Mother of God

On this the Octave Day of Christmas we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. How often we Christians use that title and with such ease. It slips of the tongue or greets us on the page so innocently and disarmingly. We use it so often, in the rosary or at at Mass, that we can simply overlook how profound and shocking a statement it is. Indeed, to some of other faiths it would simply be blasphemous to announce that God, the eternal and uncreated, could ever lower Himself to be born of, and cared for by, one of His creatures.

In the first few centuries of the life of the Church many Christians also found it a difficult statement to accept. Even if one accepts Mary as the mother of Jesus, isn't it a bit much to go around proclaiming a humble women to be the 'Mother of God'? Are we not in danger of proclaiming a creature the originator of the Godhead? This title, a western derivation of the Greek theotokos, or God-bearer, was first formerly adopted at the Council of Ephesus in 431. It was used here as a way to assert the divinity of Christ against those who would emphasise a disunity between Christ's human and divine natures. The Council sought to show that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human; one person, two natures; fully God and fully man. As such it follows that what can be predicated of Jesus Christ can be predicated of God also. So it was that this highest title of honour was formerly affirmed in the Church. The Church says; the one whom Mary bore is God, not that Mary is the origin of the Holy Trinity.

We should still be shocked by this wonderful title; not to the point of disbelief, scepticism or mistrust, but in the sense of being in awe of the statement. The title can tell us much about Mary and much about her Son. It should remind us of how powerful an event the Incarnation really is and what an example of all that is faithful and holy Mary is. The courageous and humble fiat that Mary proclaimed enabled the Incarnation to occur and she became unique as 'Mother of God'. No other human would or could be as close to God as Mary is to her Son; but in this closeness we are reminded that it is Mary that enabled the Word to take flesh that He might share in our humanity and we in His divinity. We too can share in that bond between Mother and Child; we can share in His divinity because He, through Mary, was clothed in our humanity.

Amidst the excitement and anticipation of the beginning of a New Year we should take time to ponder these truths and to ask how we, with the help of God's grace, might share a greater closeness in the mystery we proclaim and at which Mary is at the heart. 

The Feast of the Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family is on the Sunday between Christmas and the Feast of Holy Mary, Mother of God (1^st January). It is an important feast, not only because of the role it played in our redemption but also the fact that it is still the model of a Christian family, even today.

Ten years ago, Blessed Pope John Paul II expressed his wishes for today’s families to have ‘the peace, harmony and love of the house in Nazareth.’ It is not to mean that the Holy family did not experience problems. Already before Joseph and Mary were together she became pregnant and Joseph was in great confusion and wanted to divorce her quietly until he had a dream and the angel of the Lord invited him to take her in his house. When the child was about to be born, the family could not find a room in the entire village of Bethlehem. When Jesus was presented in the Temple, the prophet Simeon told Mary that her heart would be pierced by a sword. Later, when Herod heard that a child was born to become King, he tried to kill him and the family had to go to Egypt. When Jesus was twelve years old, the parents lost him in the Temple of Jerusalem. It is highly probable that Joseph’s business had some financial problems as it is the case for poor families in occupied territories where the conquered people have to pay taxes to the occupier. Pope John Paul II said that those qualities of the Holy families (despite the hardships they went through) would help today’s families ‘overcome trials and difficulties [they] encounter on [their] way’.

Among other current issues dealt by Church authorities, family issues have taken an important place. The Holy Family of Nazareth is the ideal of a Christian family even though we all recognise the fact that many families do not look much like the Holy Family and are still good families. The United Kingdom is also very much affected by the family breakdown. Many children are raised by a single mother, a single father or in other kinds of households where the traditional setting ‘father-mother-children’ does not obviously appear. Today, several children have had more than two fathers or mothers by the time they leave the family house for studies, jobs or other commitments. Most of the time those children become very decent, responsible members of the society. However, they often have to go through extra pains while growing up. It may also destroy their future completely.

The Holy Family still inspires indeed. It went through many problems that have always been experienced by families: homelessness, poverty, doubt, confusion, persecution, exile, occupation of their land by a foreign army, heavy laws imposed by corrupted leaders, etc.  The fact that it kept its dignity and became the ideal family for all Christians depended on the harmonious relationship and love between Joseph to Mary and Jesus.

Just as prayed Blessed John Paul II in 2002, ‘let us entrust to the Holy Family of Nazareth the families of the whole world, especially those that have been most harshly tried by suffering or are in difficulty’.

Lord of lords and King of kings – enthroned in a manger!

Luke 2:1- 20.

Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus begins with a reference to Augustus Caesar (v 1). It is easy to rapidly move on to the rest of the account, and so put Augustus Caesar out of our minds, but in fact Luke’s account goes on to make a sustained comparison of the baby Jesus with the Emperor Augustus Caesar. In doing this Luke, and more fundamentally God, critiques worldly empire and power, and shows where real power, authority and might lie.

Augustus, after a series of military campaigns, had brought a good measure of peace, the so called Pax Romana, to the Mediterranean world of his day and the Roman dominions. This followed a period of civil war and constitutional instability. Rome and the territories under its control emerged as an Empire, and no longer a republic. Power was now much more concentrated in one person: the emperor. Significant titles and claims were made for Augustus and the role he and his successors held, as emperor or ‘Caesar’. Though we are used to giving many of these terms largely or exclusively religious and indeed Christian meaning, the Greek words for ‘saviour’ and ‘lord’ were also applicable in the political realm and claimed by Caesar. He had saved the Roman territories from the evils besetting them, and would do so again. He was the lord of all people in his territories and they were to live by his laws and under his authority, with a good deal of fear and respect. Additionally the emperor had a role in the religious cult of his day and was seen as a conduit of divine favour. A cult of emperor worship was developed, linked to the recognition of the emperor as in some way divine, this recognition and cult intended to encourage loyalty to the emperor, and to ensuring the stability and peace and prosperity of the empire.

In the light of this the words of the angel to the shepherds take on extra poignancy, one that has political as well as religious significance. Jesus is identified not only as the Christ (born in David’s city of Bethlehem), but as Saviour and Lord, both terms that, in Jewish thought, are linked with God (v 11). Furthermore this infant, again like Caesar, brings peace (v 14). A clear link of the child with God is indicated by the presence of massed hosts (ie armies) of heaven, made visible to the shepherds (v 13). This apparition makes clear the awesome glory of the real God in a way the man-made ritual of emperor worship simply could not. The living God of the Jews, commander of heavenly hosts, is the source of authority and power that will establish this child as Saviour and Lord.

But the sign of such a royal birth, of a royal king, is not seemingly royal or powerful. It is ‘a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger’ (v 12). This speaks of poverty and perhaps rejection: be is located not in a palace or even a bed, but in an animal feeding trough (v 7). There was no other place for him. And, though their use was probably part of normal good parenting at that time, the swaddling bands speak symbolically of restriction of movement, even of loss of freedom. Nor is a baby naturally powerful. These signs foreshadow, and to the attentive reader suggest, his death and particularly his burial, when he was again wrapped up in cloths (perhaps by his mother) and laid in a borrowed tomb, having less movement and seemingly less influence than a baby. The sign then points to a strange victory, to strange kingship and power, at least by worldly standards. This baby came into the world specifically to die for it.

The shepherds were not perturbed by this seeming paradox. They had seen the glory of heaven, and then had seen the predicted sign in the concrete reality of the child in the manger with Mary and Joseph (v 16) and so they praised and glorified God (v 20). They may well not have understood its deeper significance, or what it indicated about how God would establish his kingdom. At any rate, we here nothing more of them. But Mary treasured and pondered it all (v 19). It probably did not make complete sense to her at the time but she kept and deepened her faith that God would fulfil his plans through Jesus.

We too and called to ponder and to grow in our faith and to see that God is bigger than worldly events and powers. Indeed God can use their actions to serve his purposes whether they intend to or not. Thus the census, an expression of power, resulted in Jesus being born in Bethlehem (vv 2-5), thus fulfilling Messianic prophecy (especially Micah 5:1-3). Later, the death of Jesus would be ordered by the representative of Caesar and carried out by Roman law. But this did not vanquish Jesus. Rather it was the means by which he established an everlasting victory over all evil, sin and death itself, something no mere earthly ruler has ever achieved. Jesus is thus Lord and Saviour on a scale vastly beyond the scope of any emperor, and the bringer of a far deeper and more enduring peace. He can do this because he is God, and worthy of real worship, not the cheap idolatry of the emperor cult. Nowadays we tend not to worship our political leaders but we are easily seduced into participating in the cult of celebrity and fame, or longing for such celebrity, even fifteen minutes of it, ourselves.

Rather let us ponder the helpless child in the manger, and see there the power of God to save us. Let us accept him and make him our Lord and God, worshipping him alone. To those who do accept him he gives power to become children of God (Jn 1:12). And let us know that he has power over all worldly powers, even now and that one day he will judge them and that now he asks us to witness to them. According to our various vocations let us also work with them, that the political and civil realm may prepare for his coming in glory and judgement by even now ruling and governing and organising itself according to his teaching and justice and mercy. He alone brings lasting peace, for he alone is God, Saviour and Lord.

Glory to God in the Highest, to God made manifest in the baby Jesus, lying in a manger!

Tomorrow You Shall See the Glory of the Lord

Readings: II Samuel 7: 1-5, 8-12, 14,16; Psalm 88; Luke 1: 67-79

Christmas Eve is a day of anticipation. Even its name identifies it as ‘the day before’ Christmas, and today’s liturgy repeats many times the words ‘Today you shall know that the Lord is at hand, and tomorrow you shall see his glory.’ These words are drawn from the Book of Exodus (Ex 16: 6-7), and in their original context refer to the miraculous feeding of the people of Israel in the wilderness: it is in the miraculous gift of manna from heaven that the Israelites will, in the morning, see the glory of the Lord.

Now, though it’s the words themselves – ‘the glory of the Lord’ – that make this text an obvious choice for today’s liturgy, the parallel with the account of the gift of manna in particular can also help us think about our anticipation of the Nativity. Throughout the whole of Advent, the reading of the prophets at Mass has been drawing our attention to the fact that the prophecies of the Old Testament find their fulfilment in the amazing truth that God has taken to himself a human nature like ours, and was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem around two thousand years ago.

Today’s Old Testament reading, though, steps back beyond the period of the so-called prophetic books, which lament the current situation in Israel and Judah and speak of an impending restoration or of judgement. Rather, today we turn to the story of King David which we find in II Samuel (though interestingly – as an aside – the historical books are also counted among the prophets by Jews) a much earlier example of God’s intervention in history not just to put right what has gone wrong with Israel, but as the completion of his plan for all humanity in which the people of Israel, and the house of David, have a special part.

And if the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem (‘the house of bread’ in Hebrew), the city of his ancestor David, is the fulfilment of God’s plan to which the whole of the Old Testament bears witness, then his gift of manna to the Israelites in the wilderness can also be understood as pointing in some way to his gift of his Son to the world to satisfy that most profound human hunger for a knowledge of God. And it turns out that that knowledge of God is not revealed to us in complex propositions or grand pomp, but in a helpless child lying in a manger – the same Jesus who, on the night before he suffered and died, took bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples as the best sign of what he was doing for them.

As we make our various preparations for tomorrow’s celebrations then (some of which may well be undertaken with a view to satisfying our physical hunger), we should remember also to prepare ourselves to receive ever more fully God’s gift of himself which he made by taking human form and being born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem.

News from around the Province

The newsletter of the English Dominican Province has been relaunched as Friars Preachers, and the first issue in the new format is just out. Click on the image below to open it, or click here to visit the News section of the Province website, where you can also find back issues of the newsletter.

In this issue, among other things, you can find reports on:

• New chapel in Edinburgh
• Ordinations and Professions
• Launch of the Dominican Youth Movement
• New community in Durham
• Buckfast Theology Summer School

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Recognition and Rejoicing

After a few lines of introduction Luke kicks off his Gospel with two Annunciations: in the first the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah the priest while he is serving in the temple and tells him that his now elderly wife Elizabeth will finally conceive the child that she has longed for. This child is to be named John (Luke 1:13) and he shall make ready for the Lord a people prepared (Luke 1:17). Zechariah expresses surprise and so Gabriel declares that Zechariah will be struck dumb for his lack of belief. This invites us to contrast this first annunciation with the second which immediately follows it. This time Gabriel comes to Our Lady and greets her: ‘Hail, full of grace’ (Luke 1:28). He goes on to tell her that she will conceive a son who is to be named Jesus (Luke 1:31), and that he will be Son of the Most High and rule over the house of Jacob for ever (Luke 1:32-3). Mary, like Zechariah, is surprised and asks "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (Luke 1: 34). Yet Mary is not struck dumb. Instead the respectful and even reverential Gabriel explains that the Holy Spirit will ‘overshadow’ Mary and ‘therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God’ (Luke 1:35). Gabriel then drops Mary a heavy hint: Elizabeth, who had been called barren, had herself conceived (Luke 1:24. 1:36).

On the one hand, then, Luke seems to be encouraging us to reflect on the differences between these two pregnancies: Elizabeth is elderly and had been considered barren; she is married to a temple priest and is thus she at the heart of the religious establishment. Her pregnancy took away her shame and ‘reproach among men’ for not bearing a child, but her husband’s lack of faith left him dumb. Mary, in contrast, is young (probably in her mid-teens), betrothed to Joseph of the line of David, yet still a virgin. In Luke’s gospel, unlike the gospel of Matthew, Joseph’s attitude to Mary’s pregnancy is not discussed, but it seems clear that Mary’s fiat is a risk and a profound act of faith. Against the backdrop of this contrast between Elizabeth and Mary, and by implication their sons John and Jesus, Luke moves on in this Sunday’s Gospel to underline how these two children are intimately connected. 

After hearing that Elizabeth was pregnant we read that Mary ‘rose up’ and went ‘with haste’ to the hill country of Judah to visit Elizabeth (Luke 1: 39-40). According to scripture scholars, this is likely to have been a four day walk from Galilee - a long journey for a pregnant teenager. The fact that Mary made all this effort to visit Elizabeth is usually interpreted as a sign of Mary’s great charity: Mary made an extraordinary effort to care for an elderly relative. Yet this explanation does not exclude the possibility that Mary went to Elizabeth hoping for more information. Gabriel had, after all, hinted to Mary that Elizabeth’s pregnancy was somehow connected with her own. If this was indeed at the back of Mary’s mind then her hope was not disappointed. As soon as Mary’s greeting reached Elizabeth’s ears John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesied (Luke 1: 41-45). 

The prophetic word, then, after centuries of silence, returns to Israel once more when John, still in his mother’s womb, recognises the presence of Jesus and leaps for joy. From his mother’s womb, then, John the Baptist was pointing to Christ, leading others to recognize Christ, in this instance his mother Elizabeth whose prophecy helps Mary herself to better understand the gift that she had been given. The scene, then, is set for the rest of the Gospel. John, the son of an elderly woman, from a priestly background, will ‘make ready for the Lord a people prepared’ (Luke 1: 17) by recalling Israel to its vocation and by pointing those that come to him to Christ. Hence John is the greatest and the last of the Old Testament prophets: indeed his vocation sums up all Old Testament prophecy. Yet as John himself will later proclaim, he is not ‘worthy to untie’ Jesus’ sandals (Luke 3:16) and it is the holiness of Mary’s child that Elizabeth, through John, recognises in today’s gospel. 

At the visitation, then, we reach the pinnacle of Old Testament prophecy: the recognition of God Incarnate. If we read on in Luke’s Gospel reading beyond this Sunday’s passage we read that Mary responds to Elizabeth’s prophecy by breaking out into the Magnificat: the exultant and prophetic song of praise that the Church sings everyday as part of the evening prayer of the Divine office. In the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, then, we have a kind of chain reaction of recognition and rejoicing. Gabriel announces to Mary that she will conceive by the Holy Spirit, and hints that she should visit Elizabeth who is also mysteriously pregnant. Elizabeth, prompted by the infant John in her womb and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, jubilantly recognises Mary as the ‘Mother of her Lord’ (Luke 1:43). Mary, perhaps only for the first time beginning to grasp the significance of what had happened to her, is overcome with joy and explodes into song: a song that is sung every day by the Church at evening prayer and is at the heart of how the Church understands itself. This hymn begins: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’ (Luke 1: 46-7). We rejoice, like John the Baptist, like Elizabeth, and like Mary, because Jesus is near, because God is with us.

The Pope's First Tweet and the End of the World

So the End of the World has still not yet happened, and perhaps you are tired of all this waiting?

In case you're on tenterhooks, you can keep abreast of Doomsday live at the Guardian blog.

As for me, I've lost count of the number of predicted apocalypses in recent times. Earlier this year, 21 May was announced (then promptly retracted) by the Californian 'Christian preacher', Harold Camping. But believing in nonsense normally ends in disappointment. When that date passed without doom, some people were quick to console Mr. Camping:

Of course, Mr. Camping can't have read his Bible very carefully. For Our Lord clearly states that we cannot predict his Second Coming: 'Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.' (Mt. 25:13) Perhaps we will one day make reasonable predictions when the world will end, not from religious posturing but from scientific observation – of the Sun's expansion, of wayward asteroids, or whatever. But no such threat is even remotely plausible at the moment and should not trouble our sleep in the slightest.

Far more important is the fact that the Second Coming could happen any minute now, without any warnings or predictions whatsoever. So, although apocalypse is the theme of the readings at Mass at the end of the liturgical year (i.e. just before Advent), it remains relevant now, for Advent is the period par excellence of watching and waiting.

Of course, Advent is not explicitly a preparation for apocalypse, but for Christmas; and it would be foolish to conflate these two! More importantly, we have to reject 'secular' understandings of apocalypse, by which people mean the simple destruction of the world. For Christians, 'apocalypse' – literally the unveiling, or revelation – is God's definitive act of re-making the cosmos. So, the end of the world is not destruction, but re-creation: 'a new heaven and a new earth' (Rev. 21:1).

It's been a good month for earth-shattering claims. A great storm of anticipation arose when it was announced that the Pope, with brand-new Twitter accounts in eight languages, would send his first ever tweet on 12 December (that one in June 2011 doesn't count because it wasn't from his personal account...).

So, without a single tweet, the Holy Father (@pontifex) amassed over a million followers – at least when you add up his accounts in all languages – while not 'following' anyone but his own accounts in return. I took this snapshot a little earlier, but by the time his first tweet came out he had over 723,000 followers in English.

And, when it at last appeared, what did the pope's first tweet actually say? 

Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.



With all the hype, the media and the Twitterati quickly pounced on it, according to the full range of rather predictable responses. And immediately, @pontifex achieved a better retweeting record than Justin Bieber.

Five more tweets followed the same day. Look them up (or click image below), if you haven't already, and notice what @pontifex is saying. He asking predictable rhetorical questions, followed by pithy, profound answers. The format is unusually clipped, but the content is what we've come to expect from the man who is at once theologically deep and pastorally precise. No pictures of kittens. No earth-shattering revelations. Just apparently Business as Usual for the shepherd of Christ's earthly flock. Small wonder, then, that the hype has largely subsided. The Pope is a Catholic! No news there..... although The Onion imagined some humorous alternatives ('I'm still catholic I just don't go to church or believe in jesus [sic]'). 

But can Pope Benedict keep up this online activity? Breaking out into the Twittersphere was one thing, sending a great message for the Church and modern connectivity; but is it necessary or even beneficial in the long run? In fact, the Vatican confirmed that subsequent tweets would not be posted by the Pontiff himself, though 'it's always going to have his engagement and his approval'. @pontifex won't follow other accounts (how could he/they possibly choose?), won't crack jokes, won't retweet or use the hashtag. In effect, the Pope is not 'on Twitter', in the normal sense of that phrase. It would absurd if he were.

That does not obviate the possibility of other meaningful papal interventions in secular public discourse. Witness Benedict's article in the Financial Times, just three days ago, perhaps the first time a pope has ever written for a secular newspaper. Recall, too, how Christmas 2010 saw the papal debut on the BBC's Thought for the Day. These are incredibly significant acts, almost necessitated by the global growth in social networks. We could almost say, it's not enough that the Pope is the Pope: he must be seen to be the Pope! In so doing, he is reassuring those of us Catholics who are active online, that what we do here can be a fruitful work for the sake of Jesus Christ and his Gospel.

This work of the New Evangelisation is a participation in God's own fructifying providence. God is always doing new things, always re-creating.

See I am doing a new thing! 

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland. (Is. 43:19)

So it's time to prepare – the best is yet to come. The world has not ended with a cycle of the Mayan calendar; nor with the advent of @pontifex to the world of social media. It is Christ's coming at Christmas which we wait for in hope – an event far greater than a mere tweet, even a Papal Tweet.

A Virgin will Conceive ...

Isa 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Lk 1:26-38. Also Mt 1:18-25.

It is interesting that the liturgy places the reading of Isaiah’s prophecy that ‘a young woman / virgin is with child and will bear a son’ with Luke’s account of the annunciation to Mary of the conception of Jesus. Luke’s text makes clear that Mary is a virgin, and, interestingly in view of her impending marriage to Joseph, that she sees her virginity as a problem to the fulfilment of the promise of motherhood of the messiah made her by the angel (v 32-34). Luke’s account goes on to make clear that it is God himself who will directly bring about the conception of the child in her womb, without the intervention of a man, God’s action described in terms taken from the way God visits and fills his temple with his presence (v 35). The child will thus be holy in a special way and called Son of God. (Overtones of the language of the act of divine creation may be present as well.) But commentators in general do not think that Luke is actively drawing on Isaiah for his account. It is Matthew that makes explicit and very significant use of it, seeing the text as referring both to the virginal conception of Jesus by Mary and the fact that the child is properly called or at least described as Emmanuel, God-with-us’ (Mt 1:18-25).

Why does Luke seem to omit it but Matthew use it? The decision of both authors may be based on a similar knowledge of the linguistic detail and history of the Isaian text. Their respective choices may well highlight important but different features of the nativity events. The Hebrew version of Isaiah uses the word ‘‘almah’ which in the Old Testament refers to a young woman who has reached puberty and thus is ready for marriage. The stress does not fall on her virginity though that would be expected or hoped for in such societies. The Greek Septuagint (LXX), a later translation but in common use at the time of Jesus, in Isa 7:14 uses ‘parthenos’ in Isa 7, a term that means a (young) woman of marriageable age but it has far more stress on virginity. The Hebrew text does not explicitly speak of or point to a virginal conception since a natural conception could be a sign of divine blessing. The LXX allows for a more supernatural interpretation of the sign of ‘the virgin who will conceive’, but does not linguistically demand it.

But there was no clear expectation of such a supernatural conception of the Messiah, nor of a divine incarnation, at the time of Mary. These were new actions of God in history, unprecedented. Certainly in the light of them it was possible to read the Jewish Scriptures in a new and truer way – the true way – and see the prediction of Jesus in Jewish prophecy, symbol, divine action and liturgical rite. But that interpretation was undertaken precisely in the light of this new and direct and decisive act of God. (As St Paul put it, for example in Eph 1, Jesus was the mystery, hidden from the beginning, if then prepared for, but only made known in his own day.) Jesus unlocks the secret and obscure meaning of the Scriptures that precede him.

It is because of this newness that in Luke’s account Mary legitimately questions God (v 34): she is not expecting a virginal conception. And it is her simple but committed acceptance of its announcement to her, an act without precedent in Jewish history, that points to the greatness of her faith (v 38). Luke’s ‘non-use’ of the Isaian text emphasises this point.

Matthew does things differently. In the light of the fact of the Virgin Birth he uses the providential creation of the LXX as God’s way of furnishing, or at least flagging up, a prophecy about the virginal conception and Incarnation and thus of showing that they did fulfil Scripture. In this way he commends them for belief to Jewish and other audiences.

But let us focus on Luke’s text, which is today’s gospel reading, and on the extraordinary faith of Mary. It is a faith born of and sustained by divine grace. It was God’s gift to her but was also really her own, risk-filled, but loving response. She is stepping out boldly in faith, believing God can bring about her pregnancy and make the child the saviour of Israel, the fulfilment in person of the temple and its liturgy. As such she accepts and commits herself to this new and decisive act of God in history which is the Incarnation.

We are called to enter into the faith of Mary, so that Jesus may be formed in us, born of us (as we have first been born of him), so that we may show him, he who is God-among-us, to the world of today. Like Mary we are directly reliant on grace for this: the flesh cannot instigate it (cf Jn 1:13). In this all Christians are called to be virgins, but ones that bring forth Jesus. May we bring forth Jesus and show him to others this Christmas!

19 December: O Radix Jesse

Below is a post written by fr Robert Gay OP, which Godzdogz ran, back in 2006,  under the title "It's not too late". Fr Robert has recently returned to Oxford as Bursar of Blackfriars Hall and Studium.


Readings: Judges 13:2-7, 24-25, Psalm 70:3-6, 16-17, Luke 1:5-25

Let’s try for a moment to imagine that all we know about Jesus is some vague notion that he has something to do with God, that he is someone who will change our lives and that we will find out how on Christmas day. Then when Christmas day comes we discover that Jesus is God incarnate, God come into the world as flesh and blood. Can we imagine how this incredible news might dramatically change our lives, not just on Christmas day, but forever? For most of us it is hard to imagine what this might feel like. We are all too familiar with the story, so we pass over it almost without a second thought. During these last days of Advent we must prepare for Christmas in such a way that when we hear the Christmas story, it comes to us afresh, as if for the first time.

In today’s Gospel, Zechariah seems to be world weary, set in his ways and caught up in the routine of daily life. So much so that he is not a man prepared to receive God’s message, a message which is God’s gift. This probably resonates with our own experience. But see how God brings Zechariah two gifts: the gift of a son, and the gift of silence. The silence gives him the time to be prepared, time for his idea of an inferior, predictable God to be swept away, preparing him to receive God’s love more fully. Regardless of how good or bad this Advent has been there is still time left for us to be silent, to allow God to shape us into people who will willingly accept his Son this Christmas. It is an opportunity not to be missed.

O Root of Jesse, set up as a sign for the peoples, before whom kings will stop their mouths, to whom the nations will pray: come to set us free, delay no more.

"That is a true friend" - Fr Denis Geraghty OP (1929-2012)

Fr Allan White OP, formerly Prior Provincial of the English Province and currently Senior Chaplain at New York University, preached the following homily at the funeral of Fr Denis, which took place at St Dominic’s, London, on 5th November 2012:

One of the things Father Denis felt strongly about, and often he only seemed to feel strongly about things, indifference like logic was alien to him, was the undesirability of panegyrics at funerals. Once on returning from a funeral he dismissed the sermon of the preacher saying ‘he came to praise him not to bury him.’ Father Denis believed that the task of a Dominican friar is to talk about God. The work of a priest is not to draw attention to himself but to point towards Christ. He is sent for the service of Christ's Gospel. The priest points to Christ by coming to resemble him and that resemblance is to be seen not only in what he says but in what he does and in what he is. Word and deed go together. The word does not only need to be heard it must be seen.

St Thomas Aquinas considered, perhaps not surprisingly, that being called to the work of preaching was to be called to the highest form of human existence (IIaIIae 188.6) Those chosen by the risen Christ as his ambassadors are chosen because they have seen him, and eaten and drunk with him, they have enjoyed his society and been accepted as his friends. The way that they live their lives is a demonstration of the friendship they enjoy with him. In the end the most powerful and important sermon we ever preach is the sermon of our lives. In wrestling with the Word our lives become an enacted word, commentaries on the Gospel.

Fr Denis preaching at the funeral of Br Vincent Cook in 2010

Blessed Jordan of Saxony said of St Dominic that God gave him a special grace of compassion for sinners, the poor and the afflicted: he carried their distress in the innermost sanctuary of his heart. For Blessed Jordan Dominic had a gift, a charism, which prompted him to see and to share in an intense way in the sufferings of others. The Dominican mission of preaching is an exercise of the mercy of God made real and mediated through the human life and experience of his ministers. Father Denis raised eccentricity to a new level. He was a distinct and idiosyncratic character, his intention may have been to act as a signpost to Christ, he may have wished his own personality to fade into the background but God gave him a special grace of eccentricity which brought people to see the Lord in him. The countless number of people who came to him for counsel, confession, companionship and spiritual friendship testifies that in him they found the living Word of God’s love, forgiveness and acceptance. He was not unaware of his own failings and would often disarmingly admit them, usually when he had brought one of the brethren to the brink of murdering him, but instead of isolating him from others and marking him off from them these traits of character made him more accessible to others. He thought of himself as unimportant and was gifted with a rare humility which rather than rendering him bland or anonymous made him uniquely original. At times his unconventionality bordered on the anarchic but the gift he received form God was precisely to be a minister of God’s own anarchic grace which freed people from the broken circumstances of their lives from which they believed there was no escape. Father Denis never believed he was an expert on anything, but he was expert at reading human hearts. This skill he acquired through allowing the Lord to break open his own heart. He never thought that he had graduated from the school of the Lord’s service. There was always something more for him to learn and one of the things he was learning in the last years of his life was how to complete his Dominican profession of obedience as he handed himself over in surrendering himself into the hands of God.

It was said of St Dominic that he spoke only to God or about God. Fr Denis relished the ministry of the word. He loved to talk about God. In fact, he loved talking! He was always ready to preach employing that unique form of exegesis which blended acute human insight and profound spirituality with an amalgam of Professor Bultmann and Saint Alphonsus Ligouri. He never seemed to lose his way yet we knew that if he ended his sermon with the phrase ‘and so we might like to reflect on that’ it was because he was not sure of his conclusion. If he used the phrase ‘and so my dear people’ the brethren knew that things were dire. As he loved to talk about God, in his last years as his health declined he was drawn more deeply into talking to God in the mystery of prayer. His favourite spot in this church was at the foot of the crucifix in the Lady Chapel. There he spent many hours in prayer. If his active apostolate was limited his contemplative apostolate was not. Father Provincial told me yesterday that whenever he was troubled about some difficulty or problem in administration he would go to Father Denis and commission an immediate five decades of the Rosary. Father Denis was the Provincial’s equivalent of a Tibetan prayer wheel.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The most concentrated form of his teaching was given on the cross where he displayed his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. In recent months Denis entered more closely into the mystery of the cross as he prepared to take leave of us and return to the Lord whom he loved and longed for. He knew there were no short cuts. The way to glory is the way of the cross and by cleaving to the cross he hoped to learn its wisdom from him who was gentle and lowly of heart. It was that yoke of gentleness and lowliness that Father Denis took gladly on his shoulders when he was clothed in the Dominican habit at the age of 44.

Blessed Jordan, replying to a letter of Blessed Diana in which she asked him to recommend some spiritual books, advised her that all the spiritual knowledge and wisdom she desired would come from the crucified Christ. He compared the crucifix to an illuminated manuscript she needed no other books:

...you will indeed be more nobly and sweetly consoled by that book that you have daily before the eyes of the spirit, the book of life, the tablets “of the purest law, that excites the soul.” This “pure law” (Ps. 18:8)…is love, when you behold Jesus your redeemer with arms outstretched on the Cross, written with his wounds, pained with his holy blood. …No book can lead more compellingly to love.

It was in this book that Father Denis read deeply as in these last months of private and secret intense pain he prepared for the final stages of his return to his Father’s house.

When St Thomas talks about the New Law of the Gospel he asks is it a written law? He concludes that no book could contain the excellence of Christ’s teaching. The new law of grace was designed to be impressed on the hearts of its hearers. Preaching, proclaiming the word is not the communication of information, it is not an empty moralism telling people what to do, it witnesses to Christ. The foundation of our life is the sequela Christi, the following of Christ. We are all disciples of Christ. Our ministry flows from discipleship. In our day we have often come to privilege the spoken word over every other form of word. We need to remember that we have heard His voice, but we have also seen His glory. As we read in the second reading from the First Letter of John our subject is not only what we have heard but what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed, and felt with our hands…the word of life. There is a hearing, but also a seeing. It is true that scriptural revelation is a revelation of the word, but it is not only that. Underlying the word there is always a vision, there must always be a vision. The whole story of scripture is driven by a hunger for sight, a nostalgia for the vision of God. “It is your face Lord that I seek. Hide not your face.’ In our intensely visual society, dominated by the flickering image of screen and tabloid, people want to see. In our world many people have lost the ability to read the Word, the witness of Scripture is alien to them, all the more need then for preachers who not only speak the word but do it and live it and show it forth. As an old Chinese missionary prayer has it ‘Lord make us to be Bibles so that those who cannot read the Word can read it in us.’

In his letter to the Ephesians St Paul reminds them that they are God’s work, his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared us in advance to walk in. We are God’s project, or as some translate it, we are God’s masterpiece, his principal work of art. We are being warned not to get ideas above our station. We are not our own project. We cannot create ourselves, if we try to do that we shall inevitably follow the wrong template, we will be design failures. When we try to fashion ourselves we frequently start with the wrong blueprint of humanity. Paul is saying that we often start from our own experience of what it is to be human and think that this is all there is to it. In fact we start in the wrong place and inevitably reach the wrong destination. The model of true humanity is presented to us in Jesus; it is only as we conform to this blueprint, live in accordance with the life that comes through him that we are truly alive and taste of true humanity. We can only be truly human if we allow ourselves to be his work. It is in disposing ourselves to be God’s work that we become not less ourselves but more ourselves. We become originals and workers in the world of the anarchy of grace.

Once St Francis of Assisi was passing through a field when a peasant who was ploughing saw him and ran up to him. He asked him if he was Francis and Francis said indeed he was. The farmer then said ‘I tell you do not be other than you appear to be for many people put their trust in you.’ Fr Denis never appeared to be other than he was and many mourn him today who never regretted putting their trust in him. We pray that as he continues his journey from glory to glory before the throne of God that he is becoming even more himself, although with what effect on the heavenly liturgy can only be imagined.

Last week we celebrated Mass for Father Denis in the chapel of New York University Catholic Centre. After the Mass one of the students came to me and said ‘Father I am sorry for the death of your friend.’ He asked me what he was like. I gave as best I could a description of Father Denis. At the end the young student asked me a question which rather took me aback. He asked, ‘Did he make you feel as if you wanted to be a better person.’ I was surprised at this and thought about it before answering. I replied ‘Yes, he did.’ I do not think he quite managed it as so often in this life desire outstrips performance. The young student then said: ‘that is a true friend.’

That is a true friend.

Advent: Who is this man?

Readings:Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent: Jeremiah 23:5-8; Psalm 71; Matthew 1: 18-24 

In these last few days before Christmas our Gospel readings at Mass are taken, unsurprisingly, from the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. Both of the evangelists use an account of the circumstances surrounding Jesus's conception, birth, and infancy as  an interpretative  key for the rest of their gospels: from the very first chapters of Matthew and Luke the reader is let in on the secret  of Jesus's true identity so that we might better understand his life, words, and deeds. Yesterday for our Gospel reading we heard the famous genealogy which opens Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 1: 1-17). This genealogy is marked by a continual repetition of the same pattern over  and over  again: X was the father of Y, and Y the father of Z and so on all the way from Abraham through to King David and finally reaching Jacob the Father of Joseph: yet here the pattern is broken. We do not read: ‘and Joseph was the father of Jesus’, as the continual repetition might lead us to expect but instead: ‘Joseph [was] the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born’. Thus from the very first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel the question of Jesus’s paternity is raised. What is Jesus' relation to Joseph?

Today’s Gospel, Matthew 1: 18-25, follows immediately after this genealogy and tells the story of Jesus’s conception from Joseph’s perspective. Interestingly, Matthew takes Jesus’s Divine paternity for granted. Mary, he tells us very briefly, conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18): Jesus, then, is Son of God. Matthew swiftly moves the narrative on to focuses his attention instead on establishing that Jesus is also Son of David, a legitimate heir of the line that he has just traced through his genealogy. This explains Matthew’s focus on Joseph rather than Mary: the Davidic line could only be transmitted through the Father. 

The doctrine of the Virgin birth, then, requires that the place of Jesus in David’s line be secured by adoption by one who is already a ‘son of David’. Joseph grafted Jesus into his line by naming him (Matthew 1:25). Names in the Jewish tradition were understood to have a kind of vocational power: they served to define the child’s identity and thus destiny. It was the father’s privilege to name his child. In so doing the father acknowledged that the child was born in wedlock and identified the child as his own. Joseph, we read, did not choose Jesus’s name, this was given to him by the angel, but by following the angels instructions and naming him he claimed Jesus as one of his own on behalf of David’s house and on behalf of humanity. Thus Jesus’s dual paternity is affirmed: Jesus, ‘God dwelling with us’ (Matthew 1:23) or in popular etymology ‘The Lord saves’, becomes invested with the significance of the house of David. Matthew sees in this an encouragement to interpret Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, in the light of the promises made to Israel and the promises made to David: Jesus both fulfils the promises of the Old Testament and illuminates them. 

Matthew offers us, then, in the opening chapter of his Gospel, some strong clues as to how to interpret the narrative that follows: Jesus is both Son of God and Son of David, he both fulfills and interprets the history of Israel. Matthew also offers us, in his portrait of Joseph, a model of how to receive the Gospel. Joseph, we are told, is a righteous man (Matthew 1:19): in other words he was a faithful observer of the law. This law, it was understood at the time, would not allow him to take as his wife a woman that had been violated or seduced. Once he was aware of Mary’s pregnancy he had no choice but to divorce her. Yet his desire to ‘send her away quietly’ (Matthew 1:19) showed that he was merciful. He did not, for example, insist on a public trial in attempt to identify the father of Mary’s child so as to avoid the obligation of paying what he would have pledged to Mary in case of divorce. Instead he planned to shield her as far as possible from public disgrace and risk it being publicly assumed that he was in fact the guilty party in this divorce. The man chosen to be Jesus’s human father, then, was merciful and just. In such a heart, a place for the Lord was already prepared.In such a home, the Lord could make his dwelling.

Advent: The coming of the Good Shepherd

These themes of the lost sheep and of the Good shepherd occur in Advent’s readings. They relate to Isaiah’s prophecy announcing the coming of the Lord (Is 40:1-11).  They remind me of a story that I heard on the radio on a bus from London of this kid who comes home from a Sunday school, running and shouting: ’Mummy, mummy: did you know that we are all sheep and God is our leopard?’ I am not sure I agree with this kid but what do I know about animals, anyway?

The lost sheep!

The story of the lost sheep tells us more about the shepherd who cares for the sheep, but we can say a few things about the sheep before we say some about the shepherd. So, how do the sheep get lost in the first place? Sometimes the sheep are lost or disappear because they want autonomy, sometimes because there is a wild animal that steals them… And sometimes, they just get lost and they have really not much to do with it, but they still face the consequences. If we apply this to believers, it is very difficult to explain how people get in the position of the lost sheep. Some people decide that the life in the flock is not good for them; they find it boring, demanding or unfair. Others grow up in circumstances that hardly help them to stay with the rest of the flock. Some people grow up to become evil and are hated by almost everyone. I remember when I started Grade 6 after the Rwandan genocide; some kids were brought into our classrooms: ex-child soldiers. We used to call them little monsters… We grew up thinking they were marked for good. Many of them are now good fathers and mothers in families. 

The same thing happens over and over everywhere in the world: some people, from all classes, all conditions of life, grow up in situations that might shape their character. Some of them grow up in abusive families, dangerous neighbourhoods, judgmental communities, money-worshiping families, and so on. That might give us a glimpse into why the shepherd still wants to go after them and bring them back. Indeed, the shepherd in this case is also their creator. He loves them dearly, more than the way the best parents in the world love their children, even if these happen to be the worst, most disrespectful children. God has the full picture of the lives. When we feel good for being better than a fellow human being, we forget that in the eyes of God we are all children; his little beloved children. 

How easily can we get discouraged facing someone who does not follow his/her way and went adrift, even condemn him/her forever because we lost all hope for him/her? We no longer have time; we are disappointed and perhaps exhausted because we do not see a way out. We do not understand, we no longer understand. We put barriers to protect ourselves. We become weak… And that is normal: we are just humans. But we should keep faith in God, the good shepherd. He will go after the lost person.

Third Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday

On this, the third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday, we sense a definite mood change. The austerity of what can be a sombre though hope-filled penitential season is replaced by a shift of emphasis. We see a burst of colour appearing at the Mass today as rose-coloured vestments replace the violet and we are enjoined at the Introit to: Rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice or Gaudete in Domino semper, hence Gaudete Sunday.  But why this shift in emphasis? We are edging that bit nearer to celebrating the coming of Our Lord at Christmas, that is undeniably true, but looking at today’s Gospel we also see that we have built upon last week’s message of preparation in Luke’s Gospel and now we see John the Baptist actively proclaiming the Coming.  ‘I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming.’ John the Baptist’s proclamation is sure and certain, filled with hope and, one must assume, wholly joyful. Can we also feel in the depths of our hearts such joy as we hear this news?

To prepare meaningfully for Christmas can be exceedingly difficult. We must ask ourselves whether, amidst the tumult of our everyday lives – the rush to find the right presents, get the cards away on time, attend the obligatory functions – we are allowing ourselves to find the time to truly prepare and, more dauntingly perhaps, truly proclaim this wonderful news. That Christ dwells in us, each and every one, and that, in little over a week, we will celebrate the most astonishing and wonderful event that is Christ’s birth here in our midst, should truly fill us with such joy and peace. However, it can only do so if we allow ourselves the time to reflect, to pray and to prepare. Only then will we, like John the Baptist, be so moved by the Spirit that we will also wish to proclaim this blessed coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in a world that greatly needs to hear His message of salvation.

Advent Silence

'Silence is golden' – really? Just think of all the pejorative adjectives we attach to silence: an awkward silence, an embarrassing silence, an oppressive silence, a stony silence, a deathly silence, even a silence you can cut with a knife. Uncomfortable silences are now eased only by the Awkward Turtle...

Generally, our busy and noisy culture has no time and space for silence. Our time costs money – if a lawyer snoozes for two minutes, that's a loss of £50! We tend to think of silence as something empty and boring, to be filled as soon as possible with talk or music – almost any kind of noise will do to keep silence at bay. We may be afraid that, when the noise dies down and we are left vulnerable to our innermost thoughts, all our suppressed anxieties and traumas will resurface.

This is the problem diagnosed by a new book, The Power of Silence: the riches that lie within, by the journalist, Graham Turner. I met Graham yesterday, after he presented his book at the University Church in Oxford. Talking about silence may sound like an oxymoron, but someone's got to do it! The book is based on interviews with many people around the world and in all walks of life. You might expect all of them to be professional silence-keepers – monks and nuns and Zen Buddhists – and these certainly make an appearance. But silence becomes absolutely fundamental to the life of everyone who discovers its power, including those whose professions might seem to be anti-silence: actors, musicians, mountaineers, and even dentists! More importantly, silence can be the only way for us to face, and then to overcome, our suppressed problems. We may have much to learn from Graham's tale of the convicted murderer who sought healing through silence.

Silence alone, however, is not enough. If it were an absolute nothingness, it would be dead. The reason silence can be fruitful and creative, is that it helps us cultivate attentiveness. That's the problem with filling our lives with constant noise (no matter how 'entertaining'): the more noise there is, the less we really listen to it, and it stops us hearing other things. Then, when the silence occasionally falls, we probably feel lost, awkward and rudderless. So we need some kind of direction, something luminous on which to focus our attention. Instead of the Awkward Turtle, perhaps the traditional Catholic response is more positive: Un ange passe...

Yesterday, Graham Turner described how his morning meditations often result in quite clear and definite resolutions, arising not in any perceptible way from within but coming as an external certainty – what he calls a 'response of love'. I think the phrase is exact and well chosen. Graham insists that not everyone need ascribe this to 'God'. But his phrase captures precisely what Christians mean by God: the personal, loving Creator who calls us and responds to our every need. The silence of God is a creative Word, a presence without oppression, a command without coercion. God's stillness is full of life, His music without noise. But I cannot describe this adequately at all; far better you go and read the Christian mystics.

Indeed, as a Dominican, I belong to a fairly talkative Order! The work of preaching (pace St Francis) must often be done with words. Yet, we also practise the contemplative life, praying the Divine Office together and spending periods in silence. Our preaching must be the fruit of contemplation, for how can we preach God's Word unless we first receive it ourselves in attentive silence? Thus, one of our Dominican mottos is contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere: to contemplate and to hand on to others the fruits of contemplation.

And what has silence got to do with Advent? This is the period when we wait in hope for the coming of Jesus Christ, as we prepare to celebrate Christmas. Waiting is often a time of quiet and stillness, especially when we don't know how long we have to wait. Unless we are silently attentive, we might miss what we are waiting for! This is especially true when we wait for God, who has an unsettling tendency to come in humble, unobtrusive and unexpected ways. 'Be still and know that I am God.' God comes in the silence; on the gentle breeze; on the quiet altar of adoration; and, in the flesh, even as a vulnerable little baby in a manger. That is truly a 'response of love' worth waiting for, especially in silence.