April 1st - Bearing Witness to the Gospel

The Dominican order is very inclusive with brothers and sisters from a wide variety of backgrounds. One of the friars who lives in Oxford , Br Ursus, describes what day to day life is like for a Dominican bear.

"I get up at 7.43 every morning for Lauds. This is always a great challenge, especially in winter. Before joining the order, I used to hibernate for 6 months of the year, so it has taken me quite a while to adapt to getting up every day. It’s one of the sacrifices I have to make, but I receive many consolations. As it says in psalm 118 ‘Your promise is sweeter to my taste than honey in the mouth.’ As someone who very much loves honey, I find this imagery delightful, and it’s also very true.

"I’m currently studying philosophy and theology and I’m enjoying it very much. It’s really giving me the confidence to preach the Gospel. I’ve still got a lot to learn. In preaching classes, I’m constantly being reminded to speak up, but I find this very difficult without sounding like I'm growling. Still, the brothers are very encouraging.

"It’s taken a little while getting use to the Dominican habit, but it’s actually very comfortable. I do tend to get a few stares when I wander around Oxford , and occasionally I get people shouting out comments like ‘Super Ted.’ But the Dominican habit has become an important part of my identity and I think it’s an important eschatological sign.


"I’ve no idea what I’ll end up doing in the Order once I’m ordained - I’ll go where I’m told. Still, I miss living in the forest, so if I was given a choice, I’d love to be the chaplain for the Dominican sisters who are located in the New Forest ."

Lent Week 5 Wednesday - The Truth will set you free

Readings: Daniel 3: 14-20, 91-92, 95; Daniel 3: 52-56; John 8: 31-42

Freedom is much prized in contemporary Western secular thought: at the political level, wars are fought to bring ‘freedom’ to the population of various countries, while at the level of the individual, the freedom to do whatever you want (perhaps with the proviso that it shouldn’t harm anyone else) appears to be the basics of popular ethics. Of course, the pursuit of freedom independent from God is not a new thing: we find it in the book of Genesis, in the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9) and, indeed, in the sin of Adam and Eve (Gen 3:1-7).

And yet in today’s readings we are reminded that autonomy is not true freedom. In the book of Daniel, the three young men choose death rather than worshipping false gods (though that would have preserved their life and autonomy), because they understand that sin is a more radical rejection of their God-given freedom even than loss of life. This is because true human freedom is the freedom to flourish as human beings. Sin does thus indeed, as Our Lord says, enslave us (Jn 8: 34), since it prevents us from sharing in the life of God: that sharing in his life is the purpose for which he made us, and so only in him can our human nature fully flourish.

But how, sinners that we are, can we escape that slavery? Our Lord tells us in today’s Gospel: it is the truth that will set us free (Jn 8: 32). How, though, do we come to share in that truth? By being disciples of him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life and who, by his free choice, suffered death and rose again that we might share in his life.

Saints This Month - 25 March Saint Dismas

Tradition has given the repentant thief, crucified with Jesus, the name Dismas. Apocryphal writings have suggested that Dismas was a member of a band of thieves which set upon the Holy Family during the flight into Egypt. Being moved with pity for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Dismas is said to have made his cohorts retreat, allowing the Holy Family to continue unharmed.

On Calvary Dismas rebukes his fellow criminal (traditionally called Gestas) for mocking Jesus. In a great example of repentance and faith Dismas repents of his sins, and asks Jesus to remember him in his kingdom. Our Lord, ever merciful even on the Cross, says "today you will be with me in Paradise". This Divine promise has often led to Dismas being shown accompanying Jesus in the Harrowing of Hell and in opening the gate of Heaven. As a criminal, Dismas has been held up as a great practitioner of penance. He therefore has been adopted as a patron of prisoners, especially those on death row. Let us therefore pray for all prisoners and criminals, that they may accept the forgiveness of Christ and reform their ways. Let us also remember that Dismas is an example to us all. As a Russian Orthodox Good Friday hymn or exapostilarion puts it:

The Wise Thief didst Thou make worthy of Paradise, in a single moment, O Lord. By the wood of thy Cross illumine me as well, and save me.

Lent Week 5 Tuesday – Look Up!

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9, Psalm 102; John 8: 21-30

Snakes have a terrible reputation. Their anthropomorphic representations such as Kaa, The Lady of the Green Kirtle and Lord Voldemort, are always sly, cunning and evil characters. The Bible is bookended by the cunning serpent in Genesis and the “ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray”, in the Book of Revelation. Even Our Lord insults the Sadducees and Pharisees by calling them “serpents and a generation of vipers.” It is no surprise that Christians have often represented sin using the image of a serpent.

When the wandering Israelites fail to trust in God they are punished for their sin by a plague of fiery serpents, which kill many of the people. They repent for their sin and God instructs Moses to build a brass serpent and to put it on a standard. God promises that all who look upon this raised brass snake or Nehushtan will live. This episode foreshadows the salvation found in the Cross. Due to our fallen nature we will often come under attack from the ‘fiery snakes’ of sin and if we lose sight of our Lord, if we do not put our Faith in Him, we will die in sin. When Our Lord is “lifted up” upon the Cross, we must look up and see, as the centurion did, that Jesus is the Son of God.When we do this, we shall live and be healed, because all sin is crucified with Him. His Blood will heal and save all who ‘look up’ and believe.

Lent Week 5 Monday – Go away and do not sin again

Readings: Daniel 13:1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62; Psalm 23; John 8:1-11

In today’s Gospel passage from John, Jesus returns from the Mount of Olives to the Temple in order to teach and is almost at once embroiled in a most dramatic episode. The scribes and Pharisees bring before him for judgement a woman who has been ‘caught in the very act of committing adultery’. But the case is far from clear cut; a trap has been laid for Jesus. Is he to advise condemning the woman under Jewish Law and sanction death by stoning, disobeying the Roman authorities who had forbidden the Jews to exercise such power over their own people, or is he seemingly  to  condone her actions and do nothing?

The trap is, however, a little crude, for those assembled surely know a little more than they let on. Where for instance is the man they must also have caught ‘in the very act’ for he too is surely liable for the same judgement under Jewish law? That the woman is indeed sinful is not disputed but that there is much more to the case clearly impresses itself upon Jesus. He declares, 'if there is any one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her'. This is often misquoted and taken by some as a licence to sin, or as a sign that no one can take up a moral issue and censure sinful behaviour since none of us is without sin. This is a sad corruption of Jesus’ words in which he wishes to chastise severely those present in the Temple for their part in this distasteful affair. They are not without sin in this regard because they are in some way complicit in the adulterous actions that have been committed.

We, therefore, often miss the most important aspect of this passage, that of the unrestrained mercy of Christ. The woman has sinned, she makes no effort to deny or conceal this, and stands humbly before him. Subsequently Jesus extends to her the Divine forgiveness that we are all in need of in our lives. It is right that we are not too quick to judge and it is certainly right that we do not put God to the test as the Pharisees tried to do to Jesus, but neither is it a matter of condoning wrongful behaviour, turning a blind eye to sin (especially in our own lives). It is a matter of recognising our sinfulness and placing our humble trust in Christ before whom we must all be judged. Let us then hide nothing from him but turn towards him with all our hearts for forgiveness and by our example encourage others to do the same.

Lent Week 5 Sunday - The Raising of Lazarus

Readings: Ezekiel 37:12-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

John is the only evangelist to narrate the story of Jesus’ act of bringing the dead Lazarus back to life, although both Mark and Luke give examples of how Jesus restored life to the dead (Mark 5:23-23, Luke 7:11-17).  There is, however, something particularly dramatic about the story in John.  Here is a man who lay dead for four days and whose body had already started to decay.  The raising of Lazarus represents the last and the greatest of the seven miracles or ‘signs’ in John’s Gospel.  After this event no further miracles are recorded by John until the Lord’s own Resurrection.  In fact, the ‘sign’ of Lazarus serves in a way to prepare people for the coming death of Jesus and to point to his conquest over death in the Resurrection.

The family of Lazarus are plainly drawn to the person of Jesus and know of his ability to heal the sick.  But their expectations of him are somewhat limited.  Mary, who had anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her own hair, now prostrates herself once again at the feet of Jesus and declares: ‘Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.’  And Martha, a woman known for straight talking, directly challenges Jesus. It is simple: if he had come when he was asked, her brother would not have died.   Similarly, some of the onlookers wonder: ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’  Jesus, however, clearly demands a response and a trust that goes deeper than this, that is to say, he looks for faith in his power to bring the dead back to life.  We all pray for those we love to be cured when they are sick and no doubt we praise God if our prayers are answered in this way.  But Jesus wants us to believe even in the face of death, to believe that he has the power to restore life: ‘He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live’.

Jesus describes himself as ‘the resurrection and the life’.  He is able to do this because his union with the Father is so intimate that the life of God is his life.  Indeed, this intimacy is so close that Jesus is able to associate himself with the divine name: I AM.  He says: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.  In Jesus we see the power of God at work to save.  Throughout the whole of this scene Jesus is completely calm and in charge of the whole situation.  His final words - 'Lazarus, come out!' – are as powerful and efficacious as the divine fiat at the creation.

This reflection is on the alternative, Year A, readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. For a reflection on the Year B readings see here and here.

Lent Week 4 Saturday - When Trust is Difficult

Readings: Jer: 11:1-20, Ps 7, Jn 7:40-52

Just before the passage that we read in today’s Gospel, Jesus had been preaching during the Jewish festival of booths which commemorated the wandering of the Jewish people in the wilderness for forty years. Jerusalem is packed with pilgrims so Jesus has a large audience. We see that many Jews were deeply impressed by the substance of Jesus’ words. They recognised at once that what he said came from God for they felt that he was at least a prophet if not indeed the long awaited Christ, or anointed one. But others could not see this at all. Jesus did not fit into their fixed notion about what the Christ would be. He obviously does not fit into their expectations or categories.

So often in life we do not want to hear the message of Jesus or acknowledge his authority, compelling though it may be. Perhaps it just makes us too uncomfortable or makes demands on our lifestyle choices that we just find inconvenient. Perhaps we feel that we have met him half way or that we are doing just fine being nice and at least not hurting others. Then we realize what the extraordinary claims of Jesus require. Often one of our responses to this challenge is to try and poke holes in Jesus' right to ask anything of us. This is what the chief priests and the Pharisees do when they make the claim that this man cannot be a prophet for “prophets do not come out of Galilee”. If they bothered to investigate the truth about Jesus instead of rushing to cut him down and therefore enforce their own positions, they could have discovered that he was born in Bethlehem which is not in Galilee! 

Another temptation when challenged by Jesus' message is to shoot the messenger which can often be the Church, bishops or perhaps someone who dares to speak the truth to us. Rather than listen and enter into dialogue we can hit out as the Pharisees do to Nicodemus: “Are you a Galilean too?”

But to all who try to take up the challenge of Christ, who take the risk of moving out of their comfort zones by following him with all their struggles, weaknesses and shortcomings, Jesus offers something extraordinary: new joy, new strength, and hope that wells up to eternal life. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (Jn 7:37-38).