely at four phrases in this antiphon addressing the four headings I mention:

O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ… The Eucharist is firstly the place that builds the Communion which is the church. We are made one not by having the same feelings but by sharing one bread in penitence, not trusting in our own righteousness but in God's manifold and great mercies. Christians share the same doctrine - or should do! We share a good variety of spiritual experience but, against certain forms of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, there is no subjective experience held in common within mainstream Christianity save sharing the one bread. As the Apostle Paul says in the chapter before today’s set reading from 1 Corinthians 11, we who are many are one body, for we all partake  of the one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:17) As today’s prayer over the gifts expresses it, this unity is a gift both expressed and effected at the celebration of Mass. We come united to be made more united in our sense of need for God’s grace which is itself the secret of a church that’s together. God deepen our sense of need for him, especially in the inevitably troubled seas of a pastoral vacancy! I speak as retired priest covering one 3 years old at St Bart’s - God spare you that!

His sufferings are remembered… The Eucharist is Christ's Sacrifice and ours. It is the memorial of his once for all redemption. As we heard in the second reading Until the Lord comes… every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you are proclaiming his death. (1 Corinthians 11.26). We stand at the Cross.

Obedient to Jesus we take, bless, break and share. It is our grand invitation to enter into the movement of his self-offering. I’m grateful to holy priests and people who over the course of my life have lifted the veil covering the sacred mysteries for me by their teaching and example. They’ve helped me see beyond this brief action with scripture, bread and wine the power of Christ’s Sacrificial Prayer to which my intentions are joined day by day I’ve gained confidence in a transformative dynamic summarised in Our Lord’s promise that ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32). All people, but also all things as St Paul writes of all things being ultimately put ‘in subjection under Christ, so that God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28). Such ultimately is the power of the eucharist expressed in a verse of George Bourne’s Communion hymn: Paschal Lamb thine offering finished once for all when thou wast slain in its fullness undiminished shall forever more remain cleansing souls from every stain.

Our minds are filled with his grace… The Eucharist is Christ's Presence at the table of his word and the altar of the sacrament. How else can people come close to Jesus in this world other than through word and sacrament? My flesh is food indeed Jesus says to us. We come here for the empowerment Holy Communion effects just as in the days of his flesh the hungry were fed by Our Lord in the Gospel from Luke Chapter 9. We note a parallel with the Lord’s action at the eucharist as we read how Jesus raised his eyes to heaven, and said the blessing over bread, breaking and handing them to the disciples. To this day priests, Jesus’ men, imitate that action lifting their eyes upwards before they say the Lord’s words at this sacred meal, This is my Body...this is my Blood offered for you to the Father, given to you in Communion. It’s good Anglican practice to bow or bend the knee as we come into Church or leave Church, or as we approach or leave the Altar, practice honouring the Real Presence of Christ. Outside the eucharist, it’s believed Christ is present, truly present, under the veil of the Tabernacle or Aumbry where a light burns perpetually before the safe where the Sacrament is reserved, for Communion of the housebound or for our corporate devotion as in Benediction. To honour that perpetual presence, by bowing or bending the knee when coming and going, doesn’t deny that presence elsewhere through prayer, the reading of Scripture, in Christian Fellowship, in the beauty of nature, in holy people and so on.

We receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours… The Eucharist is a great Promise, the pledge of glory, like the cinema advertisement, a preview of forthcoming attractions. Last month I was privileged as Priest Associate of the Holy House at Walsingham to be present with up to a thousand at a day when Mary’s effigy was brought to stand on the coronation pavement before the high altar of Westminster Abbey in a great day of devotion. You could see these words behind the statue, inscribed over the high altar, from Revelation Chapter 11 verse 15: ‘the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ’. I found this deeply moving. It made for a day not just aspirational but touching on the reality of the Eucharist there and then as hundreds did business with God bringing the nation on their hearts. The coronation eucharist sets earthly kings and queens to be servants of the advance of Christ’s kingdom which is both present and to come. The use of material objects at the eucharist reminds us that God is transforming the whole universe building up the new creation in which indeed the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. At Mass the priest invites us to Communion with the words ‘blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb’ and this phrase has a double resonance - the Supper is here and it's to come, a preview of the forthcoming attraction of the banquet of heaven. As today’s postcommunion prayer expresses it: may we delight for all eternity in that share in your divine life, which is foreshadowed in the present age by our reception of your precious body and blood.

To summarise this is the hour of Jesus, the communion of the church, Christ’s sacrifice, presence and promise.

O Sacred feast in which we partake of Christ, his sufferings are remembered, our minds are filled with his grace, and we receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity Sunday 16th June 2019

Theology – the science of God – is vital because the God you attend to will change you. Attend to a wishy washy God and you’ll go wishy washy. Attend to a moral policeman and you’ll get censorious. To an indulgent God and you’ll enjoy yourself at the expense of others. Worship God as the genie in your lamp and he’ll never change you. Worship God as a distant Father figure and you’ll project bad life experience and make it ultimate.

Attend to the Trinity and you’ll become a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

The Christian religion calls us to attend to a God who’s revealed in holy scripture and affirmed by the catholic creeds and the church’s liturgy. Today’s collect affirms that the confession of a true faith is to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity.

What does this mean? That God’s shown us through Jesus he’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity Sunday’s slotted in at the end of six months when readings in church have followed the life of Our Lord up to his death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.

This Sunday we sum up Christianity as we affirm God to be three persons in one God. Why? Because that’s what he says he is. We’d never work this out for ourselves. It’s revealed from the action of God in history.

There are various illustrations. Take the water one - ice, water and steam are one substance with three forms – or take the love one - If God is love how could he be love before the world was made other than by being love within himself?

Or take that of a trellis supporting a vine. The word trellis means ‘woven with three threads’. God who is three is like a trellis supporting a fruitful vine, the church of Jesus Christ we’re part of. Unlike the trellis supporting a vine, the Trinity’s a living trellis. Without his life giving support the vine that’s the church would be a fruitless enterprise.

How you see God - theology - is vital because the God you attend to will change you.

In the eucharist we draw life from the living and true God through Christ who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It’s the way things are. God’s a fact - Father, Son and Spirit - though people have a million ideas about him. If people turn their backs on the Trinity they regress into muddled ideas of God which take you nowhere.

Not only ideas, spiritual experiences alleged to be of God mislead if they’re not seen in the light of the grace of Our Lord, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes people say to me ‘I feel God’s presence daily and don’t need your dogmas’. C.S.Lewis had a good answer to such a person: ‘I quite agreed with that man… he had probably had a real experience of God... and when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds… he… was turning from something real to something less real… if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will also be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is… only coloured paper, but… it's based on what… thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic...it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you’re content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America’.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a God-given map to the world opened up by the resurrection, a world you can’t reach by your own insight or efforts but, as the Gospel says, through the Spirit of truth who leads you into all truth. (John 16:13) As we heard in the passage from Romans we have hope of sharing the glory of God through faith that brings us the peace of Christ and God’s love [being] poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:1,2,5). This is the wherewithal, the map if you like, to get to glory.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

Attending to God is our calling from all eternity. We were each of us made to see the King, the Lord of hosts, in his beauty. We began as babies attending very much to ourselves and end, or should end, by attending to God. What changes isn’t self love so much as the self that we love. As our lives expand in relationships into maturity we see that our self interest is one with that of the whole human community and of God three in one who made and makes it. This is how the Trinity saves us.

So to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be ascribed as is most justly due all might majesty dominion and power, now and for ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

All Saints, Roffey Pentecost 9 June 2019

How do you experience God?

As Christians we see him as the source of all that is, as the one who redeems our failings and as the fount of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God is the One who is - the fount of being - and being fully alive is about living close to him.

The world makes us defensive about such belief because its blind to what’s beyond the physical order but God needs no defence. He is the One who is - the ground of being and as such beyond our grasp. That violent wind on Pentecost Sunday touched the disciples directly, personally, so they became aware of the closeness of the God who is the ground of all being.

Cutting my hedge last week I was very aware of the wind, working round it as it came and went. The hedge cuttings got carried across the road. Bees sheltering from the wind in the hedge didn’t like the hedge cutter and flew out at me. It was quite an experience! When the wind’s blowing you really know it, your skin gets refreshed and you breathe more freely but you’re reminded of your little place on earth compared to the elements. Who can tell where the wind comes from, where it starts or where it will end? We can only experience it, be in the midst of it, be touched as it blows, and work with it's consequences as I did with the hedge cuttings and the bees.

How do you experience God?

Like the wind, as Our Lord said to Nicodemus, the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8). Seeing God, engaging with God, is as here and now as experiencing the air around you. As the Psalmist writes Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).

To be at home with God we need regular silence to be at home with ourselves. We live alas in an age full of artificial noise distracting us from this vital task. In today’s Gospel Our Lord says the Holy Spirit… will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you a the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:26-27). How can we experience the Holy Spirit who is peace and balm for troubled hearts without opening ourselves to the present moment?

The Holy Spirit is God in the present moment. To experience God we must discipline ourselves to attend less to past regrets or future anxieties but to what’s here and now. In that discipline of prayerful attendance to God we experience again and again what the Gospel promises my peace I give to you… do not let your heart be troubled.

On Pentecost Sunday we end the liturgical cycle which started six months ago with Advent, a cycle that displays year by year the God who loves us so much he gives us himself, his Son and his Spirit. The Son of God became Son of man so children of men could become children of God! The God who made us loves us through and through so much so that he sent his Son to die and rise for us. Together on the Day of Pentecost they sent the Holy Spirit, to dwell with us, in us and among us in the Church. As we heard in the Romans reading: all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God… when we cry, ‘Abba! Father! it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. (Romans 8:14, 15b-17a)

How do you experience God?

Stop the flow of your life! Pray, Come, Holy Spirit! Be present to God - pray, read the bible, examine yourself, come to Mass, look to the needs of others!

God addresses you in the present moment, here at All Saints this 9th day of June at 11 o’clock! Then God in the present moment tomorrow morning at work or wherever - be still and know that I am God - this is the Holy Spirit’s invitation day after day, wherever, whenever!

Like the wind we can’t contain God but we can experience him. To secure us in the experience of his love God’s Son gives us bread and wine as living memorial of his saving work. By the Holy Spirit bread and wine are changed so we can be changed and the world can be changed through us. Today’s Feast recalls the outward flowing dynamic captured at every Mass that started with the wind of the Spirit at Pentecost and has blown the good news of Jesus worldwide. It challenges us to hoist our sails to the wind of Spirit so we can be taken where God wants us to be taken, as Bishop Mark said on Monday, bringing love wherever he knows there’s need of it.

‘I ask not to see. I ask not to know. I ask simply to be used’ wrote Cardinal Newman. Whilst its good to ask ‘How do you experience God?’ we shouldn’t expect to understand God so much as to place ourselves at his disposal and pray ‘Come, Holy Spirit’ to be empowered to travel on the best forward course. This we do now offering ourselves as a living sacrifice with Christ, welcoming the experience of his close presence in the Holy Sacrament, God in his Spirit, in the present moment, the radiance of his love calling us to make him loved in the world on 9th June 2019.

St Richard, Haywards Heath Listening to God 12.5.19

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice. John 10:27

We hear three voices - those from God, our neighbourhood and our self. Even when we’re speaking, those voices engage with us. We have two ears - I often need reminding - and one mouth! But we also have inner ears gifted by the Holy Spirit to listen from the heart and see our hearts touched, melted and enthused towards others. Building capacity to listen is about building awareness of those three voices.

We might not have ears like rabbits but our inner ears can grow !

As I look back on my life I think it's the people who’ve listened to me who’ve changed me most. I think of my mum and dad, my friends and teachers, my wife, my children and people who’ve lent an ear to my desire to follow God in the best way. As you’re listening to me now I also spend time listening in Church where I gain inspiration. I listen to God, to his word in the Bible, to the words of the Eucharist, sermons, to people who cross my path day by day and of course to myself. By listening to others I serve them and others serve me as they listen to my aspirations.

Priests do a lot of listening and bishops more so. I remember a conversation with Archbishop Rowan Williams who’d just come back from going round classes in a school. ‘I felt great sympathy with the children in their struggle to listen’ he said as one used to listening to the woes of priests. It’s one of the big challenges we have, the shorter attention spans of our children and grandchildren, which affects the classroom and among other things impacts church attendance. Children expect excitement in church. Wise children expect to be awed and intrigued - we have to cater for both!

This reminds me - I have a butterfly mind easily distracted - of a story about paying attention. It's about a shocked visitor to Crete who tackled a farmer she saw bashing his donkey on the side of his head with some sort of mallet. ‘How can you treat your donkey like that’ shouted the lady. ‘Simple’ the peasant replied. ‘I’ve got to get his attention’.

We should have sympathy. Life can feel donkey-like at times, like being on a treadmill, somewhat thankless. It's the same with the spiritual life at times. How many memorable sermons can I recall, let alone sermons that have really changed my life! One I must mention was on Jeremiah 31:17 ‘There is hope in thine end’. It was by a holy monk called Cedma Mack in the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield where I trained as a priest. ‘There is hope in thine end’ Fr Cedma announced as his text and dropped dead! Never forget it - you couldn’t lay on something like that! They carried him out.

The Creed was said not sung that day but otherwise the Community Mass proceeded as normal! Cedma was a much loved man - I held the holy water bucket at the grave and can tell you more tears flowed than holy water at his funeral!

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice.

I found God speaking to me as I read St Richard’s annual report last week. To read the description of the seven core areas of our life was very stimulating. More of us are leading so more is being achieved. I was pleased to do my bit in the Churchyard and through the Week of Guided Prayer. I’m aware of more God talk among us which might evidence more listening to God. It’s good we feel able to share with our peers and our priests about our journey of faith because that’s our Christian distinctive.

Listening to God and to one another is packaged with the costly virtue of self-forgetfulness. I try to remember that ultimately I will be with God and people in the communion of saints so my longing for him and for my neighbour is pivotal. My life - my eternal life - depends upon it.

A few weeks back I had a really difficult phone call from someone so full of emotional pain they were hardly able to let me get a word in to say I had a train to catch! In this experience I was trying to listen to her, to myself - an impatient inner voice saying ‘end this call asap’ - and to God saying ‘be kind’. By the grace of God I got my train! Reflecting back on the conversation I was fast to judge the poorly lady’s demanding tone as it rattled my own self-will. None of us can be in two places at once but the capacity to listen to others in or out of a crisis is a servant gift I keep seeking - and with it the gift of self-forgetfulness.

A practical suggestion. Pray for two gifts - to forget yourself and never to forget God. Ask the Lord first to steer you from self-love in every guise or disguise since that above all else blocks your capacity to listen to others. Then, secondly, offer God the aspirations of your soul and the health and ability of your body and open your heart to his love, maybe in a prayer like this.

A prayer of Eric MIlner-White: ‘Let your love, O Lord, pass into the depth of my heart, into the heart of my prayer, into the prayer of my whole being; so that I desert myself and dwell more and more in you, in peace, now and evermore’

St Bartholomew, Brighton Easter 3 5 May 2019

‘Do you love me?’ John 20:16

Our Lord’s question to Peter extends to us all through the last chapter of the Gospel of St John read on this third Sunday of Eastertide.

The question comes three times: ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’. Three times to counter Peter’s three denials before Easter. The exchange ends with an affirmation we’re invited to make our own: ‘Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you’.

Our love for the Lord represents our capacity for the infinite. It’s the most important thing in our lives.

Saint Catherine of Siena wrote as if from the Lord: ‘I who am infinite God want you to serve me with what is infinite, and you have nothing infinite except your soul’s and love’s desire’. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing puts it similarly. ‘It's not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be’.

Our love for God is our infinite tendency so it’s cultivation is pivotal. We all bear God’s image but an image isn’t reality. The reality of God’s life builds in us as our longing for him reaches out towards him, often like Peter in deep penitence for our practical atheism. We recall how Peter says three times of Our Lord I do not know him. How many times do we act in denial of the presence of God?

We profess our belief Sunday by Sunday in ‘the maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible’ but day by day, hour by hour we act in denial. We do not practice the presence of God to the best of our ability. We affirm our belief in a God who loves us, all people and all things through and through but lack transparency to that love which we profess reaches down to us from this altar.

In awesome reflections on the Eucharist Aloysius Roche writes these words of prayer to Our Lord: ‘Would that all earth-bound minds and hearts might know the truth, and break their bonds and fly to him through thee!  Would that all whose souls are cold and dead might draw near thy fires and warm them back to life, that so the divine Love which stretched out its arms to all on Calvary and holds them open hourly in the Mass may at last be satisfied’.

‘Do you love me?’ Our Lord asks us this morning. How deep and strong is your longing for me? How earth-bound are you?

From his sick bed the Abbe de Tourville wrote this guidance to an earth-bound soul: ‘Say to yourself very often about everything that happens, ‘God loves me! What joy!’ And reply boldly, ‘And I love him too!’ Then go quite simply about all you have to do and do not philosophize any more. For these two phrases are beyond all thought and do more for us than any thought could do; they are all sufficing’.

One of the blessings of sickness is space granted to reflect on life and see more fully the things that matter which will be ours in that place where ‘mourning and crying and pain will be no more’ (Revelation 21:4). What matters is the infinite God of infinite love who calls all in his image into the reality of holiness with all the saints.

God and people - they alone last forever - with our longing love for them in the communion of saints!

It's all invitation! No one’s compelled to love God or neighbour but all are invited. ‘I who am infinite God want you to serve me with what is infinite, and you have nothing infinite except your soul’s and love’s desire’.

When the tide of death sweeps over us it will remove useless self regard and leave us with the thing that lasts – love for God and people. That can’t be swept aside. It stands for ever as a component of the communion of saints. When death’s tide sweeps over the sandcastle of our lives it will reveal how much substance there is within us, sorting that from what is sandy and ephemeral. That solid residue will be the outgoing concern that draws us out of ourselves into generous communion with others. Our Christian belief and longing is for that communion, that one thing stronger than death central to this eucharist which is the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

How then can we love God more?

We build that love as we reflect on his love whose ‘fires warm us back to life… the divine Love which stretched out its arms to all on Calvary and holds them open hourly in the Mass’. As we reflect on scripture which also warms our hearts, seek spiritual guidance from our peers and priests, confess our sins, pray, worship and serve the needy. Above all our love for God grows from determination. St Seraphim asked why certain people who strive for holiness really get transformed while others hardly make progress answered why this is in two words: ‘Just determination’.

‘Do you love me?’ Our Lord asks Peter at the end of the Gospel of St John.

At the end of our lives the only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy will be not to become a saint. In other words not to have fuelled the infinite longing within us represented in our love for God. To be anything less than holy is to remain unactualized in the spiritual world like the millions of seeds unactualized in the natural world.

We are being actualised - we are reaching our potential - as we build love for Our Lord who at this season opens up to us an infinite horizon through his resurrection. As we commit afresh to him this morning we stand determined, seeking love for him, aspiring to holiness suited for a happy eternity.

Our Lord asks us this morning, ‘Do you love me?’ With Peter in the Gospel we affirm:  ‘Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you’.

Picture - re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion in Trafalgar Square on Good Friday 2019