The Furnace

Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 Jumping is not an activity usually related to an encounter with the divine.  And yet this is the case in our first reading this morning. Peter then took him by the hand and helped him to stand up. Instantly his feet and ankles became firm, he jumped up, stood, and began to walk, and he went with them into the Temple, walking and jumping and praising God.   Yet is it at all surprising?  This guy, for his whole life, his ankles and feet were twisted and ruined.  Walking was a totally alien experience to him. Not to mention actually experiencing the brief sensation of his body and feet freely moving in the air air.  It’s no wonder our formerly crippled friend was walking and jumping as much as he could. But there is another reason of his jumping.  Jumping for joy. When was the last time you jumped for joy simply at delight of being in communion with the Risen Lord, of being one of his people - or that you even felt like that?  Its important for us to reflect on our joy, and how we express it - and what we can do to better appreciate the joy God gives us. Is our Christian life even a joyful and grateful one? Let us pray. O God, who gladden us year by year with the solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection, graciously grant, that, by celebrating these present festivities, we may merit through them to reach eternal joys. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 Its really important how St Peter’s listeners react today.  What must we do?  They ask.  Peter’s answer is very illuminating: ‘You must repent,’.  Clearly, right at the beginning of the Church, this has been a key part of what anyone desiring to live the Christian life must do.  Of course - it's not all finished in one go. You and I experience in our flesh and heart the recognition that we need to do this. But there is a second thing.  And every one of you must be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  How about that.  From the word go, from the day of Pentecost, the Church was already doing at least two sacraments: baptism and confirmation.  Three actually we can say from this text: the need for Confession too is presupposed - if, and we know its true, authentic repentance - and forgiveness - is something we strive for in the Christian life.  To better be more like the Risen Jesus. Let us pray: O God, who have bestowed on us paschal remedies, endow your people with heavenly gifts, so that, possessed of perfect freedom, they may rejoice in heaven over what gladdens them now on earth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Monday, April 13th, 2020 So Happy Easter to all of you!  But Father, you might say, you already did that yesterday.  And I respond to you - yes!  You are right. And I do it again today.  Because today also is Easter Sunday. Every day this week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, is Easter Sunday.  It is called the Easter Octave - oct, for 8! Because Easter is so important for human history, and to us who love Jesus, that the Church feasts daily for eight days!  So feast merrily today, have some special foods, do some special things, and rejoice! St Peter expands on our reasons for feasting today: Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit. In other words our feasting is not simply at something which happened a long time ago.  It is not even limited to the fact that Jesus is here risen and radiant at our side right now.  We are also feasting because of what Jesus is doing and will do for us now. Peter says Jesus has promised us, now he is risen, something which has never happened in human history since the fall of Adam and Eve: God is going to pour out on us the fullness of himself, his Holy Spirit.  This means the effect of the resurrection are not simply something that I understand, and I set my life around. Just as Jesus did what we could not in Holy Week, so now, as he taught us he can that week, the Holy Spirit is now going to do what we cannot for ourselves - from within our very heart and soul.  What we saw with our eyes in Holy Week, the Holy Spirit will do himself from within our hearts for eternity. This of course is the Lord’s first redirection of our eyes towards the feast when he will accomplish this - the feast of Pentecost.  I invite you brothers and sisters, to begin preparing, simply by praying once a day the three words Veni Creator Spiritus: come creator Spirit, come rerecreate me, come liberate and heal me.  Amen. Let us pray: O God, who give constant increase to your Church by new offspring, grant that your servants may hold fast in their lives to the Sacrament they have received in faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Sunday, April 12th, 2020 Victimae paschali laudes immolent Christiani.  Agnus redemit oves: Christus innocens Patri reconciliavit peccatores.  These words are so important, they will ring out at every single mass all over the world for eight days.  They have been doing so for a thousand years. And they are going to ring out forever. Victimae paschali laudes, Christians, to the Paschal Victim, immolent Christiani offer sacrifice and praise. For this is the main thing.  The paschal victim, the passover lamb, the man who was killed and sealed in the tomb three days ago is not dead, and he is not there.  As the witnesses tell us in today’s Gospel, the tomb has been burst open. The cloths which had wrapped his dead body are now lying empty where they were left.  And, as Peter reports breathlessly to us in the First Reading, this all-powerful conqueror even of death has eaten and drank with the Apostles: we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead – and he has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to tell them that God has appointed him to judge everyone, alive or dead. It is to him that all the prophets bear this witness: that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name.’ This is unbelievably good news! Firstly because, death is no longer anything to fear.  Even though he was killed, Jesus has sprung back, now unkillable forever.  Demonstrated and public master of words and creation during his work, death too is shown to be part of what he can do what he wants with.  This means that anyone who belongs to him, anyone who is a Christian, need never fear anything ever again. Rest in me - and be not afraid! Christ tells us today, and tomorrow, and every other day of our life. Second because our sins are forgiven.  Jesus’ resurrection tells us that God the Father has accepted what Jesus did to make up and undo the damage of our sins, that we can never make up for.  Never again do we have to wander around like sin-laden and shackled ghosts of Jacob Marley. Our experience of life on earth has changed: for those who welcome it, we walk around in Mercy, knowing we are forgiven, our soul united for eternity with God who loves us. And third: as the apostles, and all the Christians and saints of the first centuries tell us - the Risen Son of God spoke and ate with Peter and the Apostles, and commissioned them to teach, sanctify and govern the Church, as foundations of the Church he was opening to all to share in the fruits of his Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, the Church Jesus still leads, strengthens and loves. Do you believe this?  Do you want to be part of this?  If yes, and you are not Christian or Catholic contact your local Catholic church.  We’re there to help you do that. And if you’re Catholic, embrace anew our daily silent time with the Risen Jesus, his absolution of our sins in confession, and his presence at Sunday Mass.   Jesus suffered, died, rose so we could share in his life through these things. Alleluia! Let us pray:  O God, who on this day, through your Only Begotten Son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity, grant, we pray, that we who keep the solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection may, through the renewal brought by your Spirit, rise up in the light of life.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ...

Saturday, April 11th, 2020 There are no readings for Holy Saturday as such. There is no liturgy. There is nothing. And that’s what you might note about the spirit of today, and the spirit of nature today. All is quiet. It’s not wonderful and its not terrible. It just is. But nature is still good. And when we stop and appreciate creation for five, ten, twenty minutes - and we should take time to do that today - it is quiet, but it is good. And solid. Clearly then, even though Jesus of Nazareth is dead and sealed up in the tomb, things are not over. God is not finished. He is still here, keeping the cosmos going, and this is part of his plan. Let us pray. In silence.

Friday, April 10th, 2020   So disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.  That’s Isaiah’s description of Jesus on the cross today.  That’s really some conclusion about God’s contact with human beings.  Born outside the city, killed outside the city. Born onto rough wood, dying nailed to rough wood.  Born ignored by most, dead abandoned by most. How could God’s incarnate interaction with us be so poor?  Surely we’re not that bad? But that’s how he was treated - at birth, at death. Is it any different today? So if you’re struggling because you feel locked out of normal community life, if you sometimes feel abandoned, if you’ve had trouble with people - God knows all about that.  Jesus experienced all that personally in Holy Week. And God has been experiencing it for basically the whole history of humanity. God’s body - cradled by Mary - is a dead body, growing colder.  The only thing that remains is to bury it. What do you feel, Mary?  John - what are you thinking? Except one thing.  The only crucial thing that makes a difference anywhere.  It is in the words of today’s psalm. The psalms were known to Jesus by heart.  They were his prayers. And as almighty God, they are his thoughts. These final words of the heart of Jesus to the Father were: In you, O Lord, I take refuge.  Let me never be put to shame. In your justice, set me free, Into your hands I commend my spirit.  It is you who will redeem me, Lord. In his very manner of death, Jesus teaches us one last thing.  When everything is going wrong, when all is black and impossible, your sadness horrific and life greatly burdensome ahead of you, do one essential thing: abandon yourself into the hands of the Creator.  Don’t control it: just carelessly fall completely into his hands. For regardless of how you feel or what others do, God loves you. No situation or person can every doing anything to alter that. And buried seeds grow: they explode out of the ground in dramatic colour, life and size compared to the petty little seed that no one thinks anymore about.  All the more do we when, feeling dead, we drop ourselves into the infinitely rich and creative soil which is the life of the Trinity. Because, having finally died to ourself, God is left free to really do what he wants with us.  And with one warm breath wakes us into a new way of being - radically changed. This is real change. This is real conversion. And this, my friends, is finally who we are. Having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation. Let us pray. Remember your mercies, O Lord, and with your eternal protection sanctify your servants, for whom Christ your Son, by the shedding of his Blood, established the Paschal Mystery. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Thursday, April 9th, 2020 Traditio.  This word echoes through all the others tonight.  Traditio.  It means “to hand over”.  Its in the first reading: This month is to be the first of all the others for you...For all generations you are to declare it a day of festival, for ever.  In the psalm God hands over his goodness:  How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me?  In the second reading St Paul hands over what he handed by the Lord: This is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you.  In the gradual Jesus hands over a new commandment: I give you a new commandment. The point of this is to highlight that Jesus is handing over something to us in the Gospel.  The first thing he hands over to our care is the new commandment. This is where we get the name Maundy Thursday from.  Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum: commandment.  You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.’  What about the “I give you a new commandment” line?  Here, that commandment is given and interpreted. The washing of the feet indicate the kind of love Jesus is talking about.  Not just feelings or romance or idealism, but actions, whether we like it or not, in service of the other’s good. That is love.  That is Divine love. There is also something else Jesus gives us tonight.  He gives us priests. Catholic priests. As the Council of Trent clarified:  If anyone shall say that by the words ‘Do this in commemoration of me’ Christ did not institute the apostles priests, or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer his body and blood: let him be anathema (Council of Trent, session 22, ch. 1).  The whole Catholic hierarchy in fact - Bishops, priests, and deacons - Jesus ordains and sets in the structure of the Church.  Since the beginning, the ordained ministry has been conferred and exercised in three degrees (CCC 1593), as the catechism reminds us. There is still one more thing Jesus hands over to us.  It is himself. We know this - because it is at the very heart of the words we prayed at the beginning of mass in the Collect: morti se traditúrus -  when about to hand himself over to death.   My friends, this is why tonight is special.  Tonight, for the first time, the bridegroom gives himself to us, his bride.  Tonight the very origin of our being hands himself, totally, into our care and lives forever.  Never again, now, need we be separated from God. In every parish church, locked and dark as they may be, Jesus is still there now, with us, locked up too - in lockdown permanently. Three ways we can honour the Real Presence in the time of lockdown: Make a sign of the cross each time you drive or walk past a church. Your daily exercise can include a walk or run past the church. Like St John Vianney, imaginatively place yourself before the tabernacle. Let us pray: O God, who have called us to participate in this most sacred Supper, in which your Only Begotten Son, when about to hand himself over to death, entrusted to the Church a sacrifice new for all eternity, the banquet of his love, grant, we pray, that we may draw from so great a mystery, the fullness of charity and of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son..

Wednesday, April 8th, 2020 Today since medieval times this day has been known as Spy Wednesday.  Why spy?  Its because on this day Judas goes in secret, without telling his colleagues, or his master, to sell information about his master to his enemies.  The Jewish leaders really had a spy, a paid secret agent, where they wanted one - at the very heart of Jesus’ work and personal life. Pretty terrible huh? So the next question is: what do you accept to betray Jesus?  What’s your rate? For this is of course the flip side of a betrayal coin.  When we feel betrayed, we’re all guns out for justice and just retribution and so on.  Beautiful. Wonderful. So for every one of our sins, God can apply justice and retribution to us too right?  Suddenly we stop, and are silent. And our heart says, no please God, forgive me, be merciful to me.  It’s a great way to understand why we should then also be merciful to others. Let’s us take time to beg God for mercy.  And so let us also take far more seriously our mission to pray for mercy for the whole of the world. Let us pray:  O God, who willed your Son to submit for our sake to the yoke of the Cross, so that you might drive from us the power of the enemy, grant us, your servants, to attain the grace of the resurrection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Tuesday 7 April 2020 Night had fallen. The Fathers of the Church saw this as an expression not only of the time of day, but of the state of Judas’ soul. But this darkness refers also to the whole situation. Heavy black shutters have slammed down over the heart of Judas. The disciples too are finding themselves ever more heavily curtained off from understanding what is happening around them, and from help, increasing their growing anxiety.   Even Jesus is not immune. The darkness is dripping now like a heavy black ooze over Jesus. All is becoming black, as Satan tries, and the Father allows, the Light of the World to be extinguished. And yet - Jesus remains free. We see this in two ways. The first is his continuing love and respect for Judas. Knowing what he is doing, he isn’t sharp or nasty or even sarcastic to him. He does not display a shred of lack of charity in any way. He simply says calmly and with patience: ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ Whenever we have felt that we have been betrayed, backstabbed, treated unjustly - where was our charity? We were reeling in pain, strongly tempted and maybe gave in to bitterness, and the desire for revenge. Jesus tells us with force today: that is not my way. That is not the way of my Father. And this is the second thing we see: even betrayed, upset and stirred up as he might feel, he continues with absolute and faithful adherence to the Father’s plan and the Father’s love. He’s being betrayed? That’s ok - its part of the Father’s plan - and so great good will come of it. ‘Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and in him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in him, God will in turn glorify him in himself, and will glorify him very soon. Let’s beg Jesus for forgiveness when we have chosen to do the wrong thing when we feel we have suffered betrayal, asking him for the gift of real charity in all situations and with all kinds of people. Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, grant us so to celebrate the mysteries of the Lord’s Passion that we may merit to receive your pardon. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today is called the Monday of Holy Week.  The liturgy of this week is so important that even if there are feasts of any saints they fall to the side.  Celebration of the sacraments of both Baptism and Confirmation are all forbidden - so that pride of place is the passion of our Creator, the humble Son of God. And the beginning of this unfolds before us today with today’s entrance antiphon from Psalm 34: Contend, O Lord, with my contenders; fight those who fight me.  Take up your buckler and shield; arise in my defence, Lord, my mighty help.  It’s scary because Jesus is not fighting anyone - the way the antiphon is worded, you’d think he’s about to enter a medieval joust.  And yet, as we see in the Gospel, in fact he is in the very thick of public testings and attempted trippings up. The testing is even more scary today as it reaches it crooked hand into the very dining room, the very heart of the house of some of Jesus’ closest friends - Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  Out of the very heart and very mouth of Jesus’ twelve best friends - his own carefully chosen twelve apostles. A priest. And yet it is consoling for all of us.  Consoling because we too experience life as a battle.  But consoling even more because Yoda himself - nay, one infinitely greater than Yoda - has stepped into the battle on our behalf.  Saying to Satan on our behalf these words: Leave her alone. Jesus will pay for his words - but the price will liberate all of us into eternal life.  And him - at the right hand side of the Father in glory. Let us pray: Grant, we pray, almighty God, that, though in our weakness we fail, we may be revived through the Passion of your Only Begotten Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Palm Sunday.  Here we are at last.  At Holy Week. Do you feel tired?  It’s been quite a Lent hasn’t it. And all these new changes and regulations.  Real tiring. And so we can have a taste of what Jesus felt like. Often we think: it’s his moment of glory.  It’s his first experience of triumph.  But I don’t think so.  Sitting on the donkey on the Mount of Olives, looking down and across to Jerusalem on the other side of the steep-sided valley, eyes drawn to the Stone Temple towering over all things, House of His Father and nest of his enemies - watching all the people growing in excited murmur and shouts, climbing up and pulling or cutting off palm branches in order to get their place and loudly acclaim him as liberator from the might of the Romans, excited also by his signs - and getting most of the meaning wrong of what he was about to do: yes.  Seeing all these things, and anticipating the trial of the week ahead - I think Jesus was tired. But he didn’t let this slow him down or stop him.  Not for a second. Instead they brought the ass and the colt, and put their garments on them, and he sat thereon.  This is the first lesson for us today: to enter into this fatigue of the Lord, to thank and love him for it - but to also enter the total confidence he had in His Father to arrange every future detail exactly as was best for Jesus and for each of us.  And with courage and faith and a huge love, to make each next step. A second point is that this Week of Weeks had been long prepared by God the Father.  Somehow, for example, the prophet Isaiah is able to precisely describe the passion the saviour would undergo 600 years earlier: For my part, I made no resistance, neither did I turn away.  I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle.  It’s a pretty important thing to think about, and you need to start if you haven’t already.  Almighty God let people rip out his beard by the roots. He stood patiently as they shucked gobs of their spit onto his forehead, cheeks, eyes and mouth.  He stayed patiently silent as his body bucked and warped as they raked the flesh out of his back. All for love. This is not a time when we can ask does God love me.  My friends, just look and think.  And weep. For its our sins which cause this.  Our sins, my friends, is not love. Our sins are greed and careless selfishness.  We have a lot to repent for. A lot of lack of love to make up for. And yet it is him here who is doing this for us in our place - because we ourselves are not capable of it.  So much does he make up for us. This is the message of this Palm Sunday my friends: don’t waste this week.  It’s not just an event in the calendar.  Right now, we are at the central axis of all space and time.  Baptised into Christ, we are now there present with him for every moment of the rest of this week.  Look at him and accompany him. When he is anxious, comfort him with your arm. When he is spat on, wipe away the spit.  When he trips, help him with his cross. And as he lies pinned there on the cross, with his heart gaping open for all to see, drink generously from the blood and water which gushes forth from his heart.  Love him back in all these ways - and prepare to participate in the cataclysm of His salvation. Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who as an example of humility for the human race to follow caused our Saviour to take flesh and submit to the Cross, graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering and so merit a share in his Resurrection. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Saturday, April 4th, 2020

Friday, April 3rd, 2020

In today’s readings, God combats the temptation we can have to activism.  Fr John Hardon SJ defines activism as Preoccupation with activity instead of reflection...Activism is part of the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, which holds that the main purpose of thought is not to discover and contemplate the truth, but to change reality, especially social reality, in the world.  A consequence of this is the idea that for me to be valuable, I must be useful, I must be producing something.   And we see this all the time.  Examples include being unable to sit quietly by ourself doing nothing, bragging about how busy we are, filling out time with work, and being unable to remove ourselves from behind a screen. Of course, the idea that to be valuable I need to produce something is complete nonsense.  My value, and my happiness do not revolve around production. My value is based on how God values me, and the reality that he loves me infinitely and that nobody can ever change that.  And my happiness depends on my union with God - the more united I am with him, the stronger my participation in beatitude. This is the Lord’s point today.  The whole First Reading is all about what God wants to do for Abram - and for us.  You shall no longer be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham...I make you father of a multitude of nations. I will make you most fruitful. I will make you into nations...your issue shall be kings...I will establish my Covenant between myself and you...I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land you are living in...I will be your God.’ So happiness and value is not all about us.  Or about us doing things. This is an especially important message for all of you at home, frustrated about the things you can’t do.  Life and happiness is not firstly about that! It’s about the action of God, and allowing him to do what he wants with us. Let us use this time to practice, first of all, to abandon ourselves daily totally to his will. Let us pray: Be near, O Lord, to those who plead before you, and look kindly on those who place their hope in your mercy, that, cleansed from the stain of their sins, they may persevere in holy living and be made full heirs of your promise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Wednesday, April 1st