A-Z of Paul: Old Covenant

What is the Old Covenant and why would St Paul, being the Apostle of the Gentiles, be interested in the Old Covenant in the first place? Paul was a Pharisee, a devout Jew who led his life with a firm belief in the Scriptures. Inspired by them the whole people of Israel saw themselves as the heir to the promise and the blessing given by God to Abraham and to his offspring, and this is what the Old Covenant means.

Even though St Paul became a follower of Christ, he sees his new vocation as an apostle as sprouting out from his Jewish belief. Christ proclaimed himself to have come in fulfilment of both the prophets and the law and St Paul explains for us what this means. In his Letter to the Galatians (ch. 3) he says that it is Christ himself who is the heir of the promise and blessing given to Abraham. It is Christ who is the long-awaited offspring of Abraham.

If this is so, then, the Old Covenant finds its fulfilment in the person of Christ.

Jesus, as the heir of the promise, makes another Covenant with God, or if you like, extends the Old Covenant, through his death on the cross and resurrection. In this way the Old Covenant is brought to perfection as Christ died for all, and so the New Covenant made on the cross is lasting and universal. If this is so, then the only right thing to do is to preach God’s love and mercy beyond the boundaries of the Chosen Nation and this is what St Paul did with great Pharisaic dedication.

August 15 - The Assumption of Our Lady

Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

There is great interest today in fantasy literature, in magical and enchanted stories, whether about Harry Potter or Narnia or the Lord of the Rings. Bookshops are full of material like this as well as science fiction and other kinds of imaginative writing. The desire for enchantment is a desire for other levels of life, that there might be other possibilities for humanity.

Today's feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, her being taken up body and soul to the glory of Her Son's kingdom, meets this desire in us for a level of life that transcends the ordinary realities, a thirst for something beyond, or beneath, or within the things immediately seen, the things easily comprehended and manipulated by us. Fantasy speaks, however faintly, to our sense of wonder about hidden mysteries.

The first reading for example, from the Book of Revelation, presents us with a dramatic story full of symbols, perfect for nourishing the artistic and poetic imagination. The newborn child is Christ and the woman who gives birth is Mary. But she is also the Church, the community of the followers of Christ, destined to follow a difficult road in this world. How the imagination thrills at an adventure, a quest, a search for hidden treasure. The road is rich with possibilities but it is also dangerous and there are many obstacles to be overcome. It is a work of the apocalyptic imagination but it is a true fantasy, if we can put it like that, an accurate diagnosis of the situation of the Christian in the world, of the promise which is our treasure, of the dangerous adventures of the way.

In the second reading Saint Paul teaches us that the new life, the life of the resurrection, already established in Jesus Christ in the moment of his resurrection - this new world and new creation is not just for Jesus but has been won by him for us. The great grace of the Christian faith is this, to accept the promise of a level of living which reaches beyond our imagination. The assumption of Mary is the guarantee of this: the new creation is not just for Christ but is for all who belong to him, in the first place Mary who is next to him in all things, but eventually to all Christ's people. Mary, according to the preface of today's Mass, is thus 'a sign of hope and comfort for God's people on their pilgrim way'.

The gospel includes Mary's great prayer, the Magnificat, praising God for all His graces. Mary, an historical and particular woman, is a unique individual with a unique role in the drama. But she is 'full of grace' and so also a symbolic figure, representing the Church and all who are with her in the Church. The preface speaks of her as 'the beginning and pattern of the Church in its perfection'. Symbolizing and realizing this perfection she is fittingly called 'Mother of the Church'.

Already during this pilgrimage to the land sought by the Christian imagination, we see signs of the new creation, sparks of the glory that is to come, premonitions of the dawn. Wherever there is compassion, work for justice, care of the poor, unexpected generosity, faithful love, spontaneous and creative benevolence - in all of this we detect the presence of the Spirit for these are the effects of His life-giving love. Mary, whose following of her Son was marked by all these things, is the most beautiful creation of the Spirit, the highest honour of our race.

For the moment these signs and sparks encourage us to continue and to persevere on our pilgrimage. The full and clear revelation is yet to come. We continue to thirst, to desire and to imagine, living in the hope of the resurrection that is still to come. We are comforted and strengthened beyond measure by the prayers and example of Mary, already assumed into heaven, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

A-Z of Paul: Newness

The whole of the Bible can be viewed as an epic of new creation. Very early on in the narrative God’s pristine creation is marred by the ugliness of sin and its effects. But although it has its ups and downs the story told throughout the Bible is one of redemption. The Lord makes something new out of the mess that human beings have made and re-establishes his covenantal relationship with them. This reaching by God to heal the wounds of sin and division reaches its climax in the life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus where those who follow Christ are given a newly created dignity, bought with the price of his blood on the Cross, that of children of God, members of Christ’s mystical body.

For Paul this motif of newness takes pride of place. He says in 2 Cor. 5:17 : “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.” In this passage St. Paul is trying to get across that the message of Our Lord requires us, and the gift of the Spirit enables us, to be transformed from our old worldly ways of being and acting. Our Lord Jesus tells us that we must be like little children of we are to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Little children?! Many of the people whom Paul was preaching to in Corinth were well educated, well-paid professionals and academics who had worked hard to get to the position they had reached. They had tried very hard to remove themselves form the status of children, who, let us not forget, had no legal rights in the Roman Empire. To them this preaching of newness and the message of Our Lord that a child-like trust in God was required must have seemed bizzare and totally unrealistic. It is a testament to the work of the Holy Spirit enflaming Paul and his companions that so many of the Corinthians became believers and established a thriving Christian community in Corinth. For St. Paul the newness that God gives to us is never ending, we are to be refreshed again and again, converted again and again, continually brought back to his love.

August 9th - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was proclaimed a patron saint of Europe in 1999. Along with Catherine of Siena and Bridget of Sweden, she was chosen by Pope John Paul II "to emphasize the important role that women have had and have in the ecclesial and civil history of the continent down to our days." Each of these women was "connected in a special way with the Continent's history" and St Teresa in particular was described by John Paul II as "a symbol of the dramas in Europe in our time".

Born in 1891 to a Jewish family in Breslau, Edith Stein was a suffragette in university, a philosopher and teacher, and a nurse in the First World War. Although she had given up the practice of her Jewish religion at the age of 14, her study of phenomenology and her continual search for truth led to a realization that there is an objective reality that is the ground of all reality and makes all things knowable. So she came to recognize the reality of God. Based on her philosophical writings on 'The Problem of Empathy', John Paul II notes that Edith Stein saw that "this reality [of God] must be heeded and grasped above all in the human being, by virtue of that capacity for empathy, a word dear to her which enables one in some way to appropriate the lived experience of the other". Thus she began to read the experiences of God as related by Christians and especially the mystics. One evening Edith picked up the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila and read this book all night. She recounts: "When I had finished the book, I said to myself: this is the truth." Thus she came to faith in Christ and asked to be baptised in 1922.

St Teresa's search for truth and meaning, which led her through philosophy, to a discovery of the experience of God as expressed in the lives of great European Christians is instructive for us today, for European society seems to have forgotten its Christian heritage and seeks to divorce itself from the Christian experience of its past. In doing so, it can no longer empathise with its forebears and risks becoming uprooted, without an identity.

Conversely, Edith Stein not only empathised with the religious experience of great European saints but also remained rooted in her Jewish identity. She never saw her conversion to Christ as a rejection of her Jewish heritage and indeed she said that she "did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God". Although she went on to become a Carmelite nun, her Jewish roots never left her and indeed she suffered the Holocaust with her people. Her recorded last words, to her sister, when the Gestapo came to take them from her convent to Auschwitz on 2 August 1942 were: "come, we are going for our people" Already in 1933, when the Nazis took over Germany, Edith had written that "[Jesus'] Cross... was now being laid upon the Jewish people" and as a Catholic Jewess she felt that she was able to bring the suffering of the Jews to the Cross in a special way. She wrote: "I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody's behalf".

St Teresa's understanding of the Cross was profound, and her last work, left unfinished by her arrest in 1942, was entitled "Kreuzeswissenschaft" (The Science of the Cross). Clinging to the Cross as our only hope, she knew that "those who are joined to Christ... will unflinchingly persevere even in the dark night of subjectively feeling remote from and abandoned by God... Getting to resurrection glory with the Son of Man, through suffering and death, is also the way for each one of us and for all mankind."

This eternal wisdom and gospel of hope is something that the Church proclaims and which Europe needs to hear. For without her ancient Faith, and feeling remote from God, Europe languishes in moral confusion and gropes for purpose and direction. It is not Brussels bureaucracy or European legislation that will save us but only, as Edith Stein learnt, a conversion to God who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

August 6th - The Feast of the Transfiguration

Living the life of faith is often hard when things are not going well in our spiritual lives. We sit and pray, yet no nice feelings of peace or warmth seem to come. It becomes just plain boring to spend time with the Lord, to the extent that when our time for regular prayer comes, even the most unimportant thing that we have been putting off for months becomes the most urgent task! Or we drag ourselves off to Church, or to our room and just sit there, wishing that time would pass..... Anyone who has ever made some sort of attempt to pray will have experienced the closeness of God - a mini Transfiguration moment, if you like, when God seemed very real and present to us. These kind of experiences are a gift, but often few and far between. When things seem less exciting, what should we do?

Well, there is much to learn from today's Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9). Once the disciples have experienced the presence of the Lord, in all its wonder and terror, they are told to rise, and it is all over. They wanted a moment that would last forever, but they have to get up, be on their way.... after all, there are things to do. But of course, this does not mean that they have to leave the presence of God. The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus - the Law and the Prophets side by side with the one who fulfills both - serves as a reminder to them (and to us) of how God is continually present. For us it is a reminder of God's special presence in the scriptures and in the sacraments, which reveal Christ and offer him to us. So we need not tie God's loving care of us to feelings and emotions, but trust that through our prayer, our reading of the Bible and our participation in the liturgical life of the Church, we continue to receive Christ in our lives, and be transformed by him.... transformed so that we can go into the world and make him known.

A-Z of Paul: Marriage

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says it is good for a man not to touch a woman; yet to avoid immorality every man should have his own wife and every woman her own husband.

From this, one might suppose that St Paul had a rather negative view of marriage; it is tempting to think he saw marriage as the lesser of two evils. On this basis, some people even attempt to analyze St Paul’s psychological makeup and come to very unflattering conclusions.

However, in interpreting what St Paul says on marriage, we need to understand the circumstances in which he was writing. There is little evidence to suggest that sexual immorality was common amongst the Corinthians. Yes there was the case of incest mentioned in 1 Cor 5, but in the wider context of the letter to the Corinthians, Paul is concerned with those who claimed to have a superior knowledge of God. The inability to deal with a particular case of sexual immorality was just an example to show how empty the Corinthians’ claim to superior knowledge was.

St Paul, in writing to the Corinthians about marriage was trying to heal a split in the community. Reading between the lines, it is likely that Paul was addressing a group of Corinthians who were not only celibate, but who also disapproved of any sexual activity, even within marriage. St Paul in mentioning “it is good for a man not to touch a woman” could be quoting a Corinthian slogan, a slogan which he agrees with to the extent that it forbids incestuous relationships or sexual intercourse with prostitutes, but to the extent that it forbids marriage or enforces sexual abstinence within marriage, he does not agree. St Paul does recognise celibacy as a gift, but he rejects the Corinthians’ attempt to make one particular expression of the spiritual life binding on all believers. So he does not see sex within marriage as sinful, but he advises believers to marry in holiness and honour.

Being married is no obstacle to living a holy life which is pleasing to God, but St Paul goes further than this. In the letter to the Ephesians, St Paul describes Christian marriage as mirroring the relationship Christ has with the Church. Husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ also loved the Church. Therefore marriage is a sign of the mysterious union of Christ with the Church, and the sign of marriage is a way in which this union with Christ can be actually realised by the individual, a way of participating in God’s divine life. Thus St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians helps us appreciate the great importance of Christian marriage and helps us understand why it is a sacrament.

John Paul II Pilgrimage from Ely to Walsingham

Last week, the annual John Paul II pilgrimage from Ely to Walsingham was held. The pilgrimage was a great success with over 30 people, both young and old, taking part, walking along some of the same paths that have been used by pilgrims for centuries.

It was organised by Sr. Hyacinth of the Dominican Sisters of St. Joseph, and Fr Ben Earl was the Dominican Chaplain. As we walked the fifty mile journey over two and a half days, there was a real sense in which we were capturing the Dominican spirit. Like St Dominic, we were on the road for the sake of the Gospel, for the salvation of souls, praying and singing hymns as we walked along.

Pilgrimage can be seen as a metaphor for the Christian life. A pilgrimage has a clear destination, a definite purpose and goal, and this is reflected in life, a journey in which our final destination is with God. On a pilgrimage we need to continually check that we are going in the right direction, and so too in life, we need to continually check that our lives are directed towards Christ. As we journey, we do not go it alone, but we travel down paths which others have trod, we journey as a community of believers helping each other along the way, always encouraging, building friendships and bonds of love, not letting anyone get left behind.

Pilgrimage can also be a way of discovering that ascetic dimension to life, a dimension in which in one way or another, all Christians are called to participate. Christ showed his great love for us by dying on the cross, and so in a small way by doing something arduous and renouncing ourselves, we can show our love for Christ and grow in the virtue of charity.

In the Middle Ages, pilgrimage was very much associated with penance. In the 12th Century, Pope Eugenius III gave St Gerlac the penance of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and spending seven years there serving the sick and the poor. St Gerlac had asked for a severe penance in order to make amends for his former way of life. Whilst our two and a half day pilgrimage hardly compares with the efforts to which St Gerlac went, the penitential nature of our pilgrimage was still present. We were reminded of the great importance of the sacrament of reconciliation and we were encouraged to go to confession so that we could enter Walsingham having been forgiven of all our sins.

On arriving at the Slipper Chapel, we prayed to Our Lady for the conversion of England and Wales, before going into Mass in the Chapel of Reconciliation. We then walked the final mile into Walsingham, praying the Rosary as we went, joyful in the anticipation of reaching our final destination. Our pilgrimage came to an end with Benediction in the Church of the Annunciation in Walsingham; it was a chance to focus on our final goal, life with Christ, and an opportunity to be thankful for the many graces which we had received through the prayers of Our Lady of Walsingham on our pilgrimage.