On Tuesday evening, Blackfriars, Oxford continued its series of talks, "God Matters? Tricky Teachings and Difficult Doctrines". Sr. Ann-Catherine Swailes OPspoke on The Role of Women in the Church. As on previous occasions, the talk was very well attended! The talk was followed by tea and coffee, after which, the speaker and audience returned for questions (not recorded).
God Matters? talks and discussions continue on Tuesdays, 8pm, at Blackfriars, Oxford. Please do come if you can and bring a friend or three! And if you can't get to Oxford, we will continue to post videos of them on Godzdogz. The next talk is this Tuesday, 4th March under the title Sex, Marriage and That Sort of Thing.
Spiritual worldliness is defined in the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium as “seeking not the Lord’s glory but human glory and personal well-being.” A fair definition, acting in some sense as a summary of the Epistle of St. James. There the 'brother of the Lord' says, ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world’ (James 1:27). One of the most effective means of avoiding spiritual worldliness is to put into action the precepts given by Christ, summed up in command to love your neighbour as yourself.
However, it would be simplistic to think that merely by doing acts of charity towards the poor one is left unstained by the world. St Mark records the story of Our Lord watching many rich men making vast contributions to the Temple Treasury, before witnessing an elderly widow offer in two copper coins. It was this widow, said Jesus, who had put in most, for she had contributed everything she had. But contributed to whom? According to the “reality” of the world no one benefited from the widow’s well-intentioned but insignificant gesture.
Jesus’s concern was not so much whether or not the donation had any great material effect. Rather, He saw the manifestation of Divine Love in the woman. Genuine charity is a spiritual act; a manifestation of Divine Love, which is always given in abundance.
The Widow's Coin
The true remedy St James offers for spiritual worldliness is found in his exposure of the world for what it truly is. 'The world, and its riches, are like flowers and grass, they bloom but then fade away' (James 1:9-11). A man is like 'a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes' (James 4:14). By the nature of things Christians are to be, in some sense, other-worldly. Their orientation is not to this world, which passes away, but to the world to come.
An excessive attachment to the world and its goods is an impediment to man’s relationship with God and his fellow man. Of course, the fruits of the earth are good things in themselves and indeed can be taken as manifestation of God’s grace, as in the case of the righteous man Job, who was certainly blessed in the eyes of the world. However, when Job was put to the test and his prosperity removed, how did he react?
Job before the Virgin and Child
Certainly Job felt deep sorrow, but not for the loss of his material goods. On hearing of the destruction of his livestock he praised God saying ‘naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return’ (Job 1:21). Rather, Job’s pain was caused by what he took his affliction to mean; that he had lost God’s loving favour. Though in fact, his tribulation was a manifestation of the greatest favour. By enduring his undeserved suffering with faith, Job foreshadowed the Passion of Our Lord. By being stripped of worldly goods and honour he became another Christ. So blessed was he that he was given foresight to see ‘that my redeemer lives, and that He shall stand at the latterday upon the earth’(Job 19:25). In his worldly poverty, Job saw 'what prophets and kings longed to see' (Luke 10:24).
St. Francis de Sales teaches that Christians should possess in their heart ‘both riches and poverty, a great care and a great contempt for temporal things.’ There is certainly a tension in the Christian’s vocation and if it is not properly balanced he can fall into the trap of spiritual worldliness, either through a lack of concern for their fellow man or through excessive care for material things. Fortunately however, Christians can look to the Widow or Job, or indeed St. James as they seek to meet the various trials of their earthly life.
From the very beginning of the pontificate of Pope Francis, he has placed great emphasis on Mary, the Mother of God. At the end of his apostolic exhortation "Evangelii Gaudium" he refers to her as the Mother of Evangelization, showing her role not only in the earthly life of Jesus, but also her presence and role over the centuries in the mission of Church. Jesus dying on the cross entrusted her to his disciple John, through whom he entrusted his Mother to the whole Church and all believers. Through this act Mary, the Mother of God, became also our Mother.
Te see the attitude of Mary in the reception of Jesus and the Gospel we can consider certain passages from the Scripture that show both contemplative and active side of her life. Mary agreed to be the Mother of God - "let it happen to me as you have said" (Lk 1:38) and she "stored up all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:52). But she also "went as quickly as she could into the hill country" (Lk 1:39); and "near the cross of Jesus stood his mother" (Jn 19:25). She was also praying with the disciples before Pentecost.
These fragments can teach us Christians that our proclamation should be a result of our contemplation that is its source. We can't preach the Gospel without our personal meeting with Christ. Christianity is not a system or an ideology, we don't preach anything like that. We preach a Person. Therefore we won't be able to speak about somebody without our meeting with this person. Otherwise it will be our words, but not testimony that we will be able to give even in difficult situations. Mary was the closest to Jesus from his Incarnation and birth till his death on the cross and she is still in the heaven. Following her example we can learn how to be close to Jesus in our life. Nobody can teach us this better than his Mother. It is an interesting fact also that these two aspects of preaching are very important in our Dominican tradition and spirituality. The motto Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere emphasizes both the contemplative and the active sides of our preaching.
Mary, Virgin and Mother
you who, moved by the Holy Spirit,
welcomed the word of life
in the depths of your humble faith:
as you gave yourself completely to the Eternal One,
It comes as no surprise that the Gospel of Christ often carries an uncomfortable message, and although there is joy at the end, there are hardships and endurances along the way. Pope Francis has reiterated calls for a poor Church that is in solidarity with the poor, in Evangelii Gaudium. The Church has always called for a preferential option for the poor, ever since the first apostles gave alms to the poor Christians have placed charity at the forefront of putting the Gospel into practice. For all Catholics, the message is the same: we are required to give preference to the poor and to serve them as equals in God’s eye. This is not an optional extra. Pope Francis emphasises that [the cry for justice] means working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor (Evangelii Gaudium §188).
Often, when we think of serving the poor, we might think of giving money to a homeless person, or helping in a soup kitchen. In human terms this ranks highly for Christians, as God himself became poor, being raised in a home of ordinary workers and worked with his own hands to earn his bread (§197). But what of changing the structures of the economy that lead people into destitution, hunger and perhaps eventually homelessness? There are Catholic economic alternatives to the neoliberal capitalism and ‘market forces’ that dominate many aspects of our economy. There has been recent criticism from Archbishop Vincent Nichols, on government cuts to state welfare payments, as well as the inherent problems and unjustness of our economic system. Archbishop Nichols claims there has been an erosion of the ‘safety net’ of the welfare system which means people are now being left destitute. There are also fundamental problems with the way the ‘housing market’ works, which are leading to more and more difficulties and pressures for the poor, who are in some cases being forced into temporary accommodation, or at worst onto the streets and homeless hostels.
Generally speaking, the average family or individual is now being priced out of living and working in many parts of the country, let alone being able to establish permanent roots in an area. House prices in London for instance, now average over £440,000 which means only those with large amounts of money can own their home. Many are increasingly unable to afford even rented accommodation. If new homes and flats are only built for the benefit of investors (who get first chance to buy new properties) then there is a distinct lack of preference for the poor. Pope Francis calls for a rejection of the absolute autonomy of the markets and financial speculation, as without this the structural causes of inequality (the root of social ills) will never be addressed (§202).
One option to provide affordable ‘social’ housing is of course through housing associations and housing co-operatives. Well-managed housing associations enable residents to live in accredited accommodation that is fit for purpose, and rents are invested back into the housing co-operative or association, which keeps rents at an affordable level. Such a direct intervention in the so-called ‘housing market’ would potentially ensure a radical transformation of the way a key part our economy operates, taking power out of the hands of private landlords and investors. With such economic models of ‘distributism’ the poor can have stability of family life and integral development. This is the sort of joyful message that the Gospel brings. It is not just a token 50p in the hand of a homeless person, it is changing the very economic structure that allows people to fall through the ‘welfare’ net in the first place.
Government intervention in the ‘housing market’ could also include setting a maximum selling price for particular developments, increased regulation of land and property ownership with the ‘ends’ of accomplishing the rich social teachings of the Catholic Church. Politically, in this country this probably means more public funding for housing associations to construct new dwellings, in locations which are otherwise unaffordable or have chronic housing shortages. Curiously, the Holy Father finishes the section on ‘The economy and the distribution of income’ with the note that if anyone feels offended by his words, he only speaks them with affection and the best of intentions. He aims to help those who are in thrall to an individualistic, indifferent and self-centred mentality to be freed from those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking which is more humane, noble and fruitful, and which will bring dignity to their presence on this earth (§208).
If you missed the second talk in the present series, God Matters? Tricky Teachings and Difficult Doctrines, you can catch up by clicking on the video below. Bioethicist, Fr Robert Gay OP, spoke on The Beginning and End of Life. The talk was followed by refreshments and a Q&A session, which were not recorded, in order to encourage a free-flowing discussion.
Watch this space for future videos. The talks and discussions continue on Tuesdays, 8pm, at Blackfriars, Oxford.
The next talk is this Tuesday, 25th February: Sr Ann Catherine Swailes OP, a Dominican sister and Assistant Chaplain at the University of Cambridge, will speak on The Role of Women in the Church. Come along, bring a friend, and join the discussion!
We are delighted to share with you the first of the talks in the present series, God Matters? Tricky Teachings and Difficult Doctrines.
Here, Fr Richard Ounsworth OP, speaks about Life After Death: Heaven, Hell & Purgatory. The talk was followed by refreshments and a Q&A session, which were not recorded, in order to encourage a free-flowing discussion.
Watch this space for future videos. The talks and discussions continue on Tuesdays, 8pm, at Blackfriars, Oxford.
The next talk is this Tuesday, 25th February: Sr Ann Catherine Swailes OP, a Dominican sister and Assistant Chaplain at the University of Cambridge, will speak on The Role of Women in the Church. Come along, bring a friend, and join the discussion!
Today is the feast of Blessed John of Fiesole OP, better known as Fra Angelico. This Dominican friar and painter lived in 14th-century Italy and his works are easily among the most beautiful creations of the early Renaissance. As one would expect of a friar preacher, they are also theologically profound.
Recently, Dr Nicholas Gendle gave an illustrated talk on Fra Angelico, at the medieval church of St Giles just a stone's throw from Blackfriars, Oxford. You can watch it here:
That talk is part of a series, hosted by the parish of St Giles, entitled Dominican Spirituality: to learn Christ's truth and pass it on. The talks are held on Thursday lunchtimes, 12.30pm, in St Giles' Parish Rooms. The remaining talks are:
20 February - St Catherine of Siena: Compassion and Mysticism (Fr Robert Ombres OP) 27 February - Meister Eckhart (Fr Carsten Barwasser OP) 6 March - St Thomas Aquinas: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially Wisdom (Fr Richard Conrad OP)
Finally, on 13 March, 12.30pm, there will be a tour of the Dominican Priory and Church, Blackfriars, and Midday Prayer with the friars, led by the Prior, Fr John O’Connor OP,.
If you would like to see any of the past talks, you can find the links to the videos here. At the end of the series, we will post a full list for easy access.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-5)
These simple words of Jesus are the great charter of Christianity. The heart of the Gospel is love. Love of God and love of neighbour are the two hinges on which hang 'all the Law and the Prophets' (Mt 22:36-40). Moral rules are still important for human flourishing, but only insofar as they find their perfection in love. And love is ultimately defined as seeking the good of the other.
We cannot speak of the joy of the Gospel, then, without locating that joy within a loving heart. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis keeps returning to this touchstone of love. The word 'love' permeates the whole document. To set the tone, the Holy Father connects love and joy right at the beginning, when he speaks of 'the quiet joy of [God's] love' (§2).
We are often tempted to think of joy and love as fleeting emotions, but we are being invited here to consider them as more permanent dispositions. Both joy and love must be understood as human activities that endure through time. Indeed, the permanence of joy and love in our hearts is only achievable when we draw on the eternal joy and love found in God. 'God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy' (§3). The Pope reiterates that joy endures; it is no fleeting feeling of a hollow happiness. Rather, real joy comes from 'our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved' (§6).
As a result, joy leads to an 'enriching friendship' with God (§8). This, in fact, brings us back to love. For St Thomas Aquinas, friendship with God is just another description for self-giving love (caritas in Latin, agape in Greek). This caritas is a superhuman love. Indeed, one of the striking points made by Pope Francis is this: 'We become fully human when we become more than human' (§8). That is, we realise our full humanity when we allow ourselves to be drawn up into the divine love, that love which seeks not selfish gain but constantly gives itself freely for the benefit of others. The self-emptying love of God is most fully revealed on the Cross, for here is 'love in its most radical form' (§12).
Pope Francis embraces Vinicio Riva
Is there not, however, a problem of priorities: does love within our community not conflict sometimes with showing love to those outside? Our Lord is obviously speaking to his disciples, and refers to the love they must show within the Christian community. Doesn't this run contrary to the strong themes in Pope Francis's preaching about the Christian priority to go and preach outside our community? The Pope says that we must firstly evangelise those who do not know Christ. Certainly, a superficial reader might imagine that he is opting for evangelisation over and above building up the Church. He quotes the now-famous Aparecida document of the Latin American bishops in 2007, saying we 'cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings' (§15). Elsewhere he has said: 'I prefer a thousand times more a Church that is damaged [by external encounters] than a Church that is sick from closing in on itself. Go out, go out!'
On the other hand, we can't forget about our own community. The cliché that 'charity begins at home' echoes St Paul's insistence that Christians mustn't abandon the needs of their families (cf. 1 Tim 5:8). Tertullian noted in AD 197 that the pagans were disgusted at the evident love shown between Christians, specifically their charitable concern for the most needy (Apologeticum, 39, 7; cf. Matt. 25). But should we be surprised at this? We Christians must love our brothers and sisters in need; 'for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen' (1 Jn 4:20).
Happily, that false dichotomy between proclamation and service is easily resolved. Pope Francis on joy should be read in the light of his predecessor on love. Benedict XVI dedicated his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to Christian love. In it, he argued that there is no dichotomy between kerygma (proclamation, one of Francis' favourite terms), leitourgia (the sacraments), and diakonia (the service of charity), and that universal love goes hand-in-hand with our special solicitude for the neediest among our own ecclesial community (DCE, §25; cf Gal 6:10). After all, we proclaim the Gospel in and through our love. As St Paul says, we need 'faith working through love' (Gal. 5:6).
Now, in Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis has enthusiastically taken up this great theme of love. Love is the fulness of the Law (§161). Our loving is a response to God, who first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10). From God's love, we receive 'a call to grow in faith' (§160), and we should respond by seeking baptism or (if we are already Christians) to renew our baptismal commitment to Christ. We cannot do this on our own steam, but receive the free gift of God's healing waters, if only we ask him.
L.O.V.E.
And this love is not a special preserve of the 'holy' or the 'saints'. Since we are all called to be 'missionary disciples' (§120), we are allcalled to share in, and share out, this divine love. As St John puts it so succinctly:
'He who does not love, does not know God; for God is love' (1 Jn 4:8).
And again, in case you missed it:
'God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him' (1 Jn 4:16).
“I have said these things to you, so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11).
In a bar the other day, I was with somebody who had never met a friar before. At one point they said something along the lines of “he’s pretty funny, how come he’s a monk?” Now there’s a few of my brethren who might dispute the truth of the first half of statement, particularly after another bad pun. However, it’s the implicit sentiment that ought to be cause for concern. Why would somebody presume that laughing a lot and being funny were unsuitable qualities for somebody who has chosen religious life? How must the message be perceived, if the messengers are expected to be glum?
Clearly we’re doing something wrong. Perhaps the media portrays us as gloomy, perhaps they make out that our “good news” is nothing more than a restrictive set of morals? Pope Francis notes that some Christian lives “seem like Lent without Easter” (EG6). But this need not be the dominant narrative. Each one of us can change this and there are enough of us to make a real impact.
Joyful Dominicans with Pere Pierre of the Nobertines at the Monastery of Our Lady of Sarrance, France
My favourite of the dismissals in the Revised Translation of the Mass is “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life”. It strikes me that this command is at the heart of the solution. If we radiate the joy proper to people who have just participated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, if we allow the Gospel to sculpt our hearts, and if we do not hide our faith away, other people will surely start to ask, “How can these people restrained by this ‘rigid morality’ be so joyful? Might there be more to it?” Then we can be ready to give an account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), we can explain –in the words of Benedict XVI, which Pope Francis says he never tires of repeating (for they are the very heart of the Gospel) –, that: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (EG 7).
Pope Francis is an example to us all in this. He has quickly gained a reputation for being a warm and joyful presence. Yet when asked, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?", his response was: "I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner."
His joy stems neither from deluding himself that he is not a sinner, nor from deluding himself that there is no such thing as sin, but rather from a trust in the infinite mercy of the Lord. The joy of knowing that Christ came to save us from our sins. As the Holy Father says, "God's mercy has no limits if he who asks for mercy does so in contrition and with a sincere heart." We have good news for people and Jesus commands us not to keep it to ourselves. Pope Francis tells us that we “cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings”; we need to move “from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry”. This task continues to be a source of immense joy for the Church: “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Lk 15:7)(cf. EG 15).
Obviously for Dominicans, as members of the Order of Preachers, we ought to be out there preaching the message of joy that God loves each one of us. However, that command at the end of Mass is to all of us, and where the clergy are commanded to go, the laity already live and work. The New Evangelisation is the responsibility of us all and we must work together to achieve it.
The view from Fanjeaux - Mission territory for St Dominic and the early Dominicans
Let us not wait, though, until we are perfect to start telling people about the Good News: the need for the Joy of Gospel to be taken outside the Church means we don’t have time for that! Let us strive to become more perfect along the way. We will be called hypocrites when we fail to live up to the standards we strive for, and we must be humble and ask for forgiveness when this happens. As Julia says in Brideshead Revisited: “the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy.” We must not, though, dismayed by our frequent short-comings, succumb to the temptation to believe that the difficult parts of the Faith ought to be dropped or given up on. Those who do this harm themselves and the unity of the Church in its Mission; they sell themselves short and undermine those striving to uphold the fullness of the Church’s teachings. Perfection gained at the cost of lowering our aim is a shallow victory indeed. Perhaps it is in holding to our values, but with a renewed humility at our failures, a joyful admission of our faults, knowing that as we do so we come closer to Christ, that we will be the visible signs of a contradictory joy that the world needs? Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP speaks of how we need “to labour make the Church a place of evident freedom, courage, joy and hope. Truth matters. But our words will be useless unless they are embedded in communities which show how they are pointed beyond us, to the one who has sought out and given us his Word.” That’s a challenge to all of us, but the challenge to be more joyful, more free, sounds like one worth taking on.
On Tuesday 11th of February the Archbishop of Munich, Reinhard Cardinal Marx, gave the annual Newman Lecture organised by Oxford University’s Catholic Permanent Private Halls. His Eminence titled the lecture ‘A certain idea of Europe’, a reference to Charles De Gaulle’s own ‘certain idea of France.’
The lecture praised the European Union as an agent of peace whilst also promoting the view that the ‘European Project’ gave scope and vision for a Europe which could have a meaningful and positive future. The potential strength of Europe is found not only in its commitment to avoid a repeat of the two world wars but also in its contemporary attitude towards intellectual freedom and exchange of ideas. By its very nature the European Union has to accommodate a vast plurality of peoples, ideas, convictions and so on. This unavoidable engagement with diversity, His Eminence felt, gives Europe a firm bedrock upon which to build a continent which can make ‘a contribution for a better world’
Within this pluralistic system the Church has a part to play, indeed Cardinal Marx regularly meets with agents of the European Union to put forward the Church’s ideas to further the European Project. For Cardinal Marx Christianity has to have this role. The history of the continent is intertwined with the history of Christianity. In fact, His Eminence argued, a Europe which does not come to terms with its deeply Christian heritage cannot form an identity which is true to itself. However, Christians have to fight to show this is the case, though the Church does not seek, the Cardinal says, ‘re-conquest’. Rather, it puts itself at the service of pluralistic Europe; joining in its mission to improve the world.
So, in summary, the Cardinal proposed that the European Union is a positive development in the history of Europe and the world. It contributes through the promotion of intellectual freedom, diverse and pluralistic societies which are open to those on the margins. In this mission the Church can share, serving a world-wide social action which promotes the dignity and rights of all people but which has its roots in Europe, a continent formed by Christian values.
The Cardinal’s message seems somewhat rousing. It appears quite obvious that Christians should join in a project that seeks the betterment of the world; but have they not already done that by being Catholic? Cardinal Marx was keen to impress that the Social Doctrine of the Church and the principles of economic and social equity which help define the European Union are compatible, if not completely ordered toward the same end. His Eminence also repudiated the imperialism of expansionist Europe, the very expansion which took Christianity to the farthest corners of the world, a work which is now bearing fruit in the influx of missionaries and pastors into Europe. The evangelised are now evangelising the evangelists!
Today is the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, patrons of Europe and holy pastors who took the Gospel to the Slavonic Peoples of Central and Eastern Europe - and they certainly sought conquest! It often seems to be supposed that the primary difficulties facing the human condition are questions of poverty, education and want. If these things were eradicated, it is supposed, then mankind will flourish. Can Christians depend upon a project which operates according to that idea? Certainly not; without an acknowledgement of sin and its effects no true diagnosis of the ills of humanity can be made and no genuine remedy offered. Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius sought to conquer sin through the provision of God’s Grace bestowed by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Without dependence upon the Grace of the Holy Spirit, which is the definition St. Thomas gives for the New Law, humanity - no matter how formed by once held Christian ideals - returns to a form of the Old Law, yet one without God at its head.
Leo XIII
We find in the European Project the proposal of rights which we think human beings ought to have, and Europe can certainly look to its Christian heritage to find the intellectual trajectory from which this conviction comes, but if there is no Eternal Law in which these things are rooted they become, at best, useful fiction, and all fictions are allowed plot holes! Europe does not just need to recognise its Christian heritage in order to be a force for good in the world; it needs to recognise Christianity.
Pope Leo XIII introduced the Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius into the Roman Calendar in 1880. Five years later he promulgated his encyclical Immortale Dei where he decried the separation of Church and State and foretells that any society which abandons Christianity abandons the common good. The antiquity of this truly Christian conviction is shown when he quotes Pope Paschal II as saying ‘When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled…But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests do not prosper, but even things of greatest concern fall into deplorable decay.’ (Immortale Dei, para. 22)
There’s an old joke that there’s no such thing as a bad sermon: sometimes, it’s the preacher’s words that are most enriching; at other times, it’s the silence between the words that are the morsels to be savoured. If we’re honest, I suspect we’d have to admit that listening to sermons isn’t always our paradigm case of Christian joy. Shouldn’t it be a sin to bore for Christ?
St Paul describes preaching as “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:14). In our own times, these two poles of preaching can often be misunderstood. Far from being a matter of liberation, truth-telling can easily be seen as the shouting of truths at people who don’t want to hear, the type of confrontational revelations worthy of the stage of Jerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle’s lie detector; ‘love’ can be reduced to a general permissiveness, an 'anything goes' mentality that denies the truth in the name of a false freedom (‘all you need is love’!). What keeps truth and love together in Christian preaching is joy: the Christian preacher does not just proclaim a theory of life or a set of doctrines, but rather heralds the source of their hope, a joy tasted and offered for inexhaustible sharing.
The preacher invites others into the joy of their friendship with Christ. What is proclaimed is neither abstract truth nor general love, but the relentlessly particular friendship that Christ offers to each and every one of us. The source and font of this joy is Trinitarian—the one God who dwells in three persons. The preacher participates in this joyful communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and invites others to be caught up in this eternal love story. This is the story of a two-fold economy of desire: God’s desire to enjoy us, which constitutes our desire to enjoy God. But the fact that this love story culminates in the bloody execution of Christ should caution us against simplistic accounts of joy as a panacea for all troubles, the promise of a quiet life that brackets out the fullness of human experience.
The preacher’s task is a formidable one. The homily is the moment when the Gospel of Christ is drawn into contact with the experience of a particular Christian community, with all their joys and hopes, their fears and anxieties. For this reason, preaching is an essential task of the priest. Ordained to represent the people to God, and God to the people, it is human sorrow and human hope that the priest touches when he anoints the sick, when he consoles the bereaved, when he baptises or witnesses matrimony, and when he hears what only the Almighty should hear in confession. We can teach rhetoric and public speaking, we can make sure that the theology is in the right place, but the greatest preachers will always be those whose friendship with Christ overflows into their friendship with Christ’s people, the shepherds who (as Pope Francis reminds us) have both the ‘smell of the sheep’ and the ‘smell of the Good Shepherd’.
In every sermon there is an implicit, often subliminal, prayer that begs God to further reveal the meaning of our lives. Preaching is a human activity, but cannot be reduced to a human activity alone. The Protestant theologian Heinrich Bullinger even went so far as to claim that “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God”. Obviously the preacher’s words remain human words and never become divine; the preacher’s words carry authority only insofar as they conform to God’s Word. But preaching is much more than a didactic or catechetical moment when the scriptures are exposited. In the mystery of salvation, human words come to do divine things: the ever-creative word of God speaks afresh through the words of his preachers, calling into being new realities and strengthening the Christian community. For that reason, every sermon truly is worth listening to.
Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation represents a summons of all Christians to mission and so in one way or another every section of this somewhat lengthy document is directed towards preaching the Gospel. Yet if I were to pick out one strand of thought that seemed to me to be particularly relevant, it would be Pope Francis’s warning that a crippling inferiority complex has emerged among Catholics in the scandal-hit West that threatens to suffocate the proclamation of the Gospel. In short, the Pope warns, we are in danger of being shamed into silence.
Few people would deny, I suspect, that a perception has emerged among many Catholics and non-Catholics alike in parts of Western Europe and the United States that the Church has lost both its authority to speak and the right to be heard. In the face of such public disapproval, there can be and often are prudential reasons to remain silent for a time, there can also be good reasons for choosing our words with tact and care. But there is a vast difference between, on the one hand, a heart that responds to our own sin or the sin of our fellow Christians with humility and contrition, and on the other a heart that responds fearfully when confronted with the same issues and attempts to hide.
The first letter of St. John tells us that ‘there is no fear in love, but love casts out fear’ (1 John 4: 18). There is a warning here and it is a warning that Pope Francis is asking us to take to heart. A fearful response to our present trials casts out the love that is necessary for true repentance and reform. A true and lasting turn away from evil and towards the Good that is God can only be driven by a deep love of God and a recognition that the faith we have been given, the life with God that we share, is something so valuable and precious that it is worth devoting our entire lives to and in the end something worth dying for.
The key to overcoming an inferiority complex and shame, then, the key to overcoming our fear, is to learn again the value of what God has already given us. If we can grasp even a glimmer of how much we are loved by God, then this will be a love that we want to share. This does not change the reality that our society may still not be ready to listen. There is much hard work to be done ahead proving our faith, proving our love, and proving our hope by deeds: by Christ-like service of our neighbour. But if we recommit to a new thirst for holiness, then this labour will not be a burden but something that we choose because we want to share the gift we have received. In this generosity and self-giving, God’s power will be manifested in our weakness.
Following the success of last year's series, the God Matters free talks are back! This year, the focus will be on Tricky Teachings and Difficult Doctrines. The talks are an opportunity for all people – Catholics, other Christians, people of other religions or none – to understand Catholicism better and to discuss these contentious topics in a free and open way. We want to reach as wide an audience as possible, so if you are thinking of coming, please bring a friend along with you!
Details are on the poster above, which you are encouraged to distribute as widely as possible. In brief, the talks will be at Blackfriars, Oxford, on consecutive Tuesdays from 11th February to 18th March, 8pm-9.30pm. The format will be the same as last year: a short talk by a Dominican friar or sister, time for refreshments and informal discussion, then a question and answer session with the speaker. And it's all free!
The topics include the doctrines of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory; bioethical issues about life and death; the role of women in the Church; the Virgin Mary; and the subject of sex and marriage. But these topics will surely raise other questions, too, and that is why there will be a wide-ranging panel discussion in the final Q&A session. If you have a burning question to ask, please send it in to the God Matters address: godmatters@english.op.org
If you cannot easily make it to Oxford, rest assured that the talks will be videoed and put online (watch this space!). The discussions and QA sessions, however, will not be recorded. So do come along in person if you are able. And bring a friend!
“The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come” [EG 1].
With these stirring words, Pope Francis begins his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Guadium, The Joy of the Gospel, and so we likewise begin our new series exploring the themes and challenges which the Holy Father presents to the Church on the “proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world”. We will consider how we, as a Church, communicate the most powerful, inspiring two thousand year old story of Jesus Christ, in the modern age.How do we preach God’s love to a world that appears so unreceptive, to an audience seemingly deaf to our words? These are fundamental questions for us Dominican Students, belonging to an order whose principal task is to preach, but they are also of the utmost importance for all Christians.
Well, Pope Francis is leading by example! Many people - who, hitherto, have had little interest or regard for the Church - have expressed new-found enthusiasm, admiration and an openness to what the Church is saying as a result of what one friend has called Pope Francis’s “leading with love”. What a dynamic, joyful witness we have in St. Peter’s successor!
Lest this Evangelii Gaudium be misunderstood as an exercise in Public Relations or some sort of political manifesto, let us be clear at the outset of this series that at the heart of the Pope’s message is an invitation to us, to “all Christians, everywhere”, to “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ” [EG 3]. Miss this, and frankly, you miss the point. Everything that the Holy Father addresses is rooted in Jesus Christ and His inestimable love for us.
We invite you to join us over the course of the next month as we reflect upon the concerns which the Pope exhorts us to consider, take to heart, and act upon; "For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?" [EG 8].
Today's feast of the 'presentation' of baby Jesus at the Temple marks the end of the infancy narratives in the Gospel of Luke:
And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. (Luke 2:39-40)
We next hear of Jesus returning to the Temple as a twelve-year-old boy, teaching the teachers of the Law, and then there is no further report until his public ministry begins, aged thirty. So this passage marks the end of one important stage in Jesus's life – his infancy – and the beginning of another – his childhood and adolescence. Standing at this juncture, the Presentation is clearly a 'rite of passage'.
Last September, when I was teaching some Year 6 pupils at St Dominic's school in our London parish, as part of our 'Pray4' mission week, I drew some parallels between the Presentation and our Christian rites of passage, such as Baptism. St Luke is at pains to stress the punctilious religious observance of Mary and Joseph. They take him to the Temple in Jerusalem, forty days after his birth, as the Law of Moses required. He is 'redeemed to the Lord', as the firstborn male child. His family is too poor to afford a lamb for the sacrifice, so they offer two turtledoves or pigeons (see Lev. 12:8). All of this was fairly standard practice for Jews living near Jerusalem, two thousands years ago.
Aert de Gelder, Simeon's Song of Praise
The theme at St Dominic's school was 'New Beginnings', and it's easy to see how the presentation of a child is a wonderful moment of genesis. God is thanked for giving life to the child, an event which heralds a brighter future.
But the presentation of Jesus is unique, marked as it is by the strange witness of two old prophets in the Temple, Simeon and Anna. At a time of feverish expectation of the promised Messiah, their gift of prophecy (which was supposed to have ended with the Old Testament figures) would have been interpreted as a sign of the saviour's imminent arrival. When I think of Simeon and Anna faithfully living out their religious vocations in the Temple, year in, year out, this Psalm verse springs to mind:
There is one thing I ask of the Lord,
for this I long,
to live in the house of the Lord,
all the days of my life,
to savour the sweetness of the Lord,
to behold his temple (Ps. 27:4).
These two extraordinary figures were richly rewarded for their fidelity. They savoured the sweetness of the Lord as they beheld the living Temple which is Christ (cf. John 2:19). They saw the wonderful new beginning which God had long been preparing in Israel; the dawn of a new covenant was breaking. This Messiah would bring light, not only to the chosen people Israel, but even to all the nations. The joy and peace of God, which had been announced at Christmas, was now confirmed by Simeon to be a gift to every human being, regardless of origin or ability. In our own particular way of life, we can all behold Christ and love Christ.
Fra Angelico OP, The Presentation
And yet, this feast is tinged with sadness, too. The mission of Christ will only be achieved through great suffering and division, and his mother Mary would not escape these sorrows which would take her to the very foot of the Cross. Simeon and Anna must also feel pangs of sorrow even in this moment of joy. For God's arrival in their midst is the sign that their time is up. At last, all-powerful Master, you give leave to your servant to go in peace, according to your promise. (Luke 2:29) These prophets teach us to meet new beginnings in hope, but also to accept faithfully the terminations and the losses.
The song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis, is sung every night at Compline. It is an appropriate expression of Christian confidence in God at the end of the day, as it was at the end of Simeon's life. If we make it our own prayer, we will learn to see the light of Christ as clearly as Simeon and Anna did, and we will bring that light to those around us.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine,
secundum verbum tuum in pace:
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum,
quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum:
Lumen ad revelationem gentium,
et gloriam plebis tuæ Israel.
At last, all-powerful Master,
you give leave to your servant to go in peace,
according to your promise.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared for all nations,
the light to enlighten the Gentiles
and give glory to Israel, your people (Luke 2:29-32).
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