Credo 5 - ... Maker of heaven and earth ...

To confess that God is the ‘maker of heaven and earth’ is to say everything that is owes its existence to the creative act of God. Although creation is - in a sense - an ongoing process, and we are still awaiting its perfection, the very fact that things ‘are at all’ is solely through God’s action.

It is not a surprise that the article about God’s creation of the universe appears so early in the creed, just after belief in the oneness of God has been expressed. Let us explore briefly the reasons for its actual place in our confession of faith and its meaning.

Firstly, anything that exists is either God or God’s creation, so this is, in a sense, why this article of faith comes second. Why does it have to be an article of faith, one may ask? Can’t we see things around us, can’t we touch and smell and taste? Isn’t creation a matter of science rather than faith? Well, frankly... no. To say that ‘the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them’ (Exodus 20:11) is a confession of faith, not a scientific statement. It must be so, because the idea of creation ‘out of nothing’ is beyond science, and even beyond our understanding. We cannot have a properly shaped idea of what it means to create, because it is impossible for us to think it. We can only confess it.

Secondly, to confess that God is ‘Maker of heaven and earth’ just after our affirmation of the oneness of God, follows systematically the pattern of the Old Testament revelation: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). It is worth noting that the Hebrew verb ‘he created’ – bara – is only used in the context of God’s action. It represents, in a sense, a divine attribute. This revelation has always been interpreted (in the Christian tradition) through the opening verses of the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made’ (John 1:1-3).

Thirdly, creation is a work of the one God, that is to say, of the Father through the Son with the Spirit. It is not an exclusive work of either the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit: whenever God is acting, the whole Trinity is involved.

see the previous posts on the creed

'the Father and I are one'

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Readings: Acts of the Apostles 13:14, 43-52; Psalm 99; Revelation 7:9, 14-17; John 10: 27-30

When getting to grips with the extracts of scripture the Church presents to us in the Liturgy it’s often useful to look at what the compilers of the Lectionary have left out, whether in breaking the material down into manageable proportions to emphasise a point or by ineptitude. Today’s readings are a case in point.

We’re told that Paul and Barnabas have arrived at the synagogue in Pisiddian Antioch. In the bit we don’t hear Paul preaches a sermon in which he runs through the history of salvation, culminating in Jesus’s rejection by the leaders of Israel at Jerusalem and his exaltation by God in the Resurrection. This arouses both interest and controversy, and crowds “almost the whole town” come to hear Paul’s message. I think we’re meant to assume that the newcomers are predominantly Gentile, not Jewish. Paul, in typical stroppy style, makes no attempt to conciliate the Jews, but rather announces a ”turn to the pagans”: they have had their chance; their rejection of God’s message mirrors the rejection of Jesus by the Chief Priests and Elders of Jerusalem, just as Paul’s rejection by (some of) the Jews mirrors Jesus’s rejection by his townsfolk in Nazareth (but not his disciples); Luke’s concern here is to emphasise that Paul, inspired by the Spirit, is following closely in Jesus’s footsteps, is doing what he has done. Now, therefore, God’s promise, his covenant, is extended to all the nations. This is further emphasised in the reading from the Apocalypse, where the innumerable number from all nations – not just Israel – are now the people of God, fulfilling the promise made to Abraham of descendents “as many as the stars of heaven”. Paul, then, is made a light for the nations, so that the Lord’s salvation may reach the ends of the earth.

May even reach us, if we will respond to him. How are we to do that? In the verses preceding the Gospel extract we’ve heard, we’re told Jesus was in the Temple at the feast of the Dedication. The Temple was the sign of God’s presence among His people. Jesus, questioned about his Messianic status, answers that he is the good shepherd – (a frequent symbol for the Davidic king, hence he implicitly claims messianic status). This, again, splits his audience: which prompts Jesus’s reply: “the sheep that belong to me listen to my voice”. If “the Jews” do not follow Jesus, it is not because he is not a shepherd, but because they are not sheep, as Chrysostom once said. Those who insist on seeing Jesus in their own terms, not his, do not hear, and are lost. Those who do hear, who accept Jesus on his terms, in terms of loving service to each other, will have life; because the sheep are given to Jesus by the Father, by God, and no-one can ever snatch the sheep from the Father’s hands; Jesus acts for the Father, as one united with the Father, so “no-one will ever steal them from me”, because “The Father and I are one” that is, Jesus himself is the visible presence of God among them; those who have faith in Jesus’s word – who recognise in it the revelation of God - can be sure that they are in the Father’s hand, that they are in union with God “for “the Father and I are one”.

No matter what persecutions we face, even great ones, even costing our lives, we can never be separated from God unless we choose not to hear, choose to turn away.

To Praise, to Bless, to Preach!

This Sunday, the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, we would like to share with you a video exploring the gift of a Dominican vocation produced by our brothers in St Joseph's Province, U.S.A.



Their other videos, available here, are also well worth a look.

We ask you please to pray with and for our Order:

Blessed Jordan, worthy successor of St Dominic,
in the early days of the Order,
your example and zeal prompted many men and women
to follow Christ in the white habit of our Holy Father.
As patron of Dominican vocations,
continue to stimulate talented and devoted men and women to consecrate their lives to God. Through your intercession,
lead to the Order of Preachers generous and sacrificing persons, willing to give themselves fervently to the apostolate of truth.
Help them to prepare themselves to be worthy of the grace of a Dominican vocation.
Inspire their hearts to become learned of God,
that with firm determination they might aspire to be
champions of the faith and true lights of the world. Amen.

Credo 4 - ... the Almighty ...

When we say God is 'the Almighty', do we mean that He possesses the greatest power amongst a field of rivals? Is the clause inserted in the creed in order to assert that God will suffer no competition?

The power that is located in God is not simply greater than all the powers in the material universe. Rather, through His act of creation, all creatures live, move and have their being through the power of God. When God creates, his activity is not analogous to a builder who constructs a wall that, once built, can sustain without the builder's interference. God's act of creation is constantly sustaining the life of the universe. God creates me now as directly as he did at my conception. If God ever stopped creating, all things, no matter how long they had had being, would cease to exist. Julian of Norwich perceived this when she envisioned God holding the world in being, as Julian herself could hold a hazelnut in the palm of her hand.

The title of 'Almighty' for God, acknowledges God's creative power. The title is not 'Most mighty', as if something other than God could bring about life and being. To name God 'Almighty' is to assent to the belief that all strength and potency in the universe has its origin in God's own power and creative will. To express firm belief in this clause is to marvel again at the generosity of God in giving creatures His own strength, the better to serve Him.

see the previous posts on the creed

Dominican Vocation film clip (1964)

Our Dominican brothers in Washington, D.C. have recently put up this video on the Dominican vocation. It is taken from a 1964 film entitled And the world looks at us. Some aspects of the Dominican liturgy and some customs of conventual life have changed since then but our life is still essentially the same: dedicated to preaching for the salvation of souls, a preaching nourished and supported by prayer, contemplation, study and fraternity.



For a contemporary account of the call to Dominican life read Br Bruno's story.

Is God calling you too?

St George, Patron of England

Martyrdom is now an ambiguous and misunderstood phenomenon. If it simply means 'dying for what you believe', what makes that laudable and holy? It is certainly not laudable and holy if such a demise inflicts suffering and death on others, or if it is a deliberate taking of one’s own life removed from the context of threat and persecution in faith.

For the Catholic Church, the content of what is believed bears upon whether or not individuals are to be venerated as martyrs. In Oxford, for example, there is a ‘Martyrs Memorial’ which commemorates men who died for Protestantism under the Catholic Queen Mary during the Reformation. The Church, however, venerates Thomas More and John Fisher as saints and martyrs from this same period because they died upholding the Catholic faith. John Paul II re-defined martyrdom when he canonised Maximilian Kolbe who died as a martyr of charity rather than a martyr of faith. Even more controversial was his canonization of Edith Stein as a martyr: she died because she was Jewish by race and Catholic in her faith. Martyrdom, as a holy and sanctifying example, must be carefully understood.

These points are relevant to the remembrance of England’s patron, because St George as a martyr and as a soldier remains significant across Christian denominations seventeen centuries after his execution. He is venerated in the Church of England, the Catholic Church and particularly the Eastern and Orthodox churches. This is extraordinary considering nothing is known about him for certain. Thought to have been tortured and put to death in 303 under the Emperor Diocletian for refusing to participate in the persecution of Christians and counting himself among them, he is said to have been a tribune in the Roman army and came from what is now Turkey. But even these pieces of information are vague, even legendary. It is interesting to note that as early as 496, Pope Gelasius includes George as one of the saints ‘whose name is rightly reverenced but whose actions are known only to God’.

It is thus extraordinary that his patronage is linked to so many countries and situations. It is not only England who asks for his prayers but Aragon, Catalonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Germany and Greece; also Moscow, Istanbul, Genoa and Venice (second to St Mark). Why is an unknown, Turkish soldier, living and dying before many of these places gained their identity, revered as a national, identifying patron?

I think we must return to the careful examination we have made of martyrdom. George, in the face of darkness and persecution, chose the light and followed his Lord Jesus. As a soldier he would have known battle, faced the possibility of death. This is not the issue. His submissive, passionate action, defying soldier’s orders, maintained compassion in the face of tyranny and justice at the risk of dishonour and treason. This is the example that so many have found in our patron saint, that sudden rush of love that falls on those born again in the Spirit, that at the last, changes one’s life.

But what of the identity that the patronage of George the Turk brings to England? Ireland’s Saint Patrick brought the light of Christ to their nation, defining the country’s soul; St David was a saintly Bishop, shepherding his people in Wales in the Christian life. They identify with and bring identity to their nations. But St George is patron of England, not because he defines who England is, but because he exemplifies what we should be: compassionate, honourable, Christian.

'I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry God for Harry, England and St George!'.

Henry V: Act 3, Scene 1

* * * * *

St George is depicted above in a rare 14th-century wall painting from the parish church of Hornton, Oxfordshire.

Witness

Third Sunday of Easter

Readings: Acts of the Apostles 5:27-32, 40b-41; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

Courage speaks for itself. This is why so many people converted to Christianity, when they saw Christians martyred, seeing their blood shed not in a violent opposition and conflict but in a courageous witness to their faith. The blood of martyrs waters the faith of the nations.

I've always thought that martyrdom is the most paradoxical expression of our faith - an expression that shatters all cosy and lukewarm systems of value. It is also the most quiet and yet the most attractive witness, to lose one's life in order to spread life-giving faith and, ultimately, to win back one's life in eternity, to be able to live forever with 'the Lamb, who was slain'.

We see the germinal growth of this witness in today's readings: Peter's threefold confession of love will lead him to become an extremely courageous preacher whose blood will be shed for Christ - not through a violent fight but in a quiet and firm stand. Jesus anticipates that all this will happen to Peter, when he says:

'Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go' (John 21:18).

Now Peter’s love and faith are mature. He has indeed ‘walked where he would’: after the crucifixion of Christ Peter fled Jerusalem and went fishing with his friends. He was greatly disappointed, I guess, that things went the wrong way. He must have been terribly afraid. Yet the threefold confession of love and his acceptance of the mission to ‘tend Christ’s sheep’ enables him to come back to the community of disciples which he deserted. Peter now has the courage to bear witness.

As he stands with other apostles in front of the Sanhedrin, Peter has already ‘grown old’, and when challenged to stop preaching he strongly affirms the apostolic mission: ‘we must obey God rather than men’.

It is impossible to be a Christian and not to bear witness to one’s faith. Christianity is never anonymous. It is firmly based in community. Its preaching and works of mercy are its witness: the fruit of common faith and God-inspired love. Christians are prophets by the very nature of their faith: they are living signs, witnesses to Christ’s saving death and resurrection. It is because we are rooted in Christ’s body that we are able courageously to bear witness to our faith.

A Dominican Vocation

‘Can I have your neckties…?’ This was my reaction when my father told me that he was to train for the Permanent Diaconate. 1997: I was 19, finishing a degree in Music at Durham; looking forward to Postgraduate work at the Royal Northern College of Music and no thought of becoming a priest or religious. No thought of a vocation of my own.

No thought…? Aye, there’s the rub. There is the tremor of God’s plan that shakes you to the core. There is the manifestation of free cooperation with grace: God’s will, becoming my will. You see, at the time my father spoke to me there was already the unsettled sensation, the unfulfilled desire in the course of my life, something thrown into sharp focus against the oppressive freedom of undergraduate opinion.

This is what discernment is – the realisation of something that has always been there, but only grasped, manifested, revealed when it becomes your choice. In 1997 I was struggling in my lifelong faith, not with its truth but with its defence. I couldn’t explain why: why I believed; why it was true. Knowledge without understanding is just information. And this uncertainty of direction was not solved by career advancement. Despite my benefit from its education, the conservatoire didn’t have an answer to the nagging thought: what do I want to do?

A vocation is grounded in this simple question. Vocation is a choice, a desire that can only be known in retrospect by stepping into it – the grace of God in our will. But this all unfolds only following the decisive first step and everyone’s story is different.

The coincidence of my restlessness and my father’s vocation proved the catalyst. In 2000, while at the RNCM, I read but one page of a book, The Catholic Faith by Richard Conrad OP, a Dominican friar. Its clarity, its reasonableness, its understanding exposed a tradition of thinking about truth and fell into a groove for me. ‘Who are these Dominicans?’ I thought. ‘This is what needs to be done, this study, this cultivation of understanding, this preaching. More people should do this work’. And I turned back to music. But it was too late… The seed of desire had begun to grow and the sense of duty, responsibility and calling gradually unveiled. The Catholic Church needs Preachers and if you can’t get a job done…

So what is the next step? Meeting the brethren: and yet, despite this, I joined the Order(!) But really, the choice of approaching a Conventual Religious Order involves relationship, something I had to experience as part of my discernment. I went to meet the vocations director; attended community, vocation events; lived with the brothers. As one Dominican always advises aspirants – you need to want to do two things in the Order: preach the Gospel; love the brethren. Both need to be learnt.

This is why the route of formation in the Order is so important. The unveiling process – that is, the gradual realisation once the decision is made that it has always been part of you – this process continues in the early years of Dominican life: the novitiate, the years of Simple Profession. Timothy Radcliffe’s experience I have found to be true: you join for some reasons, you stay for others. Both are necessary.

There is another aspect to a vocation: they have to want you too! I was called to preach by the Church and the Order who responded to my aspiration. Inasmuch as God calls you, by making it your wish, He calls you within His Church, and the Church confirms your vocation. Both aspects fulfil the desire.

So, I completed my work as a composer at the RNCM and applied to join the English Province of the Order of Preachers. I began the novitiate in 2002. And the Dominicans encourage your gifts: I still write music and we sing the Office every day. I am Cantor for the Priory of Oxford. So from the time as a novice, to today, Solemnly Professed and progressing towards ordination this year, I have passed nearly five years as an obedient friar, doing what I want to do. I didn’t need those neckties after all.

This article, by Bruno Clifton OP, is published in this week's Catholic Herald

Credo 3 - ... the Father ...

There are three senses in which God may be said to be 'Father', each one revealing a deeper reality of the life of God. The first references we find of God as Father in Scripture come in the Pentateuch at the beginning of the Old Testament. Here we find references to God as Father, where 'Father' seems to convey a sense that God is the origin of all creation, without whom nothing can have existence. In the book of Deuteronomy we read how Moses saw the Father's act of creation as an act which sets up a relationship between God and creation (Deut 32:6-9). The second sense in which God is father, is an extension of the first, and is revealed to Moses in the giving of the Law. The special bond between the Father and the people of Israel is thus revealed by the covenant which God has with his people, a people considered by God as his 'first born Son' (Ex 4:22). Thus we have a deeper sense of God's love, and learn something of God as a God who calls his people into communion with him.

However, it is Christ that we find the third, most profound, and perhaps most surprising revelation of God as Father. In the Gospels, perhaps especially in the Gospel of John, we see how often Jesus refers to God as Father: He prays to the Father, and he gives us the Prayer which expresses all that prayer should be: the 'Our Father'. Thus it is clear that God's Fatherhood is key to what is revealed by Jesus. So what Kind of Fatherhood is this? From what is revealed by Jesus of the Father, we may see that 'Father' expresses a relationship, a love shared between the Father and the Son. But, astonishingly, as sons of God through Christ, we too are brought into this relationship - we too are called to intimacy with the Father. It is through this intimacy that we are drawn into prayer to the Father, a prayer which dares to call him 'abba', yet a prayer which stands in awe of whom it is we address - the Creator of all that is, the God who spoke to Moses and to Abraham, the God who sent his Son to die for us, that we might have life in him.

see the previous posts on the creed

Credo 2 - ... in one God ...

The profession of faith in one God – that God is unique and there is no other – stands not only as the first affirmation of the Creed but also, in a sense, as the most important. This is because all the other things that we believe as Christians flow from this first radical assertion of monotheism.

The belief in one God represents a point of continuity between the faith of the Old Testament and the faith of Christians. It is in the Old Testament that we glimpse a people coming to recognise over time that their God is not merely a localised God, a God for Israel only, but rather a God for all humanity and of all creation. We see this in the book of the prophet Isaiah when God proclaims, ‘Turn to me and you will be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am a God and there is no other’ (Isaiah 45:22).

This invitation to turn to the one God requires of humanity a refusal to idolize or to deify all those other forces, for example, sex, power, and money, which we can so readily begin to turn into little gods and to worship slavishly. In fact, the biblical confession in the one God has been described as a moment of extreme significance in the liberation of humanity from all those forces which if not seen in their proper context can easily engulf us. The early Church was characterised to a large extent by the refusal of many Christians to worship any power that was not the one God.

Belief in one God requires us to recognise that all that is comes from Him. Many of the great Christian thinkers of the past, such as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, argued that the order and unity of nature point to the unity of the creator. Acknowledging in this way that all creation has its origin in the one source lets us perceive not only the essential unity of humanity but also allows us to regard the everyday things around us as somehow pointing to God. And just as importantly, accepting that all we have comes from the one saving God means that our Christian lives ought to be characterised by an attitude of praise, thanksgiving and trust.

see the previous posts on the creed

What arms to embrace?

Second Sunday of Easter

Readings: Acts of the Apostles 5:12-16; Psalm 117(118):2-4,22-27; Revelation 1:9-13,17-19; John 20:19-31

This is one of the most enduring images from the first weeks of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was published at Easter 2003. In the same explosion this Iraqi boy lost not only his arms but also his parents. He is covered in grease to help heal his wounds. Two startling comments accompanied the publication of this picture. One was from a journalist who said 'it was a price worth paying'. By what measure, or standard of currency, is such a judgement made? How many killed and maimed children are equivalent to one toppled dictator? Ten? A hundred? Hundreds? The death toll is now far in excess of that. When does the payment in human lives become too expensive, a price not worth paying? When there are too many? Or perhaps when the children are 'ours' rather than 'theirs'. Then, of course, we make a different judgement about the value of a child's life.

The other startling comment was from a doctor caring for the little boy. He said 'he would be better off dead'. It is a judgement we might be tempted to make from time to time when we cannot bear the suffering of a loved one or feel we are unable to help them any further in bearing their suffering. But again we can ask the question: how can any of us make such a judgement? By what standard of currency or value? How do we know someone would be better off dead if we do not know what death is? Perhaps it is an end to our own suffering we want, the difficulty of being in the presence of so much pain. We change channels, watch some sport or listen to some music, and forget about the terrible things that happen in some people's lives.

What has all this to do with Easter, with Thomas being invited to touch the wounded and yet glorious body of Jesus? Well, everything really. We continue to celebrate the paschal mystery of Christ, his suffering, death and resurrection. This little Iraqi boy with his arms blown off brings home to us not only the reality of sin and evil and death in the world, but the fact that there is no final judgement about what happens in this world until we stand before the throne of God. Irreparable loss has been inflicted. How can what is lost be restored?

Faith in the resurrection had grown strong in some Jewish circles by the time of Jesus. Their faith in the justice and fidelity of God led some to the conviction that God would, at some future time, vindicate those who had suffered and died for the sake of His name. The innocent who do not find justice here will be raised to life with God in the resurrection and those who have done evil will be raised to judgement. We find evidence of this in the Book of Daniel, in the Book of Wisdom, and in the Books of the Maccabees. The first Christians, who may well have shared this belief in the resurrection but expected that it would happen only at the end of time, came to believe instead that it had already begun with the raising of Jesus from the dead. The innocent one, unjustly and cruelly done to death, had been raised up by the Father's power. The resurrection, and the judgement, have begun. We have been given God's evaluation of our situation, God's judgement on the world. The cross of Jesus Christ is become the definitive standard of judgement for us. If you want to weigh sin, look at the cross. If you want to evaluate evil, look at the cross. But likewise, if you want to measure love, look at the cross. If you want to assess the weight or significance or relevance or reality of God, look at the cross. It is our criterion of judgement, the gold standard of sin and love, of human need and divine grace.

Curiously, then, and in the case of Jesus, God seems to agree with the journalist: 'it was a price worth paying'. Much of our language about the cross is of this kind: it is a ransom paid, a means of redemption, the sheep are ransomed by the Lamb, we are bought with the blood of Christ. The difference is that it is a price freely paid, emerging from the heart of Jesus as he conforms his will with that of his Father - it is a price worth paying because it gets its value from the obedience and love of Christ, God's Son.

And, curiously also, God does not agree with the doctor's verdict: 'he would be better off dead'. At Easter we celebrate God our creator saying, of his only son, 'he would be better off alive'. 'he would be better off fully alive', 'he would be better off eternally alive'. Life's champion is slain, yet lives to reign, as the Easter Sequence puts it. Death itself has been overcome not by some magical trick on the part of God (as if Jesus had not really died) but by God entering into the middle of sin and injustice, of ambiguity and compromise, of hatred and bitterness, of fear and isolation. From within our hell - for hell is something human beings establish - Christ has risen. His arms embrace everything. 'Fear not', he says to us, 'I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades' (Revelation 1:17-18).

Credo 1 - We believe ...

The Creed is a lovesong. In it we praise the one we love for his qualities and for the things he has done. The Creed is a lovesong in praise of the Trinity as we recall in turn the attributes and actions that we appropriate to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Everything done by God is done by the whole Trinity: yet there is something appropriate in assigning the work of creation to the Father, the work of salvation to the Son, and the work of sanctification to the Holy Spirit.

Most of what we know we believe. There is little enough that any of us knows 'scientifically', i.e. through personal experience and experiment. For the most part we accept the word of reliable experts and authorities and we do it in all areas of life. There is nothing unreasonable about it: in fact it seems eminently reasonable that we should accept the word of trustworthy authorities.

Faith in the theological sense has something in common with belief in this more ordinary sense but it is also distinctively different. This is because the trustworthy authority in question is God. This makes our theological faith at once more mysterious (because God and everything to do with God is mysterious) and more certain (for what authority is more trustworthy than God). The great theologians were well aware of this two-sided character of faith, that it is at once fragile, because it is a kind of dark knowledge, and strong, because although it is a feeble hold on truth (from our point of view) the truth on which it is a feeble hold is God who is Truth itself.

So we believe people. I believe my friend when she tells me that something has happened, because she is a sane and reliable person and I have no reason to doubt her word. We also believe things. I believe that there is a God, for example, and that Jesus Christ has through his death saved all humanity. These are not just opinions: to believe such things means to commit ourselves to their being true even though we don't have the clinching evidence for this that our minds would prefer to have. And we believe in people. Augustine makes much of this sense of faith and Aquinas follows him. They break up the Latin word credere to mean cor dare, to give one's heart. When people marry this is the kind of faith that enables them to make the commitment involved. It is faith in this sense that allows us to recite the Creed as a lovesong. To say 'we believe' then means 'we give our hearts to God the Father, creator ... to God the Son, redeemer ... to God the Holy Spirit, giver of life ...'

I asked a wise Dominican once whether I could know that I had the faith. He said, without a moment's hesitation, 'no, it is part of faith itself, part of the same mystery: you can only believe that you believe'. I suppose to claim anything more would be idolatrous and it is why 'fundamentalist' believing unsettles people - it forgets that faith is not so much my hold on God's truth as it is the hold of God's truth on me - humanly fragile, infinitely powerful.

A Short Commentary on the Creed ...

In the early Church catechumens received instruction about their faith both before and after baptism. During Lent they were prepared for the Easter Vigil at which they were initiated into the Church through the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist. The full meaning and effect of this initiation was explained to them in a post-Easter catechesis, sometimes called 'mystagogical catechesis'. At the heart of Christian initiation was the confession of faith through a baptismal creed. The earliest forms of these are found in the New Testament itself and later they took on the function of ensuring that people knew what the orthodox faith required (as compared with heresies such as Arianism). The Nicean creed, which we still use in our liturgies, developed from such baptismal creeds, expanded and developed through the teaching of the great councils of the Church.

Now that we are in Eastertide we would like to offer you such a 'mystagogical catechesis', reflecting in detail on the mysteries of faith as expressed in the Creed. So we are launching a new series of posts entitled A Short Commentary on the Creed that will take us systematically through this summary or 'symbol' of our faith.

We believe
in one God
the Father
the Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth
of all that is seen and unseen

We believe in one Lord
Jesus
Christ
the only Son of God
eternally begotten of the Father
God from God
Light from Light
true God from true God
begotten, not made
of one being with the Father
through Him all things were made
For us men and our salvation
He came down from heaven
by the power of the Holy Spirit
He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man
For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate
He suffered death and was buried
On the third day He rose again
in accordance with the scriptures:
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and His kingdom will have no end
We believe in the Holy Spirit
the Lord,
the giver of life
who proceeds from the Father
and the Son
With the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified
He has spoken through the Prophets

We believe in one
holy
catholic
and apostolic Church
We acknowledge one baptism
for the forgiveness of sins
We look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come

Easter Liturgies

Here are some photographs of our Easter liturgies.

The Paschal candle, painted by Br Thomas Skeats OP, the sacristan.

The Easter fire is prepared in the garden by Fr Denis Minns OP and it is blessed:
"Father, we share in the light of your glory through your Son, the light of the world..."
The blessed fire is then used to light the Paschal candle.

The priory church is filled with the new light of Easter lit from the Paschal candle. In the words of the Exsultet, it is "a flame divided but undimmed, a pillar of fire that glows to the honour of God".

Br Robert Mehlhart OP led the schola of friars in singing some of the psalms during the Vigil and also conducted the volunteer choir. At the Vigil, the 'Blackfriars Mass' by Br Bruno Clifton OP was sung for the first time, as well as Palestrina's Sicut cervus and pieces of traditional chant.

The Paschal candle burns from Easter until Pentecost, a symbol of the risen Christ.

Solemn Vespers was sung on Easter Sunday and during the Magnificat, the High Altar and the people are incensed.

Sunlight floods the east window during Vespers. This natural light too reminds us of Christ. As the Exsultet says: "He is that morning star that knows no setting, Jesus Christ your Son who came back from the dead to shed his clear light on all humankind".

We wish all our Godzdogz readers a happy and blessed Easter!

Love is stronger than death, fiercer than the grave

EASTER SUNDAY

Readings: Acts 10:34,37-43; Psalm 117; Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6-8; John 20:1-9

What are we celebrating on Easter day? What broke the numb silence of Holy Saturday? The resurrection of Jesus is the central mystery on which our faith is founded; yet it is mystery, it surpasses our attempts to grasp its full meaning. We are all of us not so far, maybe, from the hapless supermarket employee who was recently reported as supposing that the Easter eggs crowding the shelves were for celebrating Jesus’s birthday.

Some time ago the then bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, provoked a similar furore when he remarked that the resurrection was not “a conjuring trick with bones”. Jenkins’ concern, crudely and cruelly caricatured by the media, was to stress the difference between resurrection and resuscitation: Jesus has been raised not just to life, as was Lazarus (John 11: 41-44) or the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7: 11-17), but to new life, to life in God. The earliest descriptions of the resurrection emphasise that this was God’s action: God has raised Jesus. To assert this, as we do every Sunday when reciting the creed, is to assent to a particular understanding of reality and history: God has created our world, and acts in our history to save us. And, as Paul insists to the Romans, he saves us through Jesus, on whose behalf he has acted “because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10: 9).

In grappling with the meaning of the resurrection we need to avoid two extremes, firstly, seeing it as something that happened to Jesus in the past and does not especially involve us - yet we “who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death” and to the extent we remain an organic part of the Body of the Lord, in communion with Him in the church through the Spirit, we, too, “might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6: 3-4) The second might be to think that our resurrection will happen after our death. Rather, it is happening now, to the extent that we are living out the life of the Spirit; we can think, as Herbert McCabe suggested, of Christ’s resurrection and ours as the victory of love over death, seen either within history (that is Christ’s resurrection) or beyond history, in the fullness of the kingdom (that is the general resurrection).

Exsultet - Rejoice!

Many of our readers will be familiar with the Exsultet, the great hymn of praise to the paschal candle, as it appears in the Roman Missal. In Blackfriars Oxford we sing it to a tune adapted from Dominican chant and using a unique translation of the Latin text. Br Bruno Clifton OP sings it here in this setting, with photographs by Br Lawrence Lew OP

Uncomfortably numb ...

Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday is the great, the supreme, solitude. Everything is empty. There is no meaning. Nothing makes sense. God is dead and all meaning with him. Our lives are like clocks without hands. With Jesus’ death on the Cross, the whole of humanity has lost its aim. When humankind kills God, nothing can make sense anymore. Since we seem to have had the last word, we have in our finiteness the root of all destruction. If the end of the story is humanity’s own destruction, what can we hope for?

Good Friday showed us that in order to be human, we have to accept our own frailty, fundamentally our humanity, and to live it until the end. But today, there is no suffering. Holy Saturday reveals our need to give meaning. But what meaning can we give? Everything is calm and empty. After the storm, our ship is lost on a calm sea, a lukewarm sea without tide. No meaning. No map. No compass. We are facing something much more pernicious than suffering: insensibility. It is painful to cry for someone we love, a friend, a brother. But, surprisingly, it is even more difficult to have nobody to cry for, to have nothing to believe, no risk to take! It entails a more profound and more painful sense of emptiness …

Sometimes, in our lives, suffering is so deep that we become numb. We do not feel pain. All has become uncomfortably numb! We are lukewarm, neither cold as we were on Good Friday, nor hot as we will be at Easter. This is a most distasteful feeling (cf Revelation 3:16). Nevertheless, this feeling of emptiness is sometimes necessary. The black and white portrait of our humanity has to be accepted and integrated into our lives if they are to be drawn with the colorful divine ink. Though difficult, Holy Saturday is absolutely necessary. Were Easter to occur directly after Good Friday, this would lead to perverse theologies trying to give sense to our sufferings. They do not have meaning by themselves.

Holy Saturday is given to us to tame the meaninglessness, to tame the emptiness of our lives. We have to tame what is an empty tomb without testimony … Holy Saturday then is highly important, theologically and anthropologically. It rules out fanaticism, thwarts theologies giving simple meaning to suffering, destroys any concept of deism, and makes space for 'not knowing', a form of agnosticism which is necessary to our freedom. In that respect, Holy Saturday underlines a deep reality —often forgotten— of our faith. There is a kind of distance between God and us. There can be an absence of God. God can become superfluous. Hence, paradoxically, he will be able to become necessary for us ...

The prayer of the prophet Jeremiah

The video above is a recording of Oratio Jeremiae prophetae, part of the Office of Tenebrae for Holy Saturday. It is sung at Blackfriars this year by Robert Gay OP. Here is a translation of the text:

The prayer of the prophet Jeremiah

Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us; behold, and see our disgrace!
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to aliens.
We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
We must pay for the water we drink, the wood we get must be bought.
With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest.
We have given the hand to Egypt, and to Assyria, to get bread enough.
Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities.
Slaves rule over us; there is none to deliver us from their hand.
We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.
Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine.
Women are ravished in Zion, virgins in the towns of Judah.
Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders.
Young men are compelled to grind at the mill; and boys stagger under loads of wood.
The old men have quit the city gate, the young men their music.
The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!
For this our heart has become sick, for these things our eyes have grown dim,
for Mount Zion which lies desolate; jackals prowl over it.
But thou, O Lord, dost reign for ever; thy throne endures to all generations.
Why dost thou forget us for ever, why dost thou so long forsake us?
Restore us to thyself, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old!
Or hast thou utterly rejected us? Art thou exceedingly angry with us?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn again to the Lord your God.

Good Friday Liturgy

Some moments from our liturgy at Blackfriars Oxford, captured on camera:

A distinctive feature of Tenebrae is the triangular hearse with fifteen unbleached candles. As the psalms are sung, the candles are progressively extinguished. This represents the abandonment of Christ by his disciples.

At the end of Tenebrae, the cantors stand in the middle of the choir and at the steps of the High Altar and implore God's mercy and the brethren and congregation respond with the words of Philippians: "Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

At the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, the Cross is lifted high and venerated.

Friars and people creep to the Cross - an ancient liturgical practice. Three times along the way the brethren prostrate themselves and the people kneel as they approach Christ's throne of mercy - his holy Cross.

A moment of stillness after the liturgy...

We Must Glory in the Cross

Good Friday

Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 30; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

What is so good about this Friday? With bare altars and empty tabernacle, we meditate on the horrific drama of the cross, thinking of the events of Good Friday. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.

The entrance antiphon for Holy Thursday, taken from St Paul, began: ‘It is our duty to glory in the cross of Christ’. Is that what we mean by calling today Good Friday? Perhaps it should be called Bad Friday, a day when we rightfully beat our breasts in reparation for the sin of humanity against our God, a sin professed in the crucifixion of Christ and prolonged in the many transgressions of our daily lives. Emptiness, brokenness, and pain – these are all poignant themes for this day.

And yet, we call it Good Friday. We call it Good Friday because our Lord mounts that cross in love for us. It is the act of pure and total love, and it is this pure and total love that cannot be destroyed. The cross becomes the symbol of this supreme act of love, and today we commemorate that cross, the symbol of love that pervades the misery and sorrow of our human lives.

Recently I shared a day of recollection with some members of the Legion of Mary. It was the Feast of the Annunciation, falling in the week leading up to Palm Sunday. Looking to the veiled cross in the sanctuary of the church we occupied, I invited those present to reflect on the love that is poured out on the cross. Each day when we recall the incarnation of Christ in the Angelus, we implore ‘that we to whom the incarnation of Christ was made known by the message of an angel may by his passion and cross be brought to the glory of his resurrection.’ One woman felt there was too much emphasis on the misery and suffering of the cross, but in our lives we meet pain and struggle constantly. In the frailty of our human nature, the love displayed on the cross is our hope and fulfilment. The blood that gushes forth from the crucified Lord washes clean our defilements, and brings us into the glory of the resurrection.

Without the cross, there can be no resurrection. Without the sufferings and sorrows that we experience, we cannot taste the love of the cross. This is why we are duty-bound to glory in the cross. This is why we are celebrating Good Friday. We are remembering the love that changed the world – the love that we share.

I keep in my breviary a little card. The card was left on the door of my room when I was a novice. I was going through a bewildering time, and a priest of my community wanted silently to preach to me the depth of Christ’s love for me – to show me that the love of Christ would cause us to weep tears of joy. ‘I asked Jesus’ it reads, “How much do you love me?” “This much” he answered; and He stretched out his arms, and died.’

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ

In Blackfriars on Good Friday St John's account of the passion is sung to a setting based on Dominican chant. It is usually sung by three people and a small choir. However, this recording was made during a rehearsal by Fr Richard Ounsworth OP and Br Bruno Clifton OP and so only two voices are employed.

We wish to share part of our liturgy with you and offer this video as a way of using music and art to pray and meditate on the Lord's Passion.

…on the night he was betrayed

Holy Thursday

Readings for Mass of the Lord's Supper: Exodus 12:1-8,11-14; Psalm 116; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

By the time of the last supper, it is all finished for Jesus. The preaching mission has ended; he is, in effect, on death-row. He is about to face a show-trial of a kind which is not unfamiliar. People in these extreme situations often go to pieces or become absorbed in their own affliction. Yet Jesus’ words and actions shape the meaning of what will happen to him in a way quite unlike anyone else.

Jesus is about to be led into a trap, but before being given over in betrayal, he gives himself over to the disciples. He puts himself into their hands when he takes and breaks bread. ‘This is my body…this is my blood…take it’. Those who sit down to eat with him, who will themselves soon betray, deny and abandon him, find that Jesus has already abandoned himself to them, before they abandon him to others. He has made a covenant with them, and this covenant is a kind of forestalling of the betrayal. Jesus makes room in advance for all that will happen to him. Those who will abandon him are, in an important way, frustrated as betrayers. It is as though there is nothing for them to do. The victim has already given himself to them; their work is over. Whatever they do is rendered powerless, because nothing they can do destroys or removes the covenant already made.

Jesus has made of his betrayers something they could never make of themselves. He has turned them into his guests. In Jesus God has promised a kind of fidelity that he will never turn his back on. A constant open door, if you like, a continual welcome. What we are being told is that God’s promise anticipates and outlives betrayals. The most complete betrayal is anticipated in a simple and unfathomable gesture of acceptance. Future betrayals – our betrayals - are also encompassed by this sign, we too may be transformed from betrayers to guests.

The last supper is the climax of Jesus’ hospitality to the sinner and the outsider throughout his ministry. Repeatedly Jesus sits down among those who have done nothing to deserve his company. What they need to do is to remain seated and listen to their unexpected host. The covenant is just the final guarantee of the same hospitality. God’s last word is, ‘do not be afraid, I will not withdraw my love from you, there is nothing you can do to destroy that tender care’. There is no promise that people will not be unfaithful to each other, but there is an assurance that a welcome is always offered us, a welcome whose roots are deeper than we can guess.

The readings for the Chrism Mass - Isaiah 61:1-3a,6a,8b-9; Psalm 89; Revelation 1:5-8; Luke 4:a6-21 - are available here

We preach the Cross of Christ

The Great Week has begun and so, as a witness to the redemption in Christ, the Christian Churches in Oxford took to the streets in silent demonstration of faith in our salvation through the cross. In a short walk of maybe half a mile, more than 100 people followed a wooden cross through the central shopping street of the city. As the City Rector, Rev. Hugh Lee reminded us in a closing address, it was through just such a street that Christ stumbled, walking his road to Golgotha crowded with shoppers come for the feast.

We began our witness with prayers and a hymn in Oxford’s New Road Baptist Church where Rev. Susan Durber of St Columba’s URC recalled the entry of Jesus into the city to shouts of praise. Then, silently following the cross, we began our walk and with it the remembrance of that other procession of Christ ending outside the city walls.

Leading the procession behind the cross, I was conscious of my anxiety in meeting the gaze of the people who stopped, albeit briefly, to watch. Without the benefit of seeing the people who followed me, I felt detached, alone in my witness and afraid. Br Lawrence commented afterwards that it was more nerve-wracking to walk thus than simply to make your way around town in your habit. We were clearly making a statement of faith and so inevitably this brings with it a challenge.

We could see in the faces of the shoppers passing by an uncertainty, even an anxiety, which in some cases resulted in a discourteous remark thrown at us from the sidelines. People no longer know where to place such belief and such witness. The challenge is not so much one of rebuke but that re-stirring of the unknown, the forgotten sense of meaning in life that we would rather not be reminded we have lost.

So, was it a success? Did such a visible witness of faith in Christ preach to, edify or encourage the shoppers? The constant reminder of God’s love for all humanity, shown above all in his cross, is the work of the Christian and in this Week of salvation, to set this once more in the minds of those just heading for a bank holiday weekend is not a bad thing.

Yet more than this, there is one reaction above all that I remember, one response to our walk that perhaps resonates with the meaning of the event in this Passiontide. Above all the hustle and bustle of the crowds moving to and fro, over all the busy sounds indifferent to our silence; I heard the voice of a little girl. ‘Mummy, look! It’s the cross of Jesus…’

Stations of the Cross

We would like to share with you some photos from the Stations of the Cross led by the Dominican students at Blackfriars, Oxford this Holy Week:

Lord Jesus Christ,
fill our hearts with the light of your Spirit,
so that by following you on your final journey
we may come to know the price of our Redemption
and become worthy of a share
in the fruits of your Passion, Death and Resurrection.
You who live and reign for ever and ever.
Amen.

The grace of Christ's suffering

Wednesday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 68; Matthew 26:14-25

Of all the texts of the Old Testament, none resonate more clearly with the image of Christ than the passages in Isaiah portraying God’s Suffering Servant. The righteousness and innocence of this figure in the face of censure and insults is claimed as the means of redemption; the way in which the deserved condemnation of the guilty is removed.

'But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed' (Is. 53.5). This is from the fourth ‘song’ (Is. 52.13-53.12) observing the state of this man. However the passage we read today, the third song of God’s servant, presents a different perspective. Here the figure speaks of his own situation. He feels that his sense of honour and love and dignity is maintained by the Lord God, even in disgrace and ignominy. He thus bears his trials ‘like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame’ (Is. 50.7).

But the treatment this man describes is insulting and debasing: it is behaviour that denies the dignity of humanity. He is beaten; his beard is pulled out. He is spat upon. Such treatment is the fruit of hatred. What is it about God’s help that renders this shame, shameless; that renders disgrace, graceful? The Servant accepts his trials because he believes that God is his help, therefore he is not disgraced. It is more than mere assistance given by God, as someone standing on the sidelines: the help received is precisely the gift of God himself.

Christ’s disgrace is graceful and his shame, an exultation because he is God. The Creator who made man in his image takes this flesh to himself to renew its lost dignity. The damage, the despoiling that is suffering, is transformed into a life-giving action because it is the Creator who undergoes it. And this recreating grace is presented to all humanity who share God’s image. 'And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself' (Jn. 12.32).

Weakness and strength

Tuesday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 49:1-6; Psalm 70; John 13:21-33,36-38

All four 'servant songs' are read in Holy Week, the first three on Monday (Isaiah 42:1-7), Tuesday (today's first reading) and Wednesday (Isaiah 50:4-9), and the fourth on Good Friday (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

The servant is a paradoxical figure. On one side he is weak and vulnerable: not crying out, not lifting up his voice, giving his back to the smiters, a lamb led to the slaughter, a sheep dumb before its shearers. On the other side he is strong and powerful: a sharp sword, a polished arrow, his face set like flint, challenging his adversary to come forward for the struggle, given a portion with the great and dividing the spoil with the strong. It is God's strength that sees him through, enabling him to embrace weakness, and so to become the source of a salvation reaching to the ends of the earth.

We might then be sympathetic as we see Jesus' closest disciples struggling with this paradox. What were they to make of what was happening in the last days of Jesus' life? At times the reactions of Peter and Judas are very close - get behind me Satan; Satan had put it into the heart of Judas to betray him - but the demand on their faith and understanding must have been enormous. The difference between them in the end is between two forms of betrayal, a passive, cowardly one and an active, calculating one. Except that Peter was always ready to repent, to learn again. The beloved disciple seems calmer. Perhaps, like Mary in yesterday's gospel, his love for Jesus is sufficient to carry him through what is to come. And (at least according to John's Gospel) we do find him, alone of the men, remaining at Calvary.

The human characters in the drama are dwarfed by something bigger going on within but also beyond them. The glory of God is to be revealed in the heart of Satan's night. To a certain extent we are participants in this drama and its outcome is certainly crucial for us. But at a certain point we are spectators rather than participants, looking on from a distance, filled with wonder and fear. We pray for encouragement and perseverance in engaging with the paradoxes of love and faith, particularly when we see how prone we are to betrayal, whether it is from cowardice or from calculation. But there is time to repent, and to learn again. More than ever in this week of salvation.

The cost of Christian discipleship

Monday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Psalm 26; John 12:1-11

Saint John interprets the event of the anointing of the feet of Jesus at Bethany, which we are given as today’s Gospel reading, as a foretelling of Jesus’ death. This episode in the life of Christ can, therefore, serve to remind us of the events that we are about to commemorate during this Holy Week. Furthermore, in considering the roles of Mary and Lazarus in this Gospel story, we can also gain some insight into the nature of Christian discipleship.

Both Mary, who anoints the feet of Jesus, and Lazarus, who is a guest at the table of the Lord, are, each in their own way, drawn into the drama of growing resentment and hatred at the life and message of Jesus Christ. The enemies of Jesus even seek to kill Lazarus, who had been raised to new life by Christ, because he is such a powerful witness and the cause of many believing in Jesus. Similarly, Mary is criticised for wasting her energies and resources on Jesus when there are others who appear to be more deserving of her time and possessions. Her piety is considered to be a distraction from the main business of service to the poor.

So we see that anyone who wishes to be associated with Jesus Christ risks experiencing the wrath and anger of his enemies. Some of the criticisms aimed at the followers of Jesus can be very subtle, for instance, the charge that the poor should be our priority. Certainly there is an important place for service to the poor. Indeed, it is a fundamental aspect of Christian conduct. Yet, because Mary recognises who Jesus really is – 'I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into the world' (John 11:27) – she understands that he too must be given due honour. Taking some time to recall and to enter into the events of the Passion of Christ during this Holy Week is one way in which we can, at this time, give honour to God and express our own Christian discipleship.