Gospel Joy: Communicating the Joy of the Gospel today

“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.

A Certain Idea of Europe

Cardinal Marx: ‘A Certain Idea of Europe’

On Tuesday 11^th 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)

Gospel Joy: The Homily

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.

Gospel Joy: Being a missionary Church

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.

God Matters? Tricky Teachings and Difficult Doctrines

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!

Gospel Joy: Evangelii Gaudium (New Series!)

“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].

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

For today's feast, the Blackfriars schola has recorded the 'Antiphon & Nunc Dimittis' by Palestrina.

Tonight, at Mass & Vespers in Oxford, the schola will sing the 'Nunc Dimittis' by Josquin.

Gospel: Luke 2:22-40

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).