tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24736912983509039992024-03-13T19:04:39.630+00:00In Priora Extendens MeStraining forward to what lies ahead, I press onMark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-14921040802570599722022-12-23T18:30:00.011+00:002023-09-26T15:47:34.134+01:00Shcho to za Predivo: What a wonder! Glad the news I bring you<p>Every so often I find a carol or hymn in another language that appears not to have a translation that would enable it to be sung in English.</p><p>Among the abundant patrimony of Christmas carols, in which the culture of Ukraine abounds, especially among the Greek Catholics, is this poignantly tender and beautiful beautiful meditation on the news that the Virgin who has given birth to Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man, is also the first to adore him; how Joseph who is identified as an old man helps to bring in the newborn Christ as Saviour. It also hints how the mother who holds Jesus in the swaddling clothes will one day hold him when he is taken down from the Cross, to be wrapped this time in graveclothes. Yet she does not weep for the loss of her own son alone, but loves the Son who has come as the Lord himself, the Saviour of all.</p><p>It is not easy to translate from Ukrainian metre into English verse, as the patterns of the languages, and thus who they are sung, are different. But I hope this offering, with a few rhymes within, will work and enable people to sing with the Christians of Ukraine with tenderness and adoration - and indeed faith and hope. A YouTube link to a lovely rendering of it by a student choir in America, to the setting by Vasyl Barvinskiy, is here:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pC_kzkm8ZtU" width="320" youtube-src-id="pC_kzkm8ZtU"></iframe></div><br /><p>The translation, such as it is, I dedicate to me dear friend and fellow pilgrim in Australia - Sister Marie Farrell rsm.</p><p>Hristos rozhdayetsya! Christ is born: Happy Christmas.</p><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">Glad the news I bring you:</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">"Earth to joy restored;</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">For to you a Saviour,</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Christ is born, our Lord."</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">See the holy Virgin Mary,</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">She who bore Him, then adore Him:</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">“Jesu, my dear Son!”</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In that cave the old man, </p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Joseph, see prepare</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">cloths, to swathe Messiah, </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">Jesu, with all care.</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Mary mild see in them fold Him, </p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">to her heart more closely hold Him,</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Pure Mother of God.</p><p></p></blockquote><p> </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Ukrainian traditional carol for the Nativity of Christ. Translation © Mark Woodruff 23.12.2022<p></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-26055577038688936682022-04-27T11:38:00.003+01:002022-05-05T11:44:27.630+01:00The Great Martyr: Sermon on Low Sunday and the Feast of St George, Parish Church of St George, Hanover Square, London W1, 24th April 2022<p>Christ is
risen!</p><p>So little is
known of St George that in the 1960s his feast was downgraded in the Calendar
of the Roman Church and it was even suspected that he may have been legendary.
But surely that is the point of our following Jesus Christ, that it is not for our
achievements and significance that we are remembered, but simply for taking up
our Cross after him, faithful unto death. So it is for this that he is
venerated in the Christian East, as one of those known as the Great Martyrs on
account of their exceptional witness to Christ, in the face of exceptional
barbarity.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was a
career-soldier of such great skill, integrity and loyalty that he served in the
elite guards of the Emperor Diocletian in the late third century. Diocletian was
an able ruler and military leader, bringing peace and stability to the vast
empire under tensions within and from without. Yet economic and political
problems shadowed the image of an all-competent autocrat, and it was convenient
to blame religious minorities for supposedly undermining the imperial
administration. You can imagine George’s pride in his part in restoring law and
order in the Empire, and the despatch of its external enemies under
Diocletian’s generalship. George would have been a man set for great things, as
his service record extended with further honours and rising prospects for
promotion in the Praetorian Guard. Except, that he was a Christian. Previously his
problematic religion may have been tolerated; but now it was to blame for poor
government performance, according to those who spin popular opinion. It seems
that George had earlier come to Diocletian’s favourable attention, since, after
the official exclusion of Christians had begun in earnest in 302, followed by
outright persecution in 303, Diocletian and his officials may have sought to
retain him, while others were put to the sword. Privations and tortures in
mounting severity were meant to deter him from his Christianity; easing them an
incentive to embrace the official Roman religion and its cult of the Emperor.
You may imagine his protest of unimpeachable loyalty, and his appeal to his exemplary
service record. There is even a story of the Empress Alexandra, and how the brutality
led her first to admire the dignity and loyalty of the soldier who had done
nothing to deserve such dishonour, and then to recognise the power of his faith
in Christ as her own.</p><p><br /></p><p>Not more than a
few hundred yards from this Church is the road along which Christian martyrs
were carted for many decades from Newgate prison at the City of London to their
cruel dismemberment and execution at Tyburn, protesting their loyalty to
England and to Queen Elizabeth I, but rejected as traitors for being Catholics
and priests, such as I am. We know from contemporary accounts how many of them
were loved as pastors and holy people by the wider population, not just the
Catholic community. We also know that these martyrdoms, whatever the exuberance
of some elements in the crowds, were also observed with silence and grave
respect by others. I should recall that the executions of Protestants under
Queen Mary were no less ill-advised and repellent to humane Catholics, who no
more sought for the Reformation Protestants the violent repression that their
co-religionists had endured under Henry VIII and Edward VI and would again endure
under Elizabeth. By the time St George’s was built, England had exhausted
itself of religious blood-letting and civil war. St George’s was to provide a
new sacred space of godly learning and glorious music, especially that of Händel,
that has been part of the shaping of our nation’s culture and Christian
civilisation. Even while penal restrictions on Catholic Christians persisted, another
nearby sanctuary of God’s adoration and freedom in the Holy Spirit arose for
Catholics, at the Church of the Assumption and St Gregory on Warwick Street.
Today we address our differences with the honest reconciliation of memory, and the
practice of ecumenism and friendship, as well as in united service of those in
need. We realise that we do not defend separate sides but are heirs to a
history held in common. We are able to love, because we have been all been
brought to our knees by the suffering of those who went before us, whose lives
were called out of their bodies for being faithful to Christ, and because the
hardness of heart in all of us has been melted by beauty and forgiveness, in
worship and its music.</p><p><br /></p><p>Both St
George’s and the Assumption quietly stand in monumental witness to what has
been sacrificed for faith in the past, and what is held in store for those who
hope and trust. As St James has reminded us this morning, “The trying of your
faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be
perfect and entire” (James 1. 3-4). St George was certainly patient in his
faith sorely tried in 303. His remains are venerated to this day in the Holy
Land, and the crown of a life made perfect and entire is his. In his company
are the martyrs whose relics are enshrined at Tyburn Convent, St John
Southworth at Westminster Cathedral, and those Reformers whose memorials stand close
to Smithfield at St James’s, Clerkenwell.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yet these are
not remembrances of death, but of life. The feast of St George that we celebrate
today has fallen in the Octave of Easter; and he and they are witnesses that
all who have been baptized into Christ, were “baptized into his death, thus
buried in order to be raised with Him from the dead through the glory of the
Father, and walk in newness of life” (Romans 6. 3-4). The remains of St George
at Lod and of the saints in all kinds of other shrines, together with all the
Churches raised in their honour, are not memorials to a life that receded into
the past, but they are, so to speak, relics of Christ’s act of resurrection and
edifices of the Kingdom that is now and for ever. For “every branch that
beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth <i>more</i> fruit” (John
15.2). Our holy and honoured martyrs and heroes were not destroyed, but made
fruitful for more vigorous growth and enduring life: life that is not mere
survival in this world, but the fulness of life in eternal heaven lived now
upon temporary earth.</p><p><br /></p><p>Today in our
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, owing to ancient calendrical calculations by
which we and the West over time fell out of step, it is Pascha, Easter Day. We
sing, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to
those in the tombs giving life.” We are singing this dozens of times today
because yesterday we sang, “Today the Abyss sighed and cried out, My power has
been destroyed. For I received a dead Man as one of their dead, but I could not
hold Him. Then I also lost with Him all those who were under His power. From
the beginning I held the dead, but now this One raises them. Glory to Your
Cross and resurrection, O Lord.”</p><p><br /></p><p>I cannot fail
to recall those people who are our fellow Christians in the Ukrainian Greek
Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the Reformed Baptist Church, Ukrainian
Jews and Muslims, and other Ukrainian people, all of whom have done nothing
wrong and provoked nothing, but only served and lived, like St George, with
faithful love, integrity, and loyal virtue. This week we have heard of horrific
sexual attacks inflicted upon children, women and even young soldiers taken
captive. Several of our churches around the world have been desecrated, and a
priest managed to save his children with only moments to spare after his wife
was woken and saw an intruder light petrol poured through their door while they
slept. At the beginning of Lent, a priest was confronted at gunpoint by a
soldier pretending to be a monk ordering him to abandon his Catholic faith by
either becoming Russian Orthodox or a pagan, saying, “It makes no difference”.
And at the end of Lent on Good Friday, a car was driven at speed right into our
cathedral at Ternopil, destroying the Cross and the Shroud of Christ that we lay
out for the people who pour out their love and devotion before them.</p><p><br /></p><p>We have no
argument with our Russian and Russian Orthodox friends - our people wish they
had no argument with us. What we cannot understand is why Christian hearts,
after the receding past of enmity and estrangement, should abandon the dialogue
of love and instead turn on other Christians, harming the innocent on the days
of Christ’s own trials, even on the feast when He brings nothing but life and
peace - and not destruction, but salvation and his own divine beauty. St
George’s is a haven of this beauty that saves the world, a potent symbol of faithful
discipleship in the footsteps of Christ, and the beacon of St George its patron
who followed Him as far as death and into the kingdom of life that is
everlasting. So may St George, who is also the patron of this our beloved
homeland, as well as patron of the City of Moscow, by his patient endurance, by
the perfection with which he was crowned, pray for those entrusted to his
intercession, break the hearts of those who have chosen to be evil, and share
with them the gift he himself has received – peace and resurrection, and the
life of a Kingdom that is not of this world but which we pray every day will
come on earth as it is in heaven.</p><p><br /></p><p>St George the Great Martyr, pray
for us. Glory to England. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory for ever. Christ is risen.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-29457490071717619942022-03-14T10:36:00.001+00:002022-03-14T10:36:52.163+00:00Music: Prayer for Ukraine<p>Here are again are the Latin-script transliteration and my attempt at a verse translation of the Prayer for Ukraine, Ukraine's national spiritual anthem, by Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900).</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;"><br /></p><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; font-weight: bold;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Nam Ukrainu khrany,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Voli i svitu prominnyam,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Ty yii osiny.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Svitlom na-uky i znannya</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Nas, ditey, prosvity,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">V chystii liubovi kraiu,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Nam Ukrainu khrany,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Ty na liud nash zverny.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Dai, Bozhe, narodu</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">I mnohaia, mnohaia lita.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; font-weight: bold;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; font-weight: bold;"><i style="font-weight: 400;">Translation:</i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; font-weight: bold;"><i style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></i></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; font-weight: bold;">Lord, God alone, the Almighty,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Hold our Ukraine in your hand;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Shine with the rays of your glory</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Liberty on our land.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;"> </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Lighten our learning and wisdom,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Keep your children in your heart;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Love that is pure for our homeland,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Lord our God, now impart. </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;"> </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Merciful God, the Almighty,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Guard our Ukraine in your care.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Turn to our people and country,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Send your grace at our prayer.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;"> </div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Guide all our endeavour;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Bless us, God, our land and people,</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">And grant us many, many years, for ever.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px; font-weight: bold;"><em style="font-weight: 400;">Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959- ). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.</em></div><p>Here is the music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912) with the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1enHP3a4XUfR-cgNfnK2ihK2Dmg9FLjG7/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Latin-script text in Ukrainian</a>.</p><p>Here is the music with the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v2wm86ljbCfDPXRqrRpYGlI30bReD1st/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">English translation</a>.</p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-90676452601034586452022-03-10T10:31:00.027+00:002022-05-11T10:36:06.847+01:00Glory to Jesus Christ: The Church in Ukraine and its faithfulness to the Eucharistic Lord, Homily for the Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament, Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Maiden Lane, 3rd March, 2022<p> + Glory to Jesus Christ!</p><p>Father Alan, whose birthday it is today - and we wish you
many congratulations - asked me some weeks ago to preach on the Blessed Sacrament
of the Eucharist from an Eastern Christian point of view and I prepared
something. In light of the last seven days, I was not happy with it at all and
I tore it up. So what I'm going to tell you about tonight comes straight from
the heart of the Ukrainian Catholic Community in London, where I serve week by
week, month by month.</p><p><br /></p><p>I look after the Liturgies for English-speakers at the
Cathedral of the Holy Family and I am a trustee of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic
Eparchy, on loan, so to speaks, as a priest of the Latin diocese of Westminster.
I stand before you having come from that community in the most terrifying week
since the fall of the Soviet Union when all hopes rose that the hell of
communist persecution of Christians and the suppression of our Catholic Church
was over for good. Yet now we face being back in 1944 when the empire of Russia
at last managed to seize the whole of Ukraine and closed down our ancient
Church and expropriated all its patrimony, its people, and martyred its bishops.
In clear view of the threat to all Ukrainians, the Prime Minister came to us on
Sunday to show his unequivocal support. Yesterday came the Prince of Wales and the
Duchess of Cornwall to encourage us. It has been an amazing week, as the priests
have been absorbing the anxiety of the people and their worries about their
homes, their family, their loved ones, as well as their land and their future.</p><p><br /></p><p>What I want to tell you about today, in describing what
they have been going through, is why they are who they are and why they are
important to the Roman Catholic Church - because this is one of two dozen other
churches that are much smaller than the Latin Catholic Church, but are full
Churches in their own right in fullness of Communion with it and, through the Church
of Rome led by the successor of Peter, all with one another. I hope you will understand,
as I set out some of the history and some of the recent stories of people, why
this Church and our union of East and West is so important; and furthermore why
it is the Blessed Eucharist that we share with each other as fellow Catholics (in
the hope of Union with the Orthodox too) that is the centre of our lives, and why
it is the shining light, bringing brilliance from another world into this dark
period.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most people tend to think that the East is a separate
church - the Orthodox Church. Well, the lands that we now call Ukraine, along
with other parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, were evangelised in the 9th
century in a joint mission from Rome and Constantinople - the Church of the
East and the Church of the West together, but from out of the Greek Christian
culture. Part of the reason for this was because the Slavic people did not want
to be dominated by the Western Christians rulers in Germany, which would have
been easier if they were to become Latins like them. They wanted a Christian
religion, culture and form of worship of their own. Thus it was that in the
year 868 Pope Adrian blessed the books in the Slavonic language that had been
prepared by SS. Cyril and Methodius, whom you may remember were made joined
patrons of Europe along with St Benedict by Pope St. John Paul II.</p><p><br /></p><p>This evangelisation had been under way, extending well
into Ukraine when In the year 987, the Grand Prince of Kyiv, which is at the
centre of the land called Rus’ (a word from which we later derived both the
name of Ruthenia and Russia, even though it was appropriated by a new empire
around Moscow to the exclusion of the original people around Kyiv), Volodymyr (also
known as Vladimir) decided to pacify and unite the people under his rule in a
single faith, and decided that, after decades of living and ruling as a pagan,
he and they would be baptised as Eastern Christians. I am sure you have heard
the famous story that he sent emissaries across the known world to assess which
religion would be right.</p><p><br /></p><p>He no longer saw that the love that the people held for
their many and rival gods was a true and loving faith, as it was rooted in fear
and violence rather than peace and good law. The emissaries examined the
religion of the Muslims and Volodymyr rejected the prohibition of pork and
alcohol. They considered the faith of the Jewish people, but reported that it
not only prohibited pork but seemed to be missing the heart of its own religion
with the loss of Jerusalem. They went to the Latin rite Germans and so no great
beauty there. But from the Great Church in Constantinople - the vast Cathedral
known as Hagia Sophia, that is now a mosque again, they returned with a report that,
having witnessed their Divine Liturgy, “We no longer knew whether we were in
Heaven or on Earth, nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it. We only
know that God dwells there among the people, and their service is fairer than
the ceremonies of other nations.”</p><p><br /></p><p>When he heard this, Volodymyr knew that he had found the
path forward to lead his realm and people in the faith of Christ. The following
year, in the Greek city of Chersonesus, at the south-western tip of Crimea,
Volodymyr was baptised before his people and married the sister of the Byzantine
Emperor. In other words, he had received the gift of faith and thus for ever formed
the Christian identity of Eastern Europe, by the pledge of grace that would
come for him from the sacrament of the Eucharist. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
believe!” (John 20.29)</p><p><br /></p><p>Still at that moment, the churches of East and West in
Europe were in union. Sadly, this disintegrated after the Great Schism began in
1054, and so developed a division of the Churches into Catholic and Orthodox.
But the memory of the integrity of East and West remained foundational for both,
and there were repeated attempts to achieve re-integration. Substantial
misunderstandings grew about theology and language that have kept both
traditions wary of what re-union might imply, as they seek to be faithful to
the tradition they have received. In our century I believe we have become very
close to solving them. There are semantic and doctrinal difficulties that need
not, after all, be church-dividing and which can be put right with faithful mutual
understanding.</p><p><br /></p><p>Indeed, there was a major attempt at repair arising from the
Council of Florence-Ferrara in 1439, but efforts to win its acceptance did not
survive the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. It was not, however, forgotten. When the
Church of Kyiv and the surrounding Rus’ or Ruthenian regions in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth found themselves variously threatened by Muslim forces from the
south and east the other Orthodox, and also a new state that had freed itself from
the Muslim yoke in the form of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, they strongly sensed
isolation from other Orthodox churches and because of the missionary activities
of both Latin Catholics and Protestants. They could not easily be in
communication with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, the ancient
mother Church, because he himself was under the control of the Ottomans. So, in
1596, the Church of the Rus’, with the support of Constantinople, decided that
its future security and development lay in the restoration of the unity that
they had had with the Church of Rome in the beginning, and hope for better days
when the unity of all Catholics and Orthodox might be recovered. So began the
Eastern Catholic Church in the east of Europe.</p><p><br /></p><p>Over time, this unity with Rome of the Eastern Church in
Kyiv which had originally covered Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and parts of what
are now Poland and Russia, dissolved. First, Muscovy became the newly named
Russian empire and absorbed the Rus’ lands, and imposed its own form of Orthodoxy
on the Rus’, Ruthenian, Ukrainian people, out of communion with Rome. By the
time of the 19th century, the remaining Greek Catholics – Orthodox Christians in
communion with Rome - were confined to the west of what is now Ukraine, no
longer in Communion with their fellow Byzantine Christians in the rest of the historic
lands. Going forward to the Second World War, although it survived in the diaspora
and underground, the continuance of this Church body in its homeland was no
longer possible. With the invading Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church is
imposed upon the Greek Catholics of all Ukraine. A false Greek Catholic synod
is set up in Kiev in 1944, but without the Church’s bishops, who are puts into
prison and concentration camps. The Soviets force the clergy to accept union
with Moscow and to abandon centuries of Catholic communion. The bishops are
martyred; their churches are taken away from the people as well as the practice
of their Eastern Catholic faith; the seminaries are closed; the hospitals that
the Church ran, all the aid and social agencies that the Church had built up
were destroyed, or expropriated and given to another Church, or else given to
profane use by the Communists. This is in living memory for some people. It is
also living memory for some of our priests who were ordained in the catacombs
to serve the faithful, meeting in the forests and cellars at the risk of their
lives.</p><p><br /></p><p>Just this last weekend, the priests were once again in
people's basements, underground metro stations, or in forests away from the
bombs, celebrating the Holy Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, for the faithful.
Once again, the bishops have not escaped the threat of evil or left their people,
standing with them and ready for what may come. Once again the people’s faith,
even though it be suppressed, is strong, believing not against other
Christians, but in favour of Catholic unity and the solidarity of the Church.
In Ukraine for many years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has been at the
forefront of building bridges and creating a “civilisation of love”, trying to
make a just and truthful, independent and glorious society, that is not bowed under
tyranny, but stands under the freedom of the rule of law, itself founded in the
Christian virtues and goodness that our Church stands for and seeks to live by.</p><p><br /></p><p>A few weeks ago, we managed to extract two of our
seminarians, who are not Ukrainian - one British and one American – to bring
them back here. They were meant to continue their studies here. Every day they
have had their lectures and seminars from the seminary in a village outside Kyiv
online. On Thursday, however, it became clear that the seminary could no longer
continue on site. So we set up our own makeshift off-shoot seminary for them in
London, and I am their spiritual director. They have been in daily touch with their
confrères, and seen for
themselves how the seminary has had to be abandoned for the time being in the
face of the threat of invasion. The neighbouring village has already been
destroyed, so this is a time of great danger for them. The villagers, who are
mostly Orthodox, had turned to them because they knew they always had a welcome
from the Greek Catholics; so the seminary has given the buildings over to the
villagers as the basement can serve both for storage and a shelter from bombs.
In return, the Orthodox people said to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic students,
“Take our cars! Get away home to your family!” Some of the students have gone
to Kyiv, just a few to the west, to be with our patriarch, the Archbishop, remaining
with the people at the cathedral in Kyiv. Some of them have gone to seminaries
in Ternopil and Lviv. Some others have joined units to fight for the defence of
Ukraine, their homeland, thus to give spiritual support to the other soldiers.
Some have gone to help at medical facilities, or to train as firefighters, or
to other relief and rescue tasks.</p><p><br /></p><p>You can imagine the frustration of our two seminarians in
London. One of them, who was a journalist in the US before he began in
seminary, asked for a blessing to go back to be with his fellow seminarians in
what they were doing, but to offer his skills as an interpreter and journalist,
so that the international press could show what is going on and the evil that
is being perpetrated. The English seminarian is doing his part in supporting our
London cathedral parish, helping the faithful in their prayers and hopes, and
joining in the preparations for the many displaced people that we are
expecting.</p><p><br /></p><p>Why is all this important? It is not just a tale of
exile. On Sunday, we heard that Father Maxime, an Orthodox priest, belonging to
the Ukrainian, not the Russian-linked Orthodox Church, was found by Russian
soldiers. When his identity and his Church was revealed, they killed him, a
martyr for the sake of Christ, a priest who ministers at the Altar and feeds
the faithful with the Body and Blood of Christ, which we have come here today
to celebrate and to venerate. They did not even allow his body to be taken away
for burial. Then yesterday, as the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall
came to our Cathedral, we heard that a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, one of
the brethren of the priests that I work with, was confronted by a soldier
dressed up as a monk with a rifle, who said to him, “Renounce your Catholic
faith and become Russian Orthodox. If you don't want to become Russian
Orthodox, it makes no difference to us if you give up Christianity entirely and
become a pagan. We don't care, as long as you are not a Catholic.” Thanks be to
God, this man was a rogue and, when the people arrived, off he went and the
priest’s life was saved. Also yesterday, after the Royal Couple had gone home,
somebody turned up at our door -a refugee priest. He had been here to see his
family in Manchester, and was now trapped able to get home to his wife and children.
He speaks excellent English, so we are going to keep him, and try and get his
family to England to be with him. But it gives you some idea of what is so
deeply at stake.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now I just want to approach the end by adding this point. I know a lot
of traditional Catholics in this country have admired Vladimir Vladimirovich
Putin for his apparent alignment with the Orthodox faith, and his commitment to
traditional Christian values, when he describes the West as abandoning them.
The statistics on the protection of unborn children, marriage and divorce,
poverty and the treatment of minorities and state repression of freedom and
justice do not, however, bear out this presentation of a national Christian
spirituality. So here is what a senior bishop, working in eastern Europe, has
said of Putin and his deadly régime:</p><p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">It is not that these people
are intelligent. It is not that they believe in anything that they tell you. It
is that they are very well trained, such that they know how, without
conscience, to tell the truth as if it were a lie, and to tell a lie as if it
were the truth. Nothing gets in the way of the purposes of raw power. And you
realise that, looking into the face of such men, you're looking into the face
of pure evil.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">This is why His Royal Highness the Prince Charles
yesterday, just as he left the door with all the children there who had sung
songs and all the people working on the relief that is going to Ukraine as we
speak (in just four days that community has raised two million pounds, a poor
community, from their own pocket!), he turned back and said, “I almost forgot -
Slava Ukraini!”, Glory to Ukraine, to which they responded with pride, “Heroiam
slava”, Glory to the heroes who have given their lives in the cause of freedom,
peace and justice. It echoes the salutation that we give so very often, and
that I gave at the beginning: “Glory to Jesus Christ: Glory forever!” And it is
in his life and spirit that we extend it, just to and for all, especially for
this devout nation, where there are so many good believers in Christ, denied their
happiness by cruel invaders sowing division not of their making.</p><p class="MsoPlainText"><br /></p><p class="MsoPlainText">Nothing I say today is against the Russian Orthodox
Church, or its faithful, in whose name none of this is taking place, and who
also seek their own independence, security, goodness, truth and prosperity in their
own country land. It's for their deliverance that we pray, too. On the radio on
Sunday, our Bishop Kenneth, prayed for Victory and the interviewer said,
“Victory? Are you sure a Christian priest should be praying for Victory in a
war?” He said, “Yes. If we do not pray for Victory, if we do not pray for the
victory of the Christian people, evil will be victorious, and then the Dark
will truly have descended on the world.”</p><p class="MsoPlainText"><br /></p><p class="MsoPlainText">So for that reason, dear friends, thank you for your
patience in listening to me. Thank you for your understanding, and sharing with
your prayers in the plight of the Ukrainian people. Thank you for your
faithfulness to Catholic unity. Thank you for your devotion to the Most Blessed
Eucharist, and the way in which the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, the
Mass, opens up to us Heaven on Earth, as we receive Jesus Christ in His Body
and Blood. Thank you for your faithfulness and your persevering in goodness.
Thank you for your hopes, and thank you for your loving adoration of Jesus
Christ for the sake of the world that He gave His life for. To Him be “Glory for
ever”.</p><p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p></o:p></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-53937961766178921902022-03-02T12:42:00.009+00:002022-03-13T14:39:37.942+00:00The Prayer for Ukraine<p>Visiting Lviv to give a lecture at the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2016, I was very moved to hear this sung in the midst of a concert of spiritual and cultural music of many Ukrainian traditions. The whole audience silently stood up as soon as it began; and I was told that it was immensely significant to Ukrainian people of all faiths, for the sake of the "Heavenly Hundred", those innocent people killed at the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2014, when the Ukrainian people brought about the removal of a corrupt regime and insisted on their liberty to pursue their own free, democratic European future. Since then, I have continued to be moved when I have served at the Divine Liturgy on Sundays at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. It is not the national anthem, but it is the national hymn and prayer. Originally, it was written for a chorus of children, and perhaps that is why the generations have continued to take it to their hearts. Perhaps it is like "Jerusalem" for someone from England, except that in the past, and hopefully not in the future, singing it was forbidden and could come with imprisonment and torture for supposed treason.</p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/XxcNuaH4qrY" target="_blank">The Prayer for Ukraine on YouTube</a><br /></p><p>It is not my own nation's song, but I sing it in solidarity with my friends and the people whom I have come to love very dearly, and whom I love to serve and worship with. I can only imagine what they are feeling and going through; and I have shed many tears for them and with them. For those who wish to sing it with Ukrainians in the same spirit, but in English, I provide a verse translation below. God protect Ukraine with His shield and His love.</p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong>The Prayer for Ukraine</strong></p><p><i>Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900) to music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912)</i></p><div><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;"><b>Боже великий, єдиний,</b></span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Нам Україну храни,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Волі і світу промінням</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Ти її осіни.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Світлом науки і знання</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Нас, дітей, просвіти,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">В чистій любові до краю,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Ти нас, Боже, зрости.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Молимось, Боже єдиний,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Нам Україну храни,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Всі свої ласки й щедроти</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Ти на люд наш зверни.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Дай йому волю, дай йому долю,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Дай доброго світу, щастя,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Дай, Боже, народу</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">І многая, многая літа.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><strong><br /></strong></div><div><i>Transliteration:</i></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><strong><i><br /></i></strong></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px;">Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Nam Ukrainu khrany,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Voli i svitu prominnyam,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Ty yii osiny.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Svitlom na-uky i znannya</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Nas, ditey, prosvity,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">V chystii liubovi kraiu,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Nam Ukrainu khrany,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Ty na liud nash zverny.</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">Dai, Bozhe, narodu</span><br style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;" /><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;">I mnohaia, mnohaia lita.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 12.6px; font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><i style="font-weight: 400;">Translation:</i></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><i style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></i></div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Lord, God alone, the Almighty,</div><div>Hold our Ukraine in your hand;</div><div>Shine with the rays of your glory</div><div>Liberty on our land.</div><div> </div><div>Lighten our learning and wisdom,</div><div>Keep your children in your heart;</div><div>Love that is pure for our homeland,</div><div>Lord our God, now impart. </div><div> </div><div>Merciful God, the Almighty,</div><div>Guard our Ukraine in your care.</div><div>Turn to our people and country,</div><div>Send your grace at our prayer.</div><div> </div><div>Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,</div><div>Guide all our endeavour;</div><div>Bless us, God, our land and people,</div><div>And grant [us] many, man[y] years, for ever.</div><div><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><em style="font-weight: 400;">Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959- ). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.</em></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></div>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-4184258000990708582021-09-18T15:37:00.001+01:002021-09-18T15:37:29.429+01:00To You, O Lord: the Direction of the Liturgy in Christ - Homily at the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, London Eucharistic Octave, Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Covent Garden, 16 September 2021<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is claimed that the word Liturgy
means the work (<i>ergon</i>) of the <i>laos</i>, the people of God. But its
true sense is that of a public service. And the name of the Divine Liturgy
makes it clear that here is our public service to God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas in the thinking of the West, liturgy
can refer to the faithful execution and study of all the rites in general, par
excellence in the Eastern Churches using the Byzantine rite, the Liturgy is immediately
recognised as the term for the Holy Eucharist. Perhaps it is ironic that a word
for the Liturgy of Greek origin, Eucharist, referring to the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
is relatively less usual in the East, while the term Liturgy in the West does
not have such a potent connotation with the Mass. Yet Mass also has a meaning
of a loving duty discharged. We can see what we both mean in what St Paul says: </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I beseech you
therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. <i>Romans
12.1</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>By reasonable worship, St Paul means an entire self-offering within the Reason of God: in other words, the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Logos</i><span>, the Word of God, Who was breathed into the world by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Mother of God at Nazareth. There is a related expression in the Roman Mass, when the priest holds his hands over the holy gifts and prays that the offering will be blessed, acknowledged, and approved: he says, “make it spiritual and acceptable”. Here the word spiritual translates </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">rationabilis</i><span>, reasonable, as in St Paul’s word </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">logike</i><span> about our worship of complete self-oblation within the life of Christ the Word, and by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the Divine Liturgy which you
are about to see unfold, therefore, you will not so much see our action, as
that of the Trinity taking its effect on us. The structure of the rite is about
moving and journey, not only through this world but in and out of the world
that is to come, and that is the Kingdom that is already upon us and within us
(</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Luke 17.21</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">). Did not St Paul also conclude, “It is not I who live, but
Christ Who lives within me”? (</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Galatians 2.20</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">) So we are drawn into His
life within the Trinity. You have already heard the first of the many blessings
on us of the Trinity; and every prayer ends with a doxology to the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. You will have heard the commands to stand aright and be
attentive – standing because that is the attitude of our resurrection, which to
us is not something of the future for it is the life that already inhabits us now.
Christ is risen, we all are risen. And in a few moments, our resurrection will
lead to our ascension, as we recognise and genuinely see ourselves as those who
in the world mystically represent the Cherubim, laying aside the cares of this
life, so that we may receive the King of all coming to us on the Altar, escorted
by the Angels.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then, when we have reached
the threshold where we are about to tread into the courts of heaven itself,
even though we are here in this world, the priest will tell us not just to
stand, but to stand well, and offer what St Paul said: our reasonable,
spiritual worship, of our entire self-offering. But not on our own in
isolation, since we are in Christ the Word, Christ our God, Who is the oblation
of oblations, filling the universe; that, being all in all, we are assumed into
His offering of Himself and everything He fills in this forthcoming Holy Oblation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a sense we must never leave
the heaven to which we have ascended in the Divine Liturgy. Our faith must hold
this in its eyes, to overcome and overrule whatever sin or shortcoming comes
next, because nothing can ever take away the reality that in this moment we
were in the Kingdom of Heaven - no less than we believe, just as we pray
according to the Lord’s instruction, that the same Kingdom of Heaven comes on
earth in this Daily Bread.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the beautiful prayers that
a priest or deacon sometimes says as he is about to receive the Holy Communion begins,
“Behold I approach our immortal King and God”. It always moves me to think of
the shepherds at Bethlehem, or the arrival of the Magi to present their gifts.
Yet here I have nothing to offer, since, even though the priest has asked to be
allowed to offer the Oblation, it is Christ our God who offers and is offered;
Christ who receives and is given. So we remain caught up in the two directions
of Christ’s own movement: always offering and offered, giving and received between
earth and heaven, devoted to being in both. Here we have no abiding City, it is
said (<i>Hebrews 13.14</i>), but we do not feel restless as we journey on in
this world, as if we were aimless and uncertain of our Promised Land. For it
has already come to us, and admitted us as its citizens. Our way of living is
not to reject the world for which Christ came and died to give it life, but for
each member of the Church to place it in its true setting – the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus “the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of the Lord and of His
Christ.” (<i>Revelation 11.15</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When you receive Holy Communion,
you will receive it standing -standing, because we are in the resurrection and
this is our ascension in union with the Lord into the Trinity. You will receive
in both kinds from a mixed chalice, by means of a spoon. Everyone will have
their own spoon, so there is no reason to fear. The bread is leavened bread,
just the same as when the Lord spoke of himself as the living Bread, His flesh
given for the life of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Having received, as we say, “the divine,
holy, immortal, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>heavenly and lifegiving,
awesome Mysteries of Christ”, you will see why it is that we have no hesitation
in speaking confidently in the terms of religion and faith about Christ as our
God, because the priest will ask you at this exalted moment of Communion once
more to commend yourself, in union with that sacrifice acceptable to God, your endless,
reasonable, spiritual worship of your whole being, saying, “Let us commend
ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.” And a final
time, this time in complete union with Him, you will reply, “To You, O Lord.”
For this is what the Divine Liturgy comes to: Him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You will sing with us, “We have seen the true
light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true faith. And we
worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On this footing, at one with
Christ, standing in His resurrection and ascension, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>representing the cherubim, and treading the
court of God’s presence with the Mother of God and all the saints, we shall
receive the blessing of God from His Cross and see that truly “He is good, and He
loves mankind”.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-69020243389710681932021-09-14T17:46:00.006+01:002021-09-18T17:50:06.938+01:00Reflection on St John Chrysostom on the Anniversary of his Death, for the Eastern Christians Prayer Group, Fellowship & Aid to the Christians of the East<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">READING - Ephesians 4.1-7, 11-13</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I, Paul, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in all.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The gifts He gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for <a name="_Hlk82356982">building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ</a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">REFLECTION - by Father Mark Woodruff, Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At first sight, St Paul’s address to the new Christians of Ephesus on the western coast of what is now Turkey is about our faith in the Persons of the Holy Trinity and the gifts with which our baptism has equipped us to serve the building up of all humanity into the body of Christ. So indeed it is. But look again, and St Paul is saying that this first comes out of a lived experience of adversity (his imprisonment), sacrifice of self (humility), endurance (patience, and bearing with others) and redemption that take what is amiss and converts it permanently into good (love marked by forgiveness, and God’s calling that makes good on hope), because the body into which we are baptised is that of the Father’s Son nailed to the Cross, which He endured to bring our salvation into effect.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">St John is a second St Paul. His eloquence and spiritual imagination flow through abundant writings. 1687 letters and sermons reveal a lively mind, beautifully communicating from his direct encounter with Christ, and faith distilled through adversity for His sake. His preaching gained him the title ‘Chrysostomos’, the Golden Mouth, not only because what he said warmed people’s hearts and convinced their belief and discipleship, but because it rang true coming from John. What Paul said of himself, is true of Chrysostom too: “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” How did this life take shape?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He was born in the third city of the eastern Roman empire, Antioch, in around 345. An outstanding literary, philosophy and rhetoric scholar with a successful public career ahead of him, in 374 he chose instead to live for God in the severely ascetical life of monk. It was not until 386 that he was ordained priest, when his exceptional oratorical skills were revealed in the straightforward practicality, vivid imagery and convincing moral appeal of his sermons, as well as the rich insight of his commentaries on the Scriptures. Having brought about the reconciliation of the sees of Antioch and Alexandria with old Rome after a loss of communion for seven decades, in 397 he was the outstanding candidate to be the new Archbishop of new Rome, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire, Constantinople. The people of Antioch did not wish to lose him, so to evade opposition to his election, he left in secret to be consecrated away from the public eye.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Immediately, the consequence of faithful preaching “in season and out of season” in Constantinople began. While his inspiring illustrations of the Scriptures and his clear preaching, applying Christ and faith to real life, endeared him to the people, he inevitably showed up the lax lifestyles and the moral injustices of the rich and powerful. The empress Eudoxia flattered herself that these barbs were aimed above all at her. A synod was trumped up to depose him for supposed unorthodox teaching. Her husband the emperor Arcadius then exiled him in 403 to Pontus on the Black Sea coast. The people of Constantinople were in uproar. An earthquake frightened Eudoxia to thinking it too was all about her. Promising amendment, she begged the emperor for St John’s recall to appease God. Yet within months she would erect a silver statue of herself outside the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. The Golden-Mouthed John, whose triumphant return made his words more potent than ever, kept speaking vividly about the contrast between the life in Christ shown in the Scriptures and the moral shortcomings of those in power in a supposedly Christian empire, this time singling out Eudoxia. The following June he was banished inland, to the remote edge of the province of Cilicia. There were riots in Constantinople, and the first Hagia Sophia was burned down. St John continued to teach his people by letters. He was also able to correspond with Pope Innocent I in old Rome, who sent a delegation to the emperor to convene a Council to reinstate the patriarch of new Rome. Chrysostom’s powerful enemies, however, convinced Arcadius that the archbishop had insulted the emperor by contacting the pope, and now posed a threat. So in 407 St John was banished to even more remote exile in Pityus, a port on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. 310 guards ensured no one prevented his removal once and for all. The journey was harsh because of the terrain and the elements, some of the soldiers were cruel, and Chrysostom, now about 60, was weak, not having enjoyed strong health since the extreme ascesticism of his time as a hermit. He did not make it beyond Cumana in Pontus, not far from where he had been exiled four years earlier, and he died on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, saying, “Glory be to God in all things”.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thus, like St Paul, a “prisoner in the Lord,” by the public humiliation and the physical afflictions he endured, he was indeed in his flesh “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”. Eudoxia and Arcadius failed to silence him or put the Church in its place. Instead, his faithful confession of Christ despite persecution, was “Christ’s gift” of an apostle and a teacher, who “built … up the body of Christ” towards our even deeper “knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the Orthodox Church St John Chrysostom is revered as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, along with St Basil the Great of Caesarea and St Gregory the Theologian of Nazianzus. In the Latin Church they are venerated as three of the Greek Doctors of the Universal Church, on account of their decisive and compelling teaching on Christ and the Trinity, that remains formative of the faith and worship of the Church in East and West to this day. Indeed the form of the Eucharist most often celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox and the Greek Catholic Churches is the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, believed to have been abbreviated under his influence for the practical purpose of the greater engagement and spiritual enrichment of the people.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His feast in the West is kept on the day before his death on the 13th September, and in the East it is transferred two months later to 13th November. He is the patron of the city of Constantinople where its Christians are today reduced to several thousands, pressed on all sides by an almost entirely Turkish Muslim population and government, yet determined, “with patience” like St Paul’s, to preserve the living roots of Byzantine Christianity for 260 million Orthodox worldwide. (Byzantium is the older name for the city of Constantinople). He is also the patron of Christian educators, lecturers and preachers that “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">PRAYER</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Troparion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Grace shone forth from your mouth like a fiery beacon and enlightened the universe, bestowing on the world not the treasures of greed, but rather showing us the heights of humility. As you teach us by your words, O John the Golden-Mouthed, our father, intercede with the Word, Christ our God, for the salvation of our souls.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kontakion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">From heaven you received divine grace; your lips have taught us all to worship the Triune God, O blessed John Chrysostom. It is fitting that we praise you, for you are a teacher, clarifying all things Divine.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Collect for September 13 from the Roman Missal</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #2d2d2d; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O God, strength of those who hope in You, Who willed that the Bishop Saint John Chrysostom should be illustrious by his wonderful eloquence and his experience of suffering: grant us, we pray, that, instructed by his teachings, we may be strengthened by his invincible patience. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.</span></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-10808239069216001892021-09-12T17:37:00.001+01:002021-09-18T17:39:59.069+01:00Homily for the Beheading of St John the Baptist, at the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 11th September 2021<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: inherit;">The feast of the Beheading of St John Baptist is very significant to us here at the Cathedral of the Holy Family here in Mayfair in London. Just a few hundred yards across Oxford Street where it is met by the Marylebone Lane is the site of the original medieval church of this district which was dedicated to him. Here he is on our iconostasis; and here on the tetrapod is the icon of his Beheading.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now why does St John, unlike most of the other saints apart from the Mother of God, have both a feast of his Nativity, and a second of his martyrdom? Is it because in our Christian perspective the head is particularly significant?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A medieval hymn possibly by St Bernard of Clairvaux, and now deeply loved in the Lutheran and Anglican traditions, with its tune set by Bach, goes:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">O Sacred Head sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">O kingly Head, surrounded with mocking crown of thorn… </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">See me, for whom Thou diest; hide not so far Thy grace.</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Show me, O Love most highest, the brightness of Thy face.</blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this hymn the glory of Christ’s face shines from the head of one whose leadership is not of control but of sacrifice and service. Herodias wanted to see John’s head as the guarantee of the death of a dejected enemy, because his truthful words threatened her. Instead, she saw not defeat but beauty, the beauty of living and dying to God. (<i>Romans 14.8</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />There is a famous picture of Salome visiting St John the Baptist by Guercino – a copy hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland. It shows Salome seizing the bars of the cell, while St John looks away. His head turned from her shows that he is free in his spirit. She is contained by the bars. She cannot touch or told what he has, and she is really the one in prison. With his head he looks to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (<i>Hebrews 12.2</i>), for whom once again he will be the Forerunner.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This freedom in the life of God is because Christ’s headship of the Church is all bound up in the love of God. His head was physically attacked, with the thorns thrust down upon it and His face struck, because it is the visible exposition of God's love for the world (<i>John 3.16; John 15.13; Romans 5.8</i>). As the sole “head of the church,” Christ “loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” (<i>Ephesians 5.23, 25</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So the integrity of word and action pay into service of an entire life, and ultimately the sacrifice that shows what a Head truly is. Did not Christ say, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”? (<i>Matthew 20.28</i>). St John the Baptist’s words and call to repentance were powerful on his lips and did not become futile as death approached. His head became far more eloquent in silence. St John in his beheading becomes an icon of Christ going to sacrifice, “opening not his mouth” (Isaiah 53.7).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The wonderful hymn by Charles Wesley (<i>And can it be</i>) expresses it perfectly:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">No condemnation now I dread,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background: white;">Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background: white;">Alive in Him, my living Head,</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background: white;">And clothed in righteousness divine,</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background: white;">Bold I approach the eternal throne,</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background: white;">And claim the crown, through Christ my own.</span></span></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So why the costly and central Head? Because it is the head that is crowned, first with thorns but only after their wounds, with the glory. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Thus Charles Wesley has it again (</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Love divine, all loves excelling</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">):</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">Finish, then, thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.</blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>Let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee.</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>Changed from glory into glory, till in heav’n we take our place,</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>till we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.</p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The ultimate beheading is our own: Christ, who is the head of the body the Church, is to become the head of our lives. So with Him dwelling in us who are already made in His image, His head on us “that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now.” (<i>The head that once was crowned with thorns</i>, Thomas Kelly.)</span></span></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-20058936248252400982021-06-20T20:18:00.000+01:002021-06-20T20:18:10.742+01:00The Waters of Galilee: Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B), Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden<p>At various times our Catholic faith
holds our attention to some focal place. With Mary we often retrace our steps
to the Holy House at Nazareth. We spend two months preparing first to go to
Bethlehem, and then to make the journeys onward to Egypt and up to Jerusalem
with the Holy Family. We go to the desert with The Lord in our prayer; we
accompany him to every corner of the Holy Land to hear him teach, and witness
Him in our world working the miracles of the Kingdom of heaven. Above all, we
end up in Jerusalem - not just for Holy Week and Easter - at the foot of the
Cross of the Lord’s passion, and peering into the Empty Tomb, whenever we perceive
the sacrifice of the Living God Himself made present and known to us in the
breaking of the bread at the Upper Room and, risen from the dead, on the road
to Emmaus, when all these places assemble to visit us at our own churches’ altars
day by day.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">But have you noticed that it is frequently
to the waters of Galilee that the action returns? Here beside its shore is Capernaum,
where the Lord first spoke of the Holy Spirit upon Him (Luke 4.18). Here at
Cana he turned Galilee’s fresh drawn waters into wine (John 2.9). Here Andrew
and Peter and James and John forsook their nets, their boats and their
livelihoods to follow Him (John 1.40; Luke 5.10-11). Here some people tried to
seize Him and make him falsely King (John 6.15); while others wanted to stone
Him for saying of Himself, “I am,” being God the Son to the Father who is Most
High God (cf. John 8.59). Here He takes fish from Galilee and bread to feed the
Five Thousand (Mark 6.41). Here He will meet Peter and the other disciples before
His Ascension and reveal His resurrection to them (Mark 14.28), as He replays
the dramatic Feeding of the Five Thousand, but this time intimately for them at
night by the fireside (John 21.13), eating fish and breaking bread so that they
might know and see Him vanish from before their eyes in the moment that in the
Bread He enters to dwell in them, and they in Him (John 6.56). Not for nothing
would St Paul one day remark – “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives
within me.” (Galatians 2.20) Peter and the others discovered that for
themselves on that night. And here on the lake this day (Gospel: Mark 4.35-41),
we find Jesus with His disciples, recently raw recruits to the Kingdom of God,
terrified in the boat, until He calms the storm, saying to the sea, “Quiet, be
still.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">We have heard this exhortation before.
In one of the Psalms, in the midst of war, the Lord breaks the warriors’
weapons of attack and shields of defence alike: “Be still and know that I am
God” (Psalm 46/45.10). Today we know, then, that even at this early stage of
His ministry, the Lord is announcing Himself as the Living God, who, lying down
as if in the sleep of death now rises, as no storm, no threat, no death shall
prevail. The disciples come to faith that, at His Word, even the most forceful
of elements is transformed and yields its power to the peace and authority of
Christ. It is this same fresh still water that is turned into wine, of which He
says He will drink it new in the Kingdom of God all over again (Mark 14.25). It
is water that is called upon, at the instant the Spirit of God proceeds in The
Lord’s last breath from His Cross (Luke 23.46), to flow down with His Blood for
our cleansing and redemption (John 19.24), to prepare us for the resurrection that
is coming to us of all in Him. It is this lake’s water that absorbs the evil
spirits that troubled the herd of swine so that they might no longer trouble
humanity (Mark 5.13). It is Galilee’s waters that hear the Lord’s parables and
amplify His voice with its surface when He preaches from the apostles’ boat
(Mark 4.1). It is this water to which Mary Magdalen is sent home, to tell the
disciples to come back to Galilee too, where the Good Shepherd had always said
He would gather His scattered flock (Mark 14.28; cf. Communion II, John 10.11,
15), before He takes our humanity with Him in Himself as He ascends to the
Father.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">It is here on these beautiful
inland waters that fear and alarm at the elements meet peace and faith in the
present coming of the Kingdom, when its King ascends and appears to depart, yet
does not depart, but immediately fills the world, transcending all time and
place (Ephesians 4.10), saying, “I am with you always, even to the end of the
world.” (Matthew 28.20)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">We do not know where all the
disciples were baptised; but we know that, even to seasoned fishermen, the water
was an ordeal. Thus, the water that baptises and changes a person from a creature
of this world into a new creation in the next (II Corinthians 5.17) is what the
disciples were afraid of, before they went into it and through it. And the
water that is turned into wine is not a mere sign of a Divine action, but the
very life force of the new Reign of Heaven that we call the Kingdom of God on
earth, and that we know as our own life since our own Baptism. The water that
rages in a storm is, as it were, the guarantee of a voyage into peace and love,
seeing how St Paul has told us today that the love of Christ so overwhelms us,
like a flood, that we are compelled no longer live for ourselves but for Him
who died and rose again for us (Epistle: II Corinthians 5.14-17).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">The odd thing is that these tumultuous
waters are not the great Mediterranean or the mighty Indian Ocean to which the
ships went down the great rivers of the East (Responsorial Gradual: Psalm 107/106.23).
They are but an inland, freshwater lake. Yet truly this lake is the image of
the sea within. The sea that is our soul’s turmoil of temper and anger,
uncertainty and rebellion, is also reflection and restoration, refreshment and
replenishment. We know this to be true from our own life of baptism. And no wonder
the disciples kept coming back to the waters, constantly being reconciled to its
power. The Lord is with them that night when they cannot catch any fish at all.
“Put out into the deep,” He says, “and fish some more,” (Luke 5.4) as He
continues to teach the people, intending for the gospel of the Kingdom to
penetrate deep within their minds and souls and imaginations and hearts. His
boat is overloaded with the catch, as the disciples are inundated with the
images, ideas and demanding expectations of the Kingdom of God. Unable to bear
it, Peter turns to Jesus and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinner.” (Luke
5.8) Yet The Lord takes this as a confession of trust in Him, and tells him
that from now instead Peter will be a fisher of people. Peter does not question,
but with James and John he leaves everything to follow (Luke 5.11), at the
sight of the immense force of the King coming into His Kingdom.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">This Galilee, close to where the
Lord took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mother of God at Nazareth, and not
far from the mountain where He showed Himself in His true glory of God in Man
(Mark 9.2), the glory filling the universe, is where we not only recognise His
power to change us, to overwhelm us with love, and fill us in His Church (cf.
Ephesians 1.23) with His own life and liberty from the power of sin and death. Galilee
is the place where constantly with Him we put out into the deep, going deep into
His life in our own souls, as we hang on His every word, and find that “we are
still and know the He is God” (Psalm 45.10), God with us (Matthew 1.23), with
us to the end of time. (Matthew 28.20)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">Consider Job (Old Testament
Reading: Job 38. 1, 8-11), indignant at his sufferings, daring to question God
why, like we often do. He is told to abandon His pride and self-regard. “Come
thus far and no further,” he is told. But we who have been baptised and have
faith in Christ are told, “Peace, be still (Mark 4.39); come to me (Matthew
11.28); drink of the water (Revelation 22.17); put out into the deep (Luke 5.4);
enter into my Kingdom (Matthew 7.21; 18.3), enter My life as King.” And then find
out, more than anything, that we have entered the stage when, truly, it is no
longer merely we that live but Christ who lives within us. (Galatians 2.20)<o:p></o:p></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-84751146095076954372020-12-30T11:56:00.004+00:002021-06-20T20:21:01.000+01:00Still we wait: Homily for the Nativity of Our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ, Roman Catholic Church of Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, London, Christmas Day 2020 <p>For nearly all of us, the time of waiting that is Advent is
over before it has begun. Usually, most of our celebrations of the feast have already
taken place in the season of preparation: four weeks and it is over in two. This
year it is different, as the national feelings have been subdued, and we are
anxious about the mutations to the virus, the dangers coming closer, perhaps
further lockdowns, and what the future holds for us in 2021.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But, while we are used to the mounting pitch of celebration
and its climax on Christmas Day, for the the Mother of God and St Joseph, this
their day of glory is really when their waiting begins in earnest. So this year
our experience is theirs, and their perspective is ours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What lies ahead? First, we and they both, whose life at home
has been disrupted, must remain distant from the life-assuring closeness of family
and friends for months. While we face our own kind of uncertainty, St Joseph -
the architect who builds houses - cannot settle his family in a safe dwelling place.
Many of us are unable to reach the places we would normally visit; for them, the
land of Judea makes them strangers and they seek refuge at a distance in Egypt.
Innocents in Bethlehem lose their lives not to an indiscriminate plague, but to
a targeted scourge from an amoral ruler; and Mary remembers what she was told:
that her Child will be set for the rise and fall of many, and that a sword
shall pierce her heart as his life unfolds before her. For our part, we look
out not knowing, but looking forward. Reaching Christmas this year gives us
joy, and light in the darkness, as we steel ourselves to encounter what a new
year heralds, this time without fireworks. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, this year, are particularly close to the Holy Family of
God the Son, as it faces both the Light Who has come into the world, and looks
out on the dark that gathers to shroud around Him. We have to wait while our
lives are restricted for weeks and months to come; while we are gradually
vaccinated not knowing if our future health requires that we will need to be
vaccinated again; we are held back from the normal human joy of seeing our
family and friends, holding and hugging those we love, and being embraced by
them in return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even to see those we do
not like or get on with would be a welcome relief to get back to normality, and
put the past behind us. We wait, to know how our lives will develop, whether
work and living will ever be the same again. We wait, not entirely sure how the
lives of those most at risk in our society, the infirm and vulnerable, the
homeless, the powerless and the poor, will be sustained, as we proceed with
some uncertain, flickering lamps rather than clear beams, and walk onto new, untrodden
paths. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But we are not the first to face fears, or to walk paths
that are not well lit. The Holy Family that fled to Egypt under the protection
of St Joseph was following the path of Joseph the patriarch of the Old
Testament, who from a new land brought corn to end a famine in his homeland in
the Holy Land of Canaan. From Egypt’s land of waiting and exile, his
descendants the Hebrews, led by Moses, set out to meet the Lord God in a desert
filled with nothing, received His Word in the Law and the Commandments, just as
we in this desert receive the Word made flesh, and from thence entered into the
Promised Land, that flowed with milk and honey. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And just as Moses at the end of that journey
saw across to the Land of Promise from a mountain, so Simeon the Prophet saw
Jesus the Son brought up into His own high Temple and there acclaimed him the
Light of the World. Now at last, he says, I have seen the salvation which You
have prepared before all peoples – a Light to enlighten the nations and the
glory of Your people Israel.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the same way, we our conveyed along by the hope, too,
that somehow the Lord’s loving hand is there to be with us and uphold us whatever
happens - to bring goodness, mercy, kindness and blessings wherever and instead
of where adversity has befallen us. In this vale of tears, the tears were His
too. Whatever has torn us to the heart, with all that people have had to deal
with in the strains on our patience, our material resources, our mental
wellbeing, not to mention our hidden spiritual strength, or even to the loss of
life itself, we each one of us have a story of another human being who has come
to us with warmth, and love and selflessness, and made the difference, by the
humanity that we Christians know as the love of God for man, in man, that peace
and good will among people that is also glory to God in the highest, whose Name
is called Jesus, the very Son of Man.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And we have seen this compassion all played out before. For
the Little Donkey that we celebrate in songs, who carried Mary from Nazareth,
and then the Mother of God and her Son to Egypt, had a cousin who carried the
Lord into Jerusalem to face His Passion and the Cross for our sake. The bright
and warm stable with the animals, where the Light of the World first shone, is
a familiar surrounding, when you think another room not His own will be
prepared for that last supper, when Judas will leave the Light and go out into
the night. The shepherds’ fields where the angels sent by God the Father
Himself sang “Glory” at the top of their voices, shift through a crack in time
to reveal their eternal meaning: the night-time dark Garden of Gethsemane,
where the Son will pour out His heart and blood in prayer and those who once sang
“Hosanna” will cry with shouts to arrest Him and take Him to His trial and
execution. The Three Wise Men who come with gifts, give place to a false King
Herod, an unworthy time-serving High Priest Caiaphas, and a foreign power’s
governor, Pilate. They will apply a Crown not of gold but of thorns. They will
not offer the myrrh of salvation from death, but supply Him with vinegar. Nor
can they offer the glory of incense, for the right to be acknowledge the true
King comes not from the highest compliments of earthly importance, but from the
complete self-giving of utter sacrifice, in absolute love without reserve for
us, and unconditional forgiveness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To Mary at this moment, all this lies ahead; but she awaits
its coming with a steady eye. She prepares for the high joys and the collapse
of hopes, and a sword to pierce her heart, all alike. Unusually on this most
joyful of days, this year we find ourselves waiting with her, looking ahead not
only suffering and the Cross, but what they will bring about. For just as the
birth of the Word made flesh will lead to the crucifixion of that flesh on Good
Friday, so the death on the Cross will lead as day follows night to
resurrection. Because the life to which Mary the Mother of God gave birth
cannot be held back in the dark earth but must break forth and take our lives
and hers with it, bound for a new Promised Land, the Kingdom come on earth as
it is in heaven.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our beloved Cardinal Hume taught us that when we set out on
such a journey and see light at the end of the tunnel – that is hope. When <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we see no light yet still proceed on into and
through the tunnel – that is trust. Today with Mary, her hopes and fears, with
the Light of the World before us, we still contemplate the dark around us. As
we go, we wait for what will come, for there is little else, while we are in
this desert; and we persevere not with dismay, but with trust. We go on
with our faith, our love, and our belief in peace and good will, and glory
around and through and beyond it all.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">May God fill you with this faith to see you through. May the
road taken by His Son for Your sake lead to new life, new hope and new joy, and
may you know it for yourself. May the love of a Mother’s worry shield and
protect you. And may “the hopes and fears of [these two] years” be met in Jesus
Christ who is the heart of our own heart, “the joy of the whole world”, its
healing and its promise from God that will never be broken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peace, good will to us all, and glory to God
in highest heaven.<o:p></o:p></p>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-60656112599931432492020-08-06T07:54:00.000+01:002020-08-06T07:54:32.912+01:00Putting out into the deep: The Five Thousand and Elijah - Homily for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost and the Feast of Elijah the Prophet, for the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, W1The story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand we have lived with all our lives. What is the Lord showing us? Well, first of all, this story (Matthew 14.14-22) looks back to one series of events in the Gospels, and at the same time looks forward to another. And then there is a twist in the tale. <br /><br />First, the story looks back to the first time Jesus that, as a grown Son of Man, walks by the sea of Galilee. First, He calls Andrew and Simon-Peter. One morning He saw the fishing boats finishing up after a night with no catch, and told Peter to “Put out into the deep” and let down the nets one last time. After a surprise haul, Jesus takes Simon-Peter to draw the conclusion: “If you follow Me, I will make you fishermen of people.” Like his brother Andrew, he forsakes everything and immediately follows the Lord. Now one evening later on, we are beside the lake again. There are five loaves, as there were five disciples, who first took up the call from Christ, and now there are five thousand men, not to mention the thousands more of women and children. The disciples became fishermen of people indeed: and far more than those two little fish. <br /><br />Jesus speaks of the leaven in the bread that will make it expand and rise. He speaks of Himself as the Bread coming down from heaven, telling us to pray daily for this Bread with a nature, a new “Life for the World”, from beyond the world. He also tells us daily to take up our Cross and follow Him. Simon-Peter and Andrew become the first after Jesus Himself to be the ministers of the Bread of Life at its Breaking, just as they will be broken upon a cross of their own - St Andrew tortured by being crucified diagonally, St Peter by being suspended by the nails upside down. <br /><br />The second direction of the story is to look forward. We are shown a hint of the particular way in which Jesus always blesses Bread, in what He will reveal on the night before He died as the Eucharist, the mystical banquet that is our Divine Liturgy. But we are also pointed even further beyond that. St Matthew tells us that it is evening. It reminds us that on the first Easter Sunday, two disciples, one of whom is Cleopas, whose wife had been standing with the Mother of God at the foot of the Cross. They are on the road to Emmaus, when a stranger encounters them as they discuss the incredible events of earlier that morning, and makes them credible. He reveals how the Scriptures show that the Messiah must suffer, and must enter into glory – and neither suffering nor glory could happen without the other. And what happens next? Once again, it is evening. Once again, they sit. Once again, the Lord takes bread, blesses, breaks and gives it to the disciples. So it makes sense that, beside the sea of Galilee, when fishing people are preparing to set out on the water for a night of hard work, Jesus points ahead, beyond His Crucifixion, to His resurrection from the dead, and to how we will always know that He is with us. When the archangel announced to the Virgin Mary that Jesus had taken flesh in her womb, he said, “He will be called Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us’.” And now see Him, laying the foundation of trust for his promise that, indeed, He will be with us to the end of time. Yet how can this be? Well, let us look at the story again. Immediately He feeds the five thousand and more, immediately He disappears. He dismisses the crowd, and He dismisses the disciples on their boat. It is the same in that village between Jerusalem and Emmaus. Clopas and his fellow disciple receive the Bread of Life – but Christ disappears. They recognise Him in the particular way He takes the Bread, blesses and breaks it – in just the same way as we shall do in a few moments. And then He is gone? So much for being with them, to the end of time. Where is He? Well, the answer is here: when they have received the Bread of Life, why would He be there before their eyes, when He is now inside their lives, bodies and souls? As once He dismissed the crowd, He dismisses the disciples that first night since the Resurrection. And then at once, even though it is dark, they hurry back to Jerusalem and declare that, first, they have seen the Lord and, second, they saw Him no longer - because He is now for ever with them to be seen in the Breaking of the Bread. <br /><br />So, what of the twist in the tale? Just at the end of the Gospel today, St Matthew tells that, after giving the Bread He has blessed, He acts “immediately”, and departs from the sight of both the crowd and the disciples. It is the same as when Simon-Peter and Andrew see Jesus walking up to them beside Galilee. St Mark, St Matthew and St Luke all say that “immediately” they forsake their nets and follow Him. Now, what happens on the road to Emmaus? Jesus breaks the Bread and gifts it to the disciples; they recognise Him and, as soon as He does so, immediately, He disappears from sight. In other words, our Gospel tells us that our following of Jesus Christ is not a long term intention that we can get round to one day when we have time, after we have first dealt with worldly concerns. Instead, the moment is always here and now, just as it was “here and now” when Simon-Peter and Andrew were “caught up with” by the arrival of the King in His Kingdom. It is an early morning when the fish were caught. it is an evening when the people were fed with manna from heaven like their ancestors. And, most of all, it is whenever the Lord comes to us, person to person, now, immediately, saying, “I am with you. Follow me.” We take Him into us, now, immediately, and His presence becomes something that follows us, in us: now, immediately. <br /><br />Yet there is even more. After the events of today’s Gospel, the disappeared Jesus goes up a mount to pray by Himself. He goes up into God His Father. It is the same as when Moses went up the mount to commune with God and receive His Law. It is the same as when Elijah, whose feast is today, went up to the top of the same mountain to hear the Lord’s “still, small voice” (I Kings 19). It is the same as when the Lord appears to Moses and Elijah, transfigured on another mountain to show that His human nature will suffer but His divine nature will shine through in the same Person on the Cross and then out of the grave. It is the same as when the Lord goes up the mountain of mountains to be crucified on mount Calvary. Elijah is famed as the first of all the hermits and contemplatives who wait for the Lord, while their spiritual lives take them ever further up the mountain closer to union with God. It is the same as when the Lord tells the disciples, if they would be fishers of people, to “put out into the deep”. The higher we seek to rise to God, the deeper we must let him reach down into us. <br /><br />The multiplication of the five loaves and the two fish speaks to us of the growth of the Church into the whole world. The fish were probably dried, to be soaked in water and expanded. It reminds us of what is still happening to us as a consequence from our own baptism in water. The twelve baskets of bread and fish – Eucharist and Baptism – present the full reconciliation of all the estranged twelve tribes of the Jewish people brought back together to form the core of Christ’s new People of God. Beyond them, they tell of even more baskets, with even more peoples, more fish to fish. But it all starts in this way: a Person meets a Person, just as Jesus met Andrew and Simon-Peter, just as He met Clopas on the road to Damascus, just as He immersed us in the waters of His Baptism, and just as He meets us at this Eucharist. Jesus and His Kingdom is not for later, it is now. He is with us, not only in the future, but always and immediately. Like Elijah, like Peter and Andrew, like all the others, immediately we follow Him, up His mountain, out into the deep water, listening for the still, small voice, to the end of time.Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-90112909386679125582020-02-23T09:15:00.000+00:002020-08-06T09:15:51.805+01:00His Nature and His Name is Love: Homily for the Seventh Sunday of the Year, Roman Catholic Church of Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, 23 February 2020<br /><br />With Lent beginning in a few days’ time, today’s readings could not be more apt. We are going to focus a lot on our sins and shortcomings. But here today we are told that the concept of sin that we have is the wrong way round, if it concentrates on ourselves. The Lord came to say something loud and clear to us: “I do not want you to be guilty. I do not want you to be afraid of Me. I do not want you to doubt yourselves. I do not want you to be defeated. I do not want you to hold yourselves back from me. I want you to come into the Kingdom, and live in joy under the reign of God. I want you to live in that Kingdom on earth just as it is in heaven.”<br /><br />Where sin - and our sorrow for it - comes in is when, as St Paul puts it, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23). He tells us today that, whatever we think we are, however we think we matter, however virtuous, valuable, or wise, “there is nothing to boast about in anything human”. When we realise this, that is when our conscience kicks in, and we take a good look at ourselves. Here we are, built to be The Temple for God that God intends to live inside me in (I Corinthians 3.16-23) - and we close it down, so that He can’t. St Paul tells us – “You keep tearing it down, but you are only tearing yourselves down. It is a sacred building that you are, but if God is denied access, you are no Temple at all. Without God, it is destroying you.” No wonder, when the Lord died upon the Cross, the veil of the Temple was torn in two. This was not to destroy the Temple, but so that the Lord’s spirit when He breathed it out could enter into the Holy of Holies. It is the same with us. The Lord, with the same power at work as on the Cross, tears down the veil we have wrapped around our souls and our hearts, so that the Spirit of God may enter into the Temple of our soul and be the very life within us.<br /><br />So what does the Lord prescribe? He does not give us tasks to fulfil, or challenges to earn His favour. He tells us, “Be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19.1-2, 17-18). How on earth – even on earth as it is in heaven – can we be as holy as God? Does it mean, “be more religious”? Does it mean “be more spiritual”? Does it mean “say more prayers and devotions”? Does it mean “keep the Commandments, and the precepts of the Church?” Does it mean, “Follow the tried and tested rules that have been found to be wise since the days of the Disciples?” Well, yes, it means all of those things; and in every example of them, and among the many spiritualities and pathways for following in the footsteps that Christ has trodden ahead of us, so that we can trace the way and follow Him into His Kingdom, there is one that is suited for you. Do not persist with someone else’s way, if it makes you angry, or unhappy, bitter or resentful, or self-righteous, and judgemental of others. Do not think that you can proceed toward the Kingdom if you feel it is a miserable slog, or it weighs you down with a crushing sense of joyless duty. Yes, there will be difficulties, as we all know. There will be heartbreak and adversity. Yes, we may have to make great sacrifices. And yes, we will get things massively wrong and, in embarrassment, feel we wasted our opportunity with God and proved our efforts were futile. But the Lord asks us to trust Him, and follow Him on NO path that He has not walked before us.<br /><br />I always think that the most dramatic moment in the Gospels is when the Lord is in Galilee, after He has chosen the Twelve Apostles, fed the Five Thousand, and been transfigured on the Mountain, and He sets His face to Jerusalem. After revealing Himself as the Lord God the Son to Peter and John and James, He comes down, casts out an unclean spirit from another father’s son, by the sheer force of the presence of God’s majesty; then He tells the disciples that the glory of God that they have seen means that as Son of Man He must be killed. St Luke tells us (Luke 9.51) that He then sets His face to go to Jerusalem, for the days are close for Him to be taken up - in other words, arrested to appear before Herod and Pilate, lifted up onto the Cross, and raised by His Father in the Tomb. The approach of Lent for us is the same as the Lord’s approach to Jerusalem. He tells us to take up our Cross daily to follow Him; but this is not with a face grim at the prospect of death and defeat, but reflecting the glory of God’s presence seen on the holy Mountain, and the utter majesty of setting a believer free of whatever oppresses the life and stands in the way of coming into God’s Kingdom. When you and I set our face to Jerusalem, we know there will be suffering and shame ahead, as we take up the Cross in the same way as He did, to fulfil our purpose as He fulfilled His. We know that it will be impossible, and we will be blamed for being hypocrites. “In this day and age”, as in many before it, we know that we will be mocked for being Catholics. We know that we will stumble and fail as disciples, and that our hopes of making ever better progress will be brought up short by our failures. But, seeing that He stumbled and fell on His way carrying the Cross, we persevere. For what drives us is not a sense of duty and being trapped in the cycle of sin that we are trying to get out of - It is the vision of Christ’s beauty on the Mountain. It is the prize of the Kingdom to which we are making our way with Him. It is the light in the Temple that flashes no longer in a single Temple in Jerusalem of old, but in the hearts, the joy, and the faithfulness of all those who are doing this out of love.<br /><br />What is it to be holy like the Lord? Moses understood the first thing the Lord said about it – to have no hatred for anyone. And the second thing he heard was not to regard yourself as more virtuous, or better than anyone else, or closer to God, than someone who is failing. For if you fail one minute; I will fail the next. So there must be no self-righteousness about our virtues and another’s faults. There must be no vengeance for another person’s wrongdoing, and no grudges, however hurt we feel – only love for the neighbour as we love ourselves. For, as God was explaining to Moses, “That is what I am like, and I am the Lord”. When this same Lord came to us and took our flesh from the Virgin Mary to be born as one of us, He did not come to exact revenge, or to show us up. He came to attract us. The Gospel today (Matthew 5.38-48) shows us that Jesus’ mission was to break the endless churn of hatred and recrimination, vengeance and retaliation. He tells us to be people who give even if advantage is taken of us, to be more generous than people expect, and less inclined to be mistrustful when people seek our support. For this, the beauty and glory of God that the apostles saw on the mountain of Transfiguration was disfigured on the hill of Calvary. But it had to be borne, so that the only thing left would be forgiveness, and the only path still open was the way of all redeeming and all forgiving love to the Kingdom. “Love conquers all things”, the poet Virgil said, for it withstands and outlasts all that evil and sin can do. St Paul tells us, “Love always hopes, always perseveres, never fails.” When the power of wickedness has exhausted itself, Jesus observes, even the pagans are bonded by mutual love. This is what He tells us it is to be perfect – to forgive as we are forgiven, to love as we are loved, to persevere as the Lord has persevered with us for our sake, to be Temples not covered in veils so that His Light cannot pierce the gloom of guilt and self-pity, but so that each one of us is the new Temple, brilliant with his glory, reflecting a sighting of the Kingdom – yes even you and me. Each one of us is to become a Temple where the works of wickedness are cast out, where the world may know that here they may find healing and goodness to give hope and inspiration – yes, even in you and me - where the majesty of God is unmistakable, because there it is in love, mercy and joy.<br /><br /> When you turn to the Lord in sorrow and penitence this Lent, do not be downcast because you have failed to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. Rejoice, because He is taking pains, His own pains on the Cross, to make you holy as He is holy: not by accusation and inflicting the shame He bore away from us, but by the love that is His nature and His very Name. Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-2287554142297315622020-01-19T16:52:00.000+00:002020-01-19T16:52:12.842+00:00Here I am: Homily for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Corpus Christi Church, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden: 19 January 2020
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<br /><br />“Here I am, Lord. I come to do Your will.” Between us, we have declared it six times a few minutes ago in response to the Gradual Psalm (from Psalm 39). I should think every single one of us who came here to Church today made a small act of personal re-dedication to follow Christ as his disciple, as we spoke. Taken together with the words from the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 49.3, 5-6), we may also have linked ourselves in our minds to Israel of old, both the individual and the nation that took his name. From the womb, Israel is God’s servant, chosen to shed such light in the dark that shows the world where lie the paths we need to be saved from because they lead to dead ends and destruction, while into view comes another Way by which our footsteps can trace the path that leads back to God.<br /><br />Now, while this is all true, I want you to look at these words differently. Rethink them. They are not about ourselves, or prophecies of past events. They are Christ speaking about Himself and His purposes, and putting them into your mouth.<br /><br />In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Lord is for ever seeking to take form in our human midst; the divine is repeatedly taking shape in humanity. In ancient Israel, it is believed that there was a great annual enthronement ceremony at the time of the autumn harvest, in which the king in the Temple would be immersed in a great bath, then be anointed in perfumed oils, and then don white robes, before entering as a purified and transformed man into the Holy of Holies. There he would commune with The Lord as fire flashed within and incense arose outside. He would make atonement for sin and win forgiveness for himself and the people; and then at last in union with God, he took his seat upon the Ark of the Covenant. He would emerge through the Veil of the Temple, seen as a Man who had been taken up by God as His son. He would appear not just as the nation’s king but the Lord’s anointed King, a son of God’s own, the greatest of the priests, someone now bringing God in person from the Holy of Holies out to bless the people, and bless the land with abundance. Cleansing and renewing water was strewn liberally, as if to irrigate a once barren desert; and the psalms we still sing today would proclaim that The Lord is King, that He has come to His people into their midst, and somehow before them in this moment was standing God with Us, Emmanuel. If you are thinking that what I have just described resembles in some way what happens at our Mass, it is no coincidence. For at the coming of Jesus, the people who had held for centuries onto the hope of a true Son of God to be the King again did not recognise Him as a mere human ruler, or just a prophet, but the Son of David the King coming into His power. This is why He was called the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. This is why He was known by the title Son of Man – not simply a human figure but the divine Son of the Father Who has taken human form. This is why at His baptism the apostles heard the Father’s voice from heaven declare Jesus to be the Son in Whom His favour dwells. This is why He was called Emmanuel, God with us. This is why at His trial, He was mocked as a King by both the priests and Pontius Pilate, and thorns were used to crown Him. This is why we regard the Cross not as an instrument of torture, but the Altar of Sacrifice by which alone new life can come. This is why the Veil of the Temple was torn in two – not as a symbol of catastrophe, but so that, in the dark moment of Jesus’s death, out from the place of God’s dwelling could burst through to us grace and holiness in abundance – the new reign of God. This is why Jesus is called not only “Sir”, and “Master”, and “Rabboni”, and “Teacher”, but pre-eminently “The Lord”, the very Name of God Himself. What do the apostles say when they recognise the Jesus Who has risen out of death and the Tomb? “It is the Lord” (John 21.7). And what do they do when the Risen Christ has celebrated the Eucharist with them, and they consumed It and He disappears from their sight? They recognise in the Breaking of the Bread that they shared and ate that The Lord – Who has come into them.<br /><br />Now, imagine that the words of the Scriptures we have read today, and the words that have been on our lips, are not just us repeating the books and songs of the Bible from long ago, but the words of The Lord speaking Himself, using our breath to express Himself, all over again. When Isaiah recalls that the Lord God said, “You are my servant”, He speaks of a human Son formed in the womb of His mother, the divine Son in whom the Father shall be seen reflected in shining glory, and from Whom the light of heaven and salvation shall brighten every dark corner of the world. So, when you imagine that you are the servant who says, “Here I am, Lord. I come to do Your will” – you are speaking not just of service and being a good disciple. You are saying God is in my humanity once more, to be the very presence of the King, The Lord, the Son of Man, God, coming to His people, Emmanuel, with us and within us to bring blessing, light, restoration and salvation. For, as I said before, “throughout the Scriptures, the Lord is for ever seeking to take form in our human midst; the divine is repeatedly taking shape in humanity. We in the Church for twenty centuries have seen that God The Lord took human flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ. Our forebears in faith, the Jewish people, saw the inkling of it in the glory of the King entering the Temple and emerging with the closeness of the divine to us, with a blessing year on year for the people that the Lord had chosen for His own. St John Baptist saw it (in today’s Gospel, John 1.29-34), when the Son of Man looked to him like the Lamb of God, Who will show God in the only way that He could be seen that is true to His nature in this world: in the moment of complete self-giving and sacrifice for our sake on the Cross, that brings healing, forgiveness and unending life from His own Body and Blood. <br /><br />When we say, “Here I am, Lord. I come to do Your will” we are not speaking, then, about ourselves alone. We are describing ourselves as the Body of Christ. The words of The Lord are those in our mouth. In this way, The Lord is forming us to be, once again - as in the Temple, as by the river Jordan at His baptism, and as on His Cross - the way by which he takes shape in human life. When we say, “Here I am”, we name ourselves with the Name of The Lord Himself, Who says, “I am the Bread of Life”, “I am the Resurrection”, “I am the Good Shepherd”, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” When we say, “Here I am”, it is to accept the Spirit Who constantly rests upon Jesus in us, since, as St Paul tells us, Christ fills us (Ephesians 3.19) and it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives within us (Galatians 2.20). When we say, “Here I am”, it is to accept the Cross that, in us, He takes up daily still (St Luke 9.23). When we say, “Here I am. I come to do Your will. I am Your servant”, it is to be the presence of the King Himself, the Lord among His people, Emmanuel. It is not just for us to be lights of the world, but the great shining of the Light of the World Himself, so that His salvation may reach to the ends of the world, and restore all those Whom the Lord has chosen from falling into the those dark dead ends (Isaiah 49.6). In this Light we can recognise, in the Breaking and consuming of the Bread of Life Himself, the way to “taking their place among all the saints everywhere” with the the Lord Who is their Lord no less than ours (today’s Epistle, I Corinthians 1.1-3). Here, “I am” in the Breaking of Bread. Here, “I am” in the Body of Christ. Here “I am” in the people of God. Here “I am” in your Chosen Ones. Here I am, Lord. I come to do Your will. <br /><br /> Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-3133718668991694362020-01-12T17:08:00.001+00:002020-01-12T17:08:19.630+00:00The King's Gifts: to be with Him to the end of time - Homily for the Sunday after the Nativity, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, London, 12th January 2020
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When the Wise Men come to the land of the Son of David’s birth, it is to King Herod that they first pay their respects. When he realises that they look to a King of Israel who is not him, Herod fears not just for himself but for his dynasty. A spiritual warning to the Wise reveals that Herod’s and Archelaus’ realm is exactly the opposite kind of kingdom to what they have come in search of. Their gifts, as Bruce Blunt’s poem, Bethlehem Down, says, are “King’s gifts” – they come not on their own, but enhanced with another side. Their frankincense blows on the same wind that carries the shepherds’ and Angels’ songs to pay Christ love and honour; but its fire will be extinguished, when those who share His life turn cold in cruelty and betrayal. Gold to reflect the light from the Star portends a royal crown; but the crown He will wear is wooden. Spiny myrrh to five rare scent to the robes of a King, will not touch His skin again until it perfumes His gravesheets.<br /><br />Knowing this, the Wise do not reveal this King and His Kingdom to Herod. They return by another route. In other words, encountering the now Anointed One causes a change to their plans and their outlook - and a change of direction. They do not return to the royal court in Jerusalem. Herod’s throne is false, for it is not a Cross. They go a different way; not a round-about diversion, but an entirely new course. We call them the Three Kings, not because of the prestige of where they had come from and what they had been, but where they will go next and who they will become.<br /><div>
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Famously in the West, their resting place is honoured in Cologne, where the vast Cathedral is the shrine of the relics of those to whom we have given the names Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar. These remains have been on a pilgrimage. The first Christian Emperor Constantine moved them in AD313 from the See of St Andrew at Byzantium to Milan. He thereby marked the newly legal status of Christianity in the centre of his authority in the West, invigorating the until recently persecuted Church with the Wise Men’s declaration in a new Bethlehem for the Church: “We saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him” (Matthew 2.2). A new direction, a new and unexpected course, a new journey to find the King, a new opening for His Kingdom. Eight centuries later in 1164, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, moved the remains again from Milan to the northern Saint Peter’s – not at Rome but at Cologne, the heart of the Church’s leadership within the power base of the Christian Holy Roman Empire that had shifted to this side of the Alps. Another turn in direction for the Kingdom of God in this world, another course for the People of God to follow the Three Kings and come to worship the King of Kings. Cologne is a city of great martyrs. There is a memory of thousands of Christians who lost their lives on the banks of the Rhine to pagan swords in the third and fourth centuries. Here the virgin St Ursula from Brittany was on a pilgrimage to this holy city of churches prior to her marriage, only to be shot dead by the pagan general leading the siege. Hers turned into an unforeseen journey to meet the King placing her at one with Him in His passion. In times more recent to us, Cologne was at the centre of Catholic Germany opposed to National Socialism and the rule of Hitler. In the Basilica honouring St Ursula and other virgins martyred in the city for refusing to deny Christ, there is also a shrine to those many Catholic priests, sisters and lay people who were taken by the Third Reich, never to return in this world, as well as to our beloved fellow children of Abraham in faith, the Jews of Cologne. Another case where finding God and holding to Him fast means a new path on different steps leads to a future in another world.</div>
<br />Reading today’s Gospel (Matthew 2.13-23), we see that, like the Three Wise Ones, St Ursula, and the Jews, the Christians and many others in the Holocaust who were gathered up and taken where they had not envisaged, the King also had to go on the move. Protected by St Joseph, the Child and His Mother flee to Egypt not so much as refugees but as bringers of the Kingdom of God to the region of Moses His forebear’s birth and exodus, inaugurating a new Passover to a Promised Land of a wholly new order, and implanting by the hills and plains, the rivers, the towns and the sea of Galilee - and on that mount where we first heard that sermon and were told, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5.1). <br /><br />At the moment of His Ascension to this Kingdom on another mountain, the Lord tells us, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of time” (Matthew 28.20). He does not promise that this will be a constant rendezvous at our location. It is not all about us: we are all about Him, and the journey into the eternal dimension that we know even now tinges our living. For it is for our sake that He became human that we might become divine. It is not to leave us “all divine” where we are, but to present us “de-blemished” in His presence in the Kingdom (Colossians 1.22). As He told us, “I am with you always”; yet not where you think. He says, “I am going away to prepare a place for you. I will come back and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be too” (John 14.3).<br /><br />It would be a mistake to regard the Kingdom just as a location, or an institution. Nor is it a region above, or beyond. It is power “not as the world gives” (John 14.27), but authority. It is the rule of God, not in theory but in practice. And this practice is not regulations for rolling along our rut. This rule of God over and upon us is nothing other than “Christ … dwelling in our hearts through faith, that, being rooted and grounded in love, [we] may have power in concert with all the Lord’s holy people to know the breadth and length and height and depth … [of] the love of Christ … that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3.17-19). No wonder the Lord, facing His condemnation, said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18.36). For the authority on which His kind of rule rests is the power not to control but to forgive unconditionally; not to get even by exacting justice but to rebalance creation against sin and death by the absolute self-gift of sacrifice the God who is with always, Emmanuel. The gold of His crown is the stain of Blood on its thorns. The sumptuous robes of His palace are the gravesheets sanitised with herb and ointments in His Tomb. The powerful wind which fires spices and gums to venerate His empire is not the overpowering fragrancy of smoke, but Holy Spirit with which He rose from out of death.<br /><br />To desire this Kingdom is not to fail to enter it now. If we insist on its principles to apply in our world as it ought to be, then it is to insist that the rule of God starts with me. It requires more of me than obedience and support. It requires even more of me than to believe in and follow Christ. It requires me to be the foremost example of how the world to come is realised in a human being, just as it was shown from the birth of Christ to His death. I am not just to be healed, but to be the healing. I am not just to be the forgiven sinner, but the source of inexhaustible patience and compassion as if I was God Himself on His Cross, saying “Father, forgive” and “Today you shall be with me in Paradise”. I am not just to be the ever-grateful recipient of grace and mercy, but from the depth of my body and soul the blessing of Christ in person, present with us as He promised through every succeeding one of us to the end of time. It will mean that we who have come to worship Him now face a change to our outlook, and a different course to how we live and where we go with our life. We who have found Christ like the Wise Men will make our journey onwards not by a life-long series of diversions, but in treading onto the new openings where the rule of Christ lights up the way, to liberate us from returning to lurk in our darkness, and to show where the Kingdom of God is leading to new exoduses from the thrall of evil and to new promise. So we follow the Mother and Child, St Joseph, the Wise Men, the Star, St Ursula, the path that leads to the manger in the Cave, to the Cross, and on to the Cave of the resurrection of God Whom nothing could contain, up onto the mount of Ascension by way of the Font, the place of confession, and the altar, to be with the King and accompany Him wherever He and His rule are going, the Lord Who is with us to the end of time.<br /> Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-68059874224501908482020-01-03T17:27:00.002+00:002022-12-23T18:39:12.346+00:00An Office Hymn for Easter EveOver the Christmas break, I have been going through old books, to discard some and re-read others. In several, I have found folded notes of attempts at hymns that I had forgotten for decades. Here is a hymn to be sung at Vespers of Good Friday and on Holy Saturday.<br />
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I must have worked on this when I was at Mirfield (1982-84), where the Community of the Resurrection relied on the seminarian students of the College to sing the offices and liturgies of Holy Week and Easter while many of the Fathers were absent preaching in parishes. Following the custom in the Divine Office of the Liturgy of the Hours (though not in the classic Roman office, or the monastic office that Mirfield drew on to supplement the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer), there was an office hymn for Holy Saturday. It appears to be a version of the hymn used in The Divine Office, provided by Stanbrook Abbey ((c) 1974) - <i>His cross stands empty in a world grown silent</i>. An inclusive language version ((c) 1995) is included in <i>Hymns for Prayer and Praise</i> (Canterbury Press for the Panel of Monastic Musicians, Norwich 1996) at number 155. The Stanbrook hymn's metre is 11.8.11.8. While Stanbrook has its own Mode 3 melody for it, there appear to be few other reasonably known tunes (if there are any at all) that the unfamiliar form of verse may be sung to. I wonder, therefore, if the slip of photocopied typed text of a similar text, <i>As earth is still, the empty Cross</i>, was Mirfield's attempt at a version that could be sung to a Long Metre tune (8.8.8.8) with little practice. The tune given is a mode 1 melody from the <i>Antiphonale Romanum</i> in the <i>English Hymnal</i> at number 237.<br />
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I have kept that slip since my student days, when, in 1984, I was responsible as Precentor for music in the College chapel, the execution of the Gregorian chant at offices by the students, and especially at Holy Week and Easter. I chose the hymns, but not the Office Hymns, which were as set in the Community of the Resurrection's Daily Office. So I am pretty certain that <i>As earth is still</i> is not my own adaptation. I don't know where else it may have come from. If any one can shed any light, I should be interested to know.<br />
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Here is the 1984 Mirfield text, which I am supposing to be a compression of the Stanbrook Abbey hymn:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As earth is still, the empty Cross<br />
Accounts the gain redeeming loss<br />
Through hours of anguish, fear and dread,<br />
While Christ descends to wake the dead.<br />
<br />
He summons Adam and his seed;<br />
His own, long captive held, are freed.<br />
He claims the dead for to life regained,<br />
Brings light where night eternal reigned.<br />
<br />
Confessing Christ Who bore the cost<br />
Who losing life so found the lost,<br />
We praise You, Holy Trinity,<br />
Restoring in eternity. Amen.</blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
Evidently, I thought this unsatisfactory and reworked it, adding a further verse. From the many attempts at revised lines, here is the result:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In silence stands the empty Cross<br />
And tells of gain redeeming loss:<br />Now earth in anguish waits in dread<br />
While Christ descends to wake the dead.<br />
<br />
First light, O Christ, to pierce the gloom,<br />
Your dawning rise shall burst the Tomb;<br />
First fruit of those that lay asleep,<br />
A harvest in the morning reap.<br />
<br />
You summon Adam and his seed;<br />
Your own, long captive held, are freed.<br />
You claim the dead to life regained,<br />
Bring light where night eternal reigned.<br />
<br />
Confessing You that bore the cost,<br />
and losing life restored the lost:<br />
with Father and the Spirit, Three, <br />
One God, we praise eternally. Amen.</blockquote>
I gladly acknowledge the copyright and protection of the original by the Nuns of Stanbrook Abbey. I would like to acknowledge the possible editors at Mirfield. Hoping and assuming that I have their permission to share this old exercise of mine, I suppose I had better say that the adaptations and additions I have made are copyright to me (c) 1984 and 2020.<br />
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<br />Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-26662397505693338832019-12-20T15:56:00.000+00:002020-01-12T16:10:20.999+00:00Wider than the heavens, our bearing of the Light of the World: Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Divine Liturgy of St John Chryostom, Ukrainian Cathollic Cathedral, London, 15th December 2019<br />
In the six years since we have been celebrating the Divine Liturgy in English each month at the Ukrainian Cathedral, I do not think it has happened so far that we have encountered the Sunday chants of the Resurrection in the First Tone. So now here we are in the preparation for celebrating the Lord’s Advent in the flesh in 2019, and we encounter less familiar words to acclaim His rising from the dead.<br />
<br />
But it is all of a piece. In the Troparion (see below), we see how the earth contains within it the body of the Lord, a stone laid to seal it in. At His resurrection the Lord gives life to the world of death, first arising within the Tomb before arising from it. It reminds us of how the Prophet Isaiah said (Isaiah 45.8), “Drop down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth come open, and bring forth a Saviour”. In the same way as the Spirit from the Father flooded the Tomb on the Third Day, that in the living of the Trinity the Son of Man and Son of God might rise from the dead, so the Holy Spirit pours down grace upon the Blessed Virgin Mary, filling her with that righteousness that will have been won in the future by her Son’s bloodshed on the Cross, and interring within her, like a plant in the earth, the Incarnate Word Whom she will bring forth as the Saviour. The Tomb, the Womb, a Saviour emerging from within the world and bringing out through it the Kingdom of heaven: it could come no other way. We could not reach it. Instead it has reached into us. Its burst upon our scene is so surprising that it is unrecognisable; but that is what is facing us. Thus we sing, “Glory to Your Kingdom; glory to Your saving plan”. The Lord tells us (Luke 17.22f): “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘Look, there He is,’ or ‘Here He is.’ Do not go out or chase after them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so will be the Son of Man in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected.” In other words the Kingdom will come not in a spectacle, but within the life spent in human and divine love upon the Cross, from within a dead body laid in the earth; and that it all began to play out from within the womb of Virgin, just as it was all conceived when the Spirit of God brooded across the waters and the Creator spoke in His Word, saying, “Let there be Light” - the Word that would take flesh and dwell among us, the True Light who lights every man from within, even though the direction of that light from the very way He made it, caused it not to be recognised.<br />
<br />
Both the Troparion and the Kontakion speak of the glory of this light, just as St Paul today exhorts us (Ephesians 5.9-19) to spurn the works of darkness and enjoy the fruit of light. But where is this light to be seen? How is it visible, seeing that we lack the bearings to see it and where it is coming from, even if we notice the shadows where it does not shine? He tells us that we can stand in the light by being awake to the wisdom and will of God in the present moment, not putting things off because we think the Kingdom of God, with the demands and opportunities of our new way of living eternally, can be dealt with all in good time. He tells us not to be fooled by the “business as usual” of the world we are in. He says the days are evil. In our current parlance, we could reply, “Yes, but let’s be realistic. Let’s do a reality check. Let’s deal with the world as it is, not as it’s not. Let’s meet people where they are, not blame them for being where we think they shouldn’t be. As for ourselves, you can only do so much. I am what I am. Take me as you find me. We can cross that bridge when we come to it. We have to live in the real world. We’ll think about heaven when we need to. There’s too much to do here and now. Life is not a rehearsal. Life’s for living, not for dying.” The parlance in the Lord’s time was “Relax and enjoy. Eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12.16-21); and “Eat and drink today. Die tomorrow” (Isaiah 22.13; I Corinthians 15.32). And to that, the Lord Who said, “Call no man a fool” (Matthew 5.22), says, “Fool – your soul is required of you tonight!”<br />
<br />
It is interesting that St Paul’s antidote to living in this world, without paying attention to the direction from which the Kingdom is entering, is to sing hymns and spiritual songs. I have been singing hymns all my life. One can remember so much of them by heart. The way our brains work is that, often, we cannot remember the words so easily on their own, but when the music is recalled it unlocks the words. It is all to do with where the memory of music and thus lyrics is laid down in our heads. This is why so much of our Divine Liturgy’s prayer is sung, whereas in the Latin Church more of it is spoken. We not only remember it better. It sinks in; and we can call it forth from spirits when we sing. So I urge you to learn and sing our hymns and spiritual songs, not only in our Byzantine Liturgy, but also in our rich Christian culture in England. Try not to rely on texts and orders of services, but, as St Paul says, “sing and make melody to the Lord with your heart”. For this is the direction from which comes the light that we call radiant, and that others just cannot see, or that they dismiss as religious fervour. So, if you find it difficult to pray, or to concentrate on devotions – sing. Even if you are embarrassed to sing out loud, recall a tune in your head that unlocks the words of praise and devotion to Christ, and let your heart make joyful noise with it. Or gently hum. Or softly whistle. But hold the words with the melody, and St Paul says that in that very act the Spirit will fill you. This will be just as He filled the womb of the Blessed and spotless Virgin with the Divine Son, and just as He filled the body in the earth’s stone tomb when it arose from the dead.<br />
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It will be the same as the Angel Gabriel saying to the Virgin, “Rejoice”. In that instant she became Mother of God as the Lord took her flesh for His own. And in the same moment that we rejoice or lament with the Lord in our hearts, as today’s Theotokion tells us, we shall “become wider than the heavens carrying our Creator”. Imagine what it would be like if the words addressed to the Mother of God in the Theotokion were turned upon us. Then we should see where the complete surprise of the Light is coming from as we, even we, are told, “Glory to Him Who dwelt in you. Glory to Him Who comes forth from you.” We will be amazed, and just like the Mother of God, we would ask Saint Gabriel, “How can this be?” Yet it is. One of the great English hymns puts this profound dogmatic insight into how the Light comes into the World:<br />
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How silently, how silently</div>
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The wondrous gift is given;</div>
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So God imparts to human hearts</div>
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The blessings of His heaven.</div>
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No ear may hear His coming,</div>
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But in this world of sin</div>
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Where meek souls will receive him still</div>
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The dear Christ enters in.</div>
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O holy Child of Bethlehem,</div>
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Descend to us, we pray.</div>
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Cast out our sin and enter in,</div>
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Be born in us today.</div>
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We hear the Christmas angels</div>
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The great glad tidings tell.</div>
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O come to us, abide with us,</div>
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Our Lord Emmanuel.</div>
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For Emmanuel, God is with us. If you cannot see His light, come to confession that with a purified heart you may sing. For as the Light dawned from the Womb of the Mother of God, and then from out of the Tomb, so the direction remains the same. The Light shines upon His world from within the light in the lives of the People of His Church.</div>
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<u>Note: Hymns for Sunday in the First Tone</u></div>
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<i>Troparion of the Resurrection</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Though the
stone was sealed by the Judæans* and soldiers guarded Your most pure body,* You
arose, O Saviour, on the third day,* and gave life to the world.* And so the
heavenly powers cried out to You, O Giver of life:* "Glory to Your
resurrection, O Christ!* Glory to Your kingdom!* Glory to Your saving plan,*
O only Lover of Mankind."</div>
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<i>Kontakion of
the Resurrection</i></div>
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You arose in
glory from the tomb* and with Yourself You raised the world.* All humanity
acclaims You as God,* and death has vanished.* Adam exults, O Master,* and
Eve, redeemed from bondage now, cries out for joy:* “You are the One, O
Christ, Who offer resurrection to all.”</div>
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<i>Theotokion</i></div>
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When Gabriel
uttered to you, O Virgin, his ‘Rejoice!’ * – at that sound the Master of all
became flesh in you, the Holy Ark.* As the just David said,* you have become
wider than the heavens carrying your Creator.* Glory to Him Who dwelt in you!* Glory to Him Who came forth from you!* Glory to Him Who freed us through
birth from you!</div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-27421348300180513242019-11-19T13:26:00.000+00:002019-12-14T13:35:30.246+00:00What if I were holy? Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Sunday of the Sower, at the Divine Liturgy, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, London, 10th November 2019<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">St Paul tells the Galatians to look beyond the besetting temptation of religion to reduce it to a matter of things we do, rather than what we are. (Galatians 2.16-20)<br /><br />It never ceases to amaze me how harsh some people are to comment on the transgressions of others. The anger ranges from mistakes and unsatisfactory habits in execution, to denunciation of people’s entire lives before God. Now, we are supposed to tolerate those who boss other people, those who are quick to show us up. After all, they may be right in what they say. But Christ says that we are not to return the favour. We are not to be the ones to bully people into conformity to our wills, or into cause the silent resignation of depression in the Church which is supposed to be the abode of joy. But then, with an answer for everything, we might say: “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. I have no time for this. It is not in the words of Christ. It is saying, “I love you in theory, but not in practice”. And it reveals something even uglier. It is boasting about your own virtue, how good you are at keeping commands - observing the rules, yet letting yourself off your own sin.<br /><br />Everyone I know who is like this is deluded, a hypocrite covering up their own shortcomings. St Paul says he himself is so much rubbish (cf Philippians 3.8), the least of the apostles (I Corinthians 15.9), the greatest of sinners (I Timothy 1.15). I find this rings true. Some people are very holy. Some people are very good at being sinners. Most of us are rubbish at being both. We can’t even sin successfully. This is why in our Liturgy, we constantly say, “Lord have mercy” – not because we are craven and despairing about our trap in sin, but because we know God is merciful, “helps, saves” and bears with us. The last words of our Liturgy are all we need to know: “He is good and He loves mankind. Amen.” So St Paul says to those who are wrapped up in regulation, bossing people on what to do and bolstering up the image of their perfection that hides their true weakness, that it is not about deeds and acts and laws – or, we might say, my conduct, morality, behaviour or attitude. It is about me who have Christ living in me in place of myself, you that have Christ living in you in place of you. He tells the Corinthians, Christ does not want the things that you offer, the things you do, the things you have. He wants the thing that is you (II Corinthians 12.14).<br /><br />So, he can say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” This is not some pale imitation of Christ. Consider this question. “What would I do if I were Jesus Christ?” Then ask this one instead: “What would Christ do if He were me? Who would Christ be if He were me?” “What would holiness look like if it were shaped like me?” No wonder we say, “Lord have mercy,” at the prospect. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,” says St Peter (Luke 5.8) after he has seen the Lord bring about the miraculous draught of fishes. But that is the point: He will never depart from a sinful person. Christ’s is no love in theory, but not in practice. He remains, for the purpose of seeing through the work of forgiveness, going back to square one every time, repairing with patience and not with a word of condemnation, sowing the seed again and again, until there is redemption, by way of sacrifice in one world, to bring a new one through resurrection.<br /><br />The most alarming aside in the parable of the Sower, today’s Gospel (Luke 8.5-15), is where the seed fell among thorns and grew up with it. We know this is what we Christian disciples have to contend with, and what Christ has to deal with. How can it be that we who sin, who fall short in so many ways, are also none other than the same people who look like Christ. Who would Christ be if He were me? Well, if St Paul is right that it is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me, then the answer is that Christ intends to look like me. And if it is true that I, even I, am to be holy – what would that holiness look like? It is not a sufficient response to that momentous question to say, “Depart from me for I am a sinner”. We have to see this one through, because Christ is seeing it through.<br /><br />Will Christ take one look at us and say to Himself, “That person is stony ground; no seed will grow there?” Will He say, “That one is so choked up with sin that there will be no good fruit coming off that tree; write it off”? Does He say, “But some of those look good – I will concentrate my efforts on them”? No, He will not.<br /><br />Each one of us at the moment is a mix of the Word of God growing from the good seed, with the thorns and weeds that thrive in us just as much. Often we cannot tell the difference. But think of it like this. In one way, the Icons are wood, cloth, egg, pigment, art. But image and spirit are never apart from incarnation and created physical form. We venerate, touch and kiss not a representation of an idea or a memory; we touch the Mystery itself. And it is not the saints who live, but Christ who lives in them. In the same way, at our Liturgy we will take bread and wine. And, during the course of our action, we will see it is the Lord, making Himself known in the Breaking of the Bread. Not a remembrance or a symbol, but God with Us Who has promised to be with us to the end of time. And because He is seen in the Bread and the Cup, He comes to be seen in those Who share them. Thus it is not we who live any more, but Christ Who lives within us.<br /><br />Take a look at yourself and each other. Quickly you will see a character with personality, talents, flaws, irritating habits, kind gifts, heroic virtues, hidden badness. Do not judge them for this, for this is what they judge about you too. Instead, see the life of faith which hopes that all this, even the good, will be surpassed. See Christ growing from His seed, not the weeds and thorns. Imagine the other person as an icon painted with paint on wood, but brought to life by a Mystery operating within. Imagine the other and yourself as the living Presence of Christ, Who has come into each one by the Eucharist - here to change you not from being you, but into what Christ looks like when He is in you. Imagine you and one another – whatever the appearance – as already being made holy, not as a way of justifying your bad hits and misses, but to reveal the virtue of Christ being moulded into you as your own.<br /><br />God does not want us to be pale imitations of Christ, who hand over their personalities to an imaginary ideal, or who hide themselves behind a religious façade, whose only sharp edge is to judge other people. He wants the person He created, not something else, to be a new presentation of Christ in the world, the forgiving Redeemer, to recreate it.<br /><br />It is clear that St Paul is a character full of personality – difficult to some, an inspiration to others, a thorn in people’s side, a rival vying for his leadership and teaching to prevail, a spiritual man who was a sinner. Galatia and Corinth would not have been formed as Christian Churches without him, as someone in whom Christ was now living in full force. So let us live as he did, sinners who even fail at that, who keep God’s commandments but patiently, with a good deal of self-criticism and wise humility rather than condemnation of others or ourselves, and a belief that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Christ wants me to be me - not the person I should be in theory, since only the real me will become the object of His love in practice. He wants me to be me, so that in me He may be Christ Who is all in all.</span>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-10510627884898442712019-10-17T09:46:00.000+01:002019-12-14T13:35:15.275+00:00Eyes speak to eyes and heart to heart: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, St Gregory, St Edward & St John Henry, at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, 13th October 2019<br />
It is the outsider that the Lord encounters today. First, St
Paul tells us to separate ourselves out from those in whose midst we live: “Go
out from them, and you shall be My sons and daughters”. (II Corinthians
6.16-7.1) He says that this purification is the way God brings about the completion
of our holiness. Then, in the gospel (Matthew 15.21-28), a Canaanite woman
implores Him to relieve her daughter from terrible spiritual affliction – it
has depressed her mind and her body. At first the Lord says that salvation
comes according to a certain plan, all in due course: first, those who had lost
their place in the house of Israel, ahead of anyone else. But the insistence of
her faith crying out, which has driven the disciples beyond toleration, tells the
story that no one is ultimately outside the scope of salvation.<br />
<br />
<br />
There is St Paul saying, “go outside from among them”; and
here is an outsider forcing her way in. St Paul points out the way for getting
rid of the stains and pollution in our personalities, our attitudes, our hearts
and our habits, so that it is clear for the Lord to come all the way along it,
to fill us with His life and love and presence. This is another way of saying
that His holiness becomes our character, difficult and outlandish as that may
sound. And then the Gospel tells us that the purification we need does not come
from our efforts, or turning our back on what is wrong with life, but by
turning toward faith in the One who has come flooding into our midst. You get
the impression that the Canaanite woman was not planning this. She just heard
that Jesus had arrived, and it is her instinct to believe in Christ and no
other that surprises the disciples. As we often find in the Christian life,
faith precedes our confession of belief, and grace from God precedes our response
to turn to Him.<br />
<br />
<br />
Notice that when she appeals to Him, He answers not a word.
It is the same as in the manger. It is the same as when He is baptised and
transfigured. It is the same when He stands before Pilate. It is the same when
He is risen from the dead. It is not wording that is being strung together, but
the extent of faith that is being tested and explored. Christ is the Word that
need not be articulated, because it is His Person and His all-pervading
Presence and His sheer significance that cause the cleansing out of what stands
in the way of encountering Him - of bringing His holiness in us to completion,
of bringing to flower the faith that has been seeded within us.<br />
<br />
<br />
Look at what will happen in our midst in a few moments. Will
Christ who will come among us take one look and say to Himself, “Be separate
from them; go out from their midst; be separate from them”? Or will He, like He
did at journey’s end on the road to Emmaus, without scarcely a word and by His
presence and act, make Himself known to us in the Breaking of Bread? The Lord
of hosts and the Man of Sorrows, despised and rejected, acquainted with grief,
the outsider of all outsiders, becomes our insider.<br />
<br />
This Sunday in London, for the Latin Church of Westminster
among whom we live, it is the Feast of St Edward the Confessor, whose crown
adorns our monarch, and whose remains lie close to the High Altar of
Westminster Abbey, where only a few years ago they were venerated by Pope
Benedict XVI. The great king of the Anglo-Saxons remains the patron of good
government in our land, and the bulwark against misrule and injustice as he has
been for 1000 years. Here in our Church, we remember Gregory, a refugee from
pagan Armenia, who learned of Christ for himself when he was raised in
Cappadocia, at the heart of Greek Eastern Christian spiritual life and
theology, to became the “Illuminator” of his people when he returned to
organise his nation’s Church, so that the oldest Christian state in the world
remains a proud Christian civilisation in the East and in diaspora across the
world to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in Rome, John
Henry Newman, England’s son and its greatest Christian teacher and theologian,
will be included in the canon of the saints of the whole Catholic Church, on
account of his life’s dedication to the binding nature of the Truth and the
Lord whose salvation in the One Church of Christ he embraced.<br />
<br />
<br />
One of Blessed John Henry’s phrases described his spiritual
journey. It was not one of picking up or looking for hidden messages, but a
path of realising the plain reality before his eyes. So he spoke of moving “out
of shadows and illusions into truth.” He also said that this was because “heart
speaks to heart.” If we are honest, we all know what these two sayings mean,
since we have all encountered them, in our truer moments, in our souls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second phrase is adapted from something St
Frances de Sales said in his Treatise on the Love of God (Bk VI):<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
Speaking to God and hearing God
speak in the bottom of the heart … is … a silent conversing. Eyes speak to
eyes, and heart to heart. And none understand what passes save the sacred
lovers who speak.</div>
<div style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
The Canaanite woman knew the silent conversing when she
cried. The apostles cried back and told her to stop. But the Lord said not a
word. For heart speaks to heart. And when St Paul told us to clear the temple
of God that we are of all the clutter of noise to other idolised obsessions and
our illusory falsehood, it is to make way for the presence and worship of God.
Thus in the purity of lovers in relationship He may see only us as we are, and
we may see only Him as He is, for “eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and
none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak”. This is why,
when we pray to God, we do not hear with our ears; it is how we have an inkling
that prayer is not something that we do to God, but what God does to us. It is
the path of falling and being in love.<br />
<br />
St Edward, St Gregory and Blessed John Henry all in their
way knew what we are learning too. There is other light. There is no other
faith. There is no other Church, save to be in that one place where He gazes in
His heart upon us and we upon Him, where we are not alone, but see ourselves to
be in the company of all the rest who have gone their way and found that it
leads purely nowhere else than to the Church wherein He makes Himself know in
this breaking of Bread. As St Bernard put it:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
Jesu, the very thought of Thee/ With
sweetness fills my breast;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
But sweeter far Thy face to see, And
in Thy presence rest.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
O Hope of every contrite heart, O Joy
of all the meek,</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
How good to those who seek!</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
But what to those who find? Ah, this/
Nor tongue nor pen can show;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
The love of Jesus, what it is/ None
but His loved ones know.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And so, with
St Paul, the Woman of Canaan and her daughter, with St Gregory, St Edward, St
Bernard, and St John Henry Newman, we pray:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
Jesus, our only Joy be Thou, As Thou
our Prize wilt be;</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
Jesus, be Thou our Glory now, And
through eternity.</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-77534006800061622602019-09-18T09:05:00.000+01:002019-12-14T13:38:57.117+00:00This Do Until He Comes: Homily at the Divine Liturgy for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, 15th September 2019 When you go to visit Rome, it is usually for some work or
business to dispatch; or you go from architectural splendour to artistic
masterpiece, from church to church to marvel at the sights. Yes, there are
masses, and rites and liturgies. But even the Christian pilgrims can look a
little more like tourists and photographers than those who pour out prayer and
veneration as they contemplate the mysteries of Christ and the martyred saints
of the city who followed the Stranger that befriended them through life to
untimely death.<br />
<br />
I do not point a finger at any one but myself here. I love
to be in Rome and drink its glories and significance at all levels in. But
there is always something particular that I love to do, and that is to retrace
at least a few of the steps that I know they took of St Peter and St Paul. We
know that the Apostles’ remains lie at the two great Basilicas that bear their
names. But where did they go before; where had they been; and what was the path
that took them to that moment of ultimate closeness to the Lord on His Cross,
when they must have realised the meaning of the prayer from the night before He
died, that St John preserved for his gospel: “Father, may they all be one, just
as you and I, Father, are one. The glory You have given me, I have given to
them. May they be with me where I am, to see my glory. Sanctify them in the
truth”?<br />
<br />
The glory of Christ is, of course, the revelation of what
God truly looks like in the world: the Son of Man on His Cross. And if the
Church looks like anything else, it does not display His glory. In the
aftermath of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the Lord’s constant refrain
was to show the astonished disciples that the whole weight and course of the
Scriptures came down to the Cross – that the Lord must suffer, or else it is
not true, not holy, not glory.<br />
<br />
So I love to go to the Church of San Paolo alla Regola, “St
Paul’s on the Strand”, a little church near the Ponte Sisto over the Tiber. It
is a Baroque church now, but a great room to its south stands over the site of
the house where St Paul stayed for two years under house arrest, awaiting his
appeal to Caesar as a Roman citizen to be heard. Here he taught and wrote. Here
he received the Christians of Rome. Here he handed on what he had received on
the Road to Damascus, the ever present vision of the Risen Christ making
Himself known in the taking and breaking of the Bread and the Cup. Here he
contemplated the outcome of his impending trial, and the risk that the
missionary journeys were almost at an end, when the condemnation in Palestine
might at last be confirmed. Here was where he wrote from his heart about death
and resurrection, putting on Christ, reaching the full stature of humanity, of
Christ who died and rose again now filling the universe, of Christ the life
within us now. Here is where he felt his own sufferings and his growing intimacy
with Christ: “no longer I that live, but Christ who lives within me”. (Galatians
2.20) Here he approached his own death and the coming resurrection, as he had
told the Roman Church all along: “It may be sown a physical body, but it will
be raised a spiritual body.” (I Corinthians 15.44) And as he also told the
Corinthians: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the
trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be
changed.” (I Corinthians 15.52) Yes, here is St Paul’s own Garden of
Gethsemane. Here is a place of profoundest prayer with the Lord, Who asked the
Father to glorify Him in the only true and holy way.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, on the slopes of the Aventine, I like to go and
visit the serene, small church of St Prisca, on the very site of the house she
shared with her husband Aquila, mentioned in today’s epistle (I Corinthians
16.13-24). Paul visited them, and taught and inspired their home, along with the
little group of disciples that they cautiously brought together. Here too he
will have celebrated and revealed the mystery of the Eucharist of the Risen
Lord through the prism of the night before He died, when He prayed that the
humanity would see God’ glory, truth and holiness nowhere other than on the
Cross.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I like to go to the Abbey of Tre Fontane outside
the city, where, amid the pines that still grow there, the Apostle was beheaded.
Three springs of water still flow where his head rolled down to where the local
Christians, doubtless including Prisca and Aquila, retrieved his remains to
inter them as nobly as they could beside the Via Appia down by the Tiber, where
they lie to this day.<br />
<br />
On other visits, I like to go to the beautiful little city
of Tivoli in the hills above Rome to find the ancient Church of San Pietro off
the beaten track. It is believed to be on the site of another Roman family’s
house, where St Peter was first sheltered before they could risk taking him
down to the city. A number of other little towns and villages in the hills also
have a Church of St Peter, rarely the cathedral or the most impressive,
probably on the site of a house of secret local Christians, who took turns at
hiding Peter for no more than a few days, and who never lost the memory of
giving a safe haven to the Rock on which the Church was built by Christ.<br />
<br />
I also like to go to the Catacomb of Priscilla on the via
Salaria, at the site of another Roman family house where for centuries the
famous Chair of St Peter was preserved – the seat he first sat on when he came
down onto the plain and toward the city, where the Christians of Rome itself
first met him, where they heard at first hand his living memory of Jesus, and
received from the one who had denied Him and yet loved Him the food of which
the first disciples had said, “Lord give us this bread always” (John 6.34), and
which the Lord had called the “daily bread”, the bread of eternal existence.<br />
<br />
Another time, I will go up behind the Victor Emmanuel
Monument, to the all but hidden church of St Joseph. Its unadorned crypt is a
second Church, of San Pietro in Carcere, St Peter in Prison. This is the
Tullian Prison, the Mamertine Jail, of ancient Rome. Still further below is the
pit in which high profile prisons were held with no chance of escape. Here is
the single cell where it is long believed St Peter was kept in chains ahead of
his execution across on the other side of the city and the river on the upward
slope of the Vatican Hill, close to where his remains keep the Pope as bishop
of Rome - and Peter’s successor - never to go too far away.<br />
<br />
In the Gospel today (Matthew 21.33-42), the Lord speaks of a
master who planted a vineyard that was overrun by the tenants to whom it had
been entrusted. They stole all the good that came from it and wasted its fruit
on themselves, leaving the master’s winepress unused, fruitless. The master
sent his son, and, as the Lord said as He cried over Jerusalem facing its
destruction in turn, they did not recognise the moment of God’s coming to them
(Luke 19.44). The servants killed the son, and the master lost the descendant
who would inherit, and take the labour of the vineyard to grow forward into the
future. Except that now, at last, there was fruit that the tenants did not
want. This fruit is not the wine of grapes, but the blood shed by the Son. The
winepress’s moment has come. It pours out incessantly the new wine of the
Kingdom: “This is my Blood shed for you, the Blood of the new covenant, for the
forgiveness of sins.” Thus it is that at each celebration of the eucharist, we
see not only the presence of the Lord in His Body and His Blood, but also the
sacrifice that brings peace to the world and reconciliation of humanity to its
Father and Lord. This is what is made known to us in the breaking of bread –
that God in human form looks like a man on a cross, and the path to Him is
always the way of the Cross, or it is no path to glory, no reliable journey to
the truth, no approach that will ever lead to holiness. Thus it is “this we do”,
like Paul and Peter before us, “in memory of Him until He comes”.<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-22782357937204231122019-09-08T17:47:00.000+01:002019-09-29T17:52:03.643+01:00Scripture Interpretation & Inspiration: Reflection at the Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius Annual Conference, August 26 2019
<br />
In my first term at Durham in October 1977, there were regular power cuts; and in the first week we students had gathered hopeful that the Old Testament lecture would be cancelled. On the dot of 4.15 pm a noted Scout, the Revd Dr John Rogerson, entered with a vast hurricane lamp and proceeded to initiate us into the mysteries of the Documentary Hypothesis. His first words were unforgettable: “I intend to teach the Old Testament as Christian, Trinitarian scriptures”. <br /><br />When we turn to the Sermon on The Mount in chapter 5 of St Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 5.17-20), we see what he means. <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven. </blockquote>
This Law, these Prophets, and the seeing and doing of what they teach are nothing other than the voice, the righteousness and the Person of Christ. His Word is Law. The Lord’s are the words that are spirit and life. The source of our righteousness, then, is more than the pursuit of words, but our conformity to the life, pattern and Person of the Lord who spoke them. For He is the Word that took flesh; and He is the Word that revealed in His Body the divine Kingship of God that is His. But more than that: the humanity that inhabits His Kingship with Him, sweeps us into the Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, too. <br /><br />It makes no sense to look at the Scriptures outside of the context within which they are most often used: not just the study, but the Liturgy of the Church. So, to approach that passage of the Sermon on the Mount, let us think for a moment about the worship of the Temple, also set on a mount. In the Temple rite there was once an autumn fertility and water festival, in which the original High Priest, the King himself, would undergo bathing and purification rites, before entering the Holy of Holies alone, there to be glimpsed in a blaze of golden magnificence on the throne. Soon he would emerge as that human figure <i>par excellence</i>, a Son of Man, on whom God’s favour and presence rested. Thus we might know that “God is with us” (Isaiah 7.14 & 8.8; Matthew 1.23), conveyed, so to speak, in the person of the Priest-King. Now he would bestow divine blessing on the people, the land and its produce, and speak as the bearer of the Divine Voice, articulating the Divine Wisdom among the people. “Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear what the Spirit is saying,” writes St John in the Revelation (2.29), which perhaps shows to us something of this rite, with its double effect of renewed life and judgment to live by, to stand or fall by (cf. Ephesians 6.13). <br /><br /><div>
Such might be the account of the Methodist Biblical scholar, Dr Margaret Barker. Whether the persuasive conjecture is conclusive is for further research and discussion. But look at the Sermon of the Mount and its description of a similar pattern of events. St John Baptist calls the people to repentance and purification. The Son of Man submits to it and is baptised in the Jordan. As in the wanderings in the wilderness and the Temple in Jerusalem, the presence of the Lord is covered by the Spirit in the form of heavenly phenomena, whether it be clouds accumulating and parting, or a “cloud and fiery pillar”, or a dove. And a voice is heard saying to those who are apt for hearing it, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased”. The Lord emerges and, like the scapegoat rather than the Lamb that St John has attested Him to be, He is led by the same Spirit into the wilderness, where Satan first offers Him a false throne. After this hiatus, the Lord gathers the disciples and attracts the people from over the entire land and now at last rises up from among them. In the sight and hearing of the people, at last He sits on the throne of His choosing; and, like the priest-King of old, including his forefather David, He is seen with astonishment as He proceeds to tell the disciples about the nature of the Lord’s kingship, the true purpose of the Law, and the characteristics of life in the Kingdom. These are:</div>
<ul>
<li>forgiveness</li>
<li>love</li>
<li>service to those who need</li>
<li>how to pray</li>
<li>how to treasure life in the world so that it is already life in the next</li>
<li>how to found your life on Christ the Rock</li>
<li>how to bear good fruit</li>
<li>what judgment to expect and on what grounds</li>
</ul>
<div>
But, above all, everything He says proceeds from the first thing he rose up to pronounce: </div>
<ul>
<li>the Divine Blessing that will never be taken back. </li>
</ul>
<div>
For the Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in Spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who thirst for righteousness, those who are merciful, those who are pure in heart, those who make peace, those who suffer in the cause of righteousness, those who seek above all the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This pattern of the Lord entering among His people, of preparation to stand in the Lord’s presence, of entering the sanctuary, and of emerging with the revelation of the Divine Teaching in the writings of the prophets and apostles and the voice of the Lord Christ Himself in the Gospels, is a feature of nearly every Liturgy of East and West. Now, it is unwise to read our present practice back into the past. But it is of interest to consider how we have surrounded our practice. In this company, you scarcely need me to comment that the Beatitudes are often sung as the Third Antiphon before the Entrance in the Divine Liturgy. At this choral manifestation of Divine blessing, the deacon or priest who has brought the Gospels to the Holy Doors, declaims, “Wisdom, stand aright.” The same Wisdom is hailed, the expression of the Word incarnate, before the Prokeimenon, the Epistle, and the Gospel. It reminds us of the thoughts of St Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1.30): </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And from [or because of] Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us Wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. </blockquote>
<div>
In the Roman Liturgy we do not have preparatory antiphons, but the Gospel at the most solemn masses is brought into the sanctuary in a similar way at the Introit. There is no acclamation of Divine Wisdom, but it is the same procession of Emmanuel, God with Us, Wisdom from God, bringing into us, from Himself, His righteousness, His sanctification, His redemption, His royal progress, to which we are added, into His Kingdom. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yet, in the Mass of the Roman Rite, while there is no acclamation of Divine Wisdom, at the end of each reading since the revisions of the 1960s, the reader says, “V<i>erbum Domini</i>”. For years our English translation said, “This is the Word of the Lord.” It was a mistaken translation, and I feel the Latin Catholic Church should apologise to friends in other Churches which have been influenced in doing the same, because to all intents and purposes it invites the inference that the “This” in “This is the Word of the Lord”, refers to the text that has been read, or even the rightly treasured, physical copy of the Bible printed on paper. The entire point, however, is missed that - out of the study, out of the bookshop and the library - when the Scriptures are read, it is the Incarnate Lord and Word Himself Who is speaking. St Paul told the Galatians, (2.20), “It is not I who live, but the Christ Who lives within me”. It is the same in the liturgical reading of the Scriptures. It is not our activity of reading, not words on a page, but the “lively oracles of God” Himself, the Word to us and in us (Acts 7.38; John 1.14; Colossians 3.16). Thus the Lord reminded the apostles, “It will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10.20) – a clear manifestation of the voice of the Body of Christ in His Church, animated by the Spirit Who proceeded from the Father – the Trinitarian dynamic of the Scriptures at work in the new Testament as in the Old, just as Dr Rogerson with his hurricane lamp showed us that autumn afternoon in 1977. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So we have corrected our translation. It now reads clearly and unambiguously, “The Word of the Lord”. But our correction is not complete. The Gospel in the celebration of Mass in the current Latin Rite ends with the same acclamation, “<i>Verbum Domini</i>”, as the Gospel Text, an open book (cf. Revelation 5.2), is itself lifted up, venerated, and kissed as with an icon. Unfortunately, in our present translation, we are obliged to say, not “The Word of the Lord”, but “The Gospel of the Lord.” It is unsurprising, then, that the faithful relate this acclamation to the book. Thus their words of praise, “<i>Laus tibi, Domine</i>”, are addressed seemingly to Christ in heaven, rather than present in His own voice, reading Himself out to us, dwelling in us and among us richly (John 1.14; Colossians 3.16). I hope that at some point we will be bold enough to conform our English translation of the Gospel’s acclamation to the Latin, so that the deacon or priest may hold up and reveal the Gospel Text to the faithful as “The Word of the Lord” – the incarnate Word in His own speaking. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That we do not is extraordinary, given the context in which this insertion of acclamations of the Divine Word arose. At the end of nearly every celebration of the Roman Mass prior to the reform in 1965 was read out the Prologue of St John’s Gospel (1.1-14): </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. </blockquote>
<div>
This Prologue was anciently added to the Order of Mass as an exorcism to dispel and protect from the darkness of Satan the faithful who had just been prayed over with the Trinity’s blessing. The resonance with the introduction of the new acclamations would have been clear. Yet when they were added in 1969, the reading of St John’s prologue had been dropped for four years. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thus the connection between the reading of the Scriptures, and the conclusion of the entire mass in which the hushed Words of Christ Himself bring about His own presence in the Body and the Blood of the Gifts transformed out of being bread and wine, was missed and thus lost. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another mistake the Latin Church has made in its presentation of the action of the Eucharistic Mystery is to refer to the latter part as the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and the earlier part as the Liturgy of the Word. In the Byzantine Liturgy, as you well know, the acclamation of Wisdom is repeated in the prayers of the faithful ahead of the Great Entrance with the Eucharistic Oblations, for the entire Liturgy is the Liturgy of the Word; the entire Liturgy is the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Nothing different is asserted in the West, of course; but the connection of both is too little visible, as the first part of Mass is seen as a service of instruction from the Scriptures, before the gears change beyond word to sacrifice and sacrament. But it is all the one Christ, whose breath voiced into existence the creation, whose Spirit spoke through the prophets, Who shone through the life and wording of St Paul, and who – as St John put it – is the Word that is luminous in the world (John 1.9 &c.), the light in the lives of humans, and that reveals the purpose and direction of all the Scriptures, all worship, and all of our course through life to the Kingdom of heaven, no less on earth as it is in heaven. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But there remains a pearl of great price buried in the Latin canon of the Mass. The prayer is so ancient that it precedes the development of those also venerable anaphoras that include an epiclesis of the Holy Spirit for the consecration of the gifts to become the Body and Blood of Christ. The Latin theology is that the recitation of the very words of Christ – “This is my Body … this is My Blood” - effect the presence of the Word Incarnate in the matter of the Eucharist. But there is more. For the same action as we use in our other anaphoras for the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the Gifts (i.e. the priest spreading his hands over them) is classically used in the Roman Canon which does not contain one. Instead, the act accompanies the words, “Bless, acknowledge and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of Your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then we repeat the words of the Lord Himself. Now, the word for spiritual in Latin here is “<i>rationabilem</i>”, which in Greek translation is <i>logike</i>/<i>logikos</i> – not only related to the realm of reason and the spiritual sphere, but to the Logos who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1.14). This we take in the Latin Church to be the recognition of Wisdom in the secret places (Psalm 50.6). And so we are back with the Word who spoke over the waters (Genesis 1.3), the Spirit who brooded over them and the Father who identified the Son as the One on Whom his favour rests. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But as we have constantly seen from the Sermon of the Mount onwards, this action of the Trinity -whether at the Creation, or through the growth of the Scriptures across time and divine history as a living coral, or through the revealing miracle that was the incarnation, then the Cross and the Tomb and the Ascension and is now the Mass – this action of the Trinity never intends to remain self-contained. Unlike in the dramatic moment in the ancient Temple rite, the Lord does not simply appear with purification for us, healing in His wings, and His own self as His Word to inspire us, to judge us and correct us, and to infuse us in every corner with His blessing. For the Divine Kingship of the Word Incarnate is the voice teaching us so as to call us in, into where He has just come from. In our Liturgy we are not only blessed from the Holy of Holies but drawn into it. In His Body and Blood his Kingship is ours. Our righteousness is the filling of us with His grace. His words live in our own consciousness. His holiness is our sanctification to enter the Kingdom where He reigns. Thus, He declares it: “I go and prepare a place for you; I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14.3) and our prayer to go and be there even now: “Your Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6.10-11). “Lord, give us this bread always.” (John 6.34) </div>
Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0Cuddesdon, Oxford OX44, UK51.7226262 -1.133607399999959951.7127902 -1.1537773999999599 51.7324622 -1.1134373999999598tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-4628702311508457512019-08-11T10:59:00.001+01:002019-08-11T10:59:34.749+01:00Sunday of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Homily at the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 11 August, 2019The Feeding of the Five Thousand is so very familiar that we can miss all that St Matthew is telling us (Matthew 14.14-22). <br />
<br />
First, note that the disciples describe the place Jesus had retreated to as a desolate place. We are being reminded of the Lord’s Forty Days in the wilderness battling with the Deceiver, but also communing with the Father, before He begins his public ministry. But the readers and hearers of the story are also being pointed forward: to the forthcoming retreat of Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He died, truly desolate and alone, as the apostles fall asleep and there is no human force to prevent His divine intention to be betrayed into the hands of sinners and to go for our sakes to His Passion and His Cross that we may have life eternally, and not death. <br />
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Secondly, note that someone has worked out where Jesus in His boat has made for across the water; they have passed the message on, and the people follow him, walking round the lake or crossing in their own craft. We are being reminded of the Pillar of Cloud by Day and Fire by Night, which led the People of God out of captivity in Egypt across the Red Sea and into the wilderness, from there to reach the Promised Land across the river Jordan. For “a land flowing with milk and honey”, read loaves and fishes. In the same way, the Hebrews in the desert and the Jews in a desolate part of Galilee eat and are satisfied. St John tells us from memory of the sort of thing that Jesus would say to His disciples: “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. They are dead. Whoever eats of this Bread shall live for ever.” (John 6.49, 51) Do not forget that before the Tent of the Holy of Holies that the Hebrews carried round with them in the wilderness, in which the Lord dwelt upon the Ark of the Covenant when He was not leading them in the Pillar of Cloud and Fire, there was a table on which were placed the twelve loaves of the Bread of the Presence, fresh every Sabbath as a memorial of the twelve tribes of the people, as an offering to the Lord, and as a consecrated meal by which the priests commune with God. This sacred rite was continued in the permanent Temple in Jerusalem. St Matthew had just referred to Bread of the Presence of the Lord a little earlier in his Gospel, recalling how King David and his starving companions entered into the Holy Place of the Temple and took the loaves to eat, even though they were not priests. St Matthew’s message is not that the people with Jesus in Galilee are not breaking the divine Law in being given the Bread from Heaven by the Son of David, but that they are being invited into the Presence of the Lord God Himself, to the place of the priests before the Holy of Holies, as the barrier between earth and heaven, God and man, is dismantled, since the Holy of Holies is now where Christ is, and in Him all come into the Kingdom of God, “on earth as it is in heaven”.<br />
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Third, note that it is evening. We are being reminded of at least four events in the future, and the allusion explains them, and they in turn interpret the miracle. It was an evening when the Lord gathered the disciples in the Upper Room and took the bread, said the blessing and told them the secret of the Kingdom – “This is My Body; this is My Blood.” The day was also far spent and the evening almost come, when darkness covered the land, the Lord yielded up His spirit, and the veil of the Temple was rent in two. So here at by Galilee we have the enactment of broken loaves that become His broken Body, not because of a catastrophe but through His deliberate blessing. And it was another evening, St Luke tells us, that a Stranger walked with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. At the end of the day it was the way He took bread, said a blessing and broke it, that He made Himself known to them, and they knew it was the Lord that had been crucified after telling them how to recognise the secret of the Kingdom. Then, again, it was an evening, the evening of the first Sunday that the disciples had locked themselves in a room in Jerusalem, only to find Jesus among them, giving them the peace of resurrection, the blessing of the Holy Spirit breathed upon them, and the power of forgiveness that comes from saying, “This is My Blood of the new covenant poured out for you.”<br />
<br />
So, in a mere nine verses, St Matthew has told us the entire path of salvation from the captivity of the people of God in Egypt, to the foundation of the priesthood in the wilderness, to the coming of God to dwell in humanity in the Person of the Lord, to HIs Passion and the Cross and the Resurrection, and then to the arrival of forgiveness and the blessing of the Holy Spirit. It is all made known in the Breaking of the Living Bread, at which the old veil in the Temple was broken in two, so that the priests may bring the Lord into the souls of the people who are filled and satisfied by Him, and thus bring the people into the presence of the Lord. Thus they may live the life that is always directed upwards by Christ’s Ascension, to God and His Kingdom. As St Paul puts it in today’s Epistle (Romans 6.18-23), “You were slaves to sin … but now that you have been set free from sin, and becomes slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end – eternal life.”<br />
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It is no accident that our Divine Liturgy follows the same pattern as in that lonely place not far from the sea of Galilee. We follow the Lord out of the ordinary world into His presence in the next, which is this world as it more truly is, beyond sin and shortcomings, and our own dead end. We see the bread that has been set out in His presence about to be brought in to Him for blessing. We listen out for the words of the secret mystery revealed, that indeed it is His Body and His Blood, as the Holy Spirit that he breathed out for the forgiveness of sins rebounds upon the gifts to translate the whole Church and the whole creation, even without it noticing, into the dimensions of heaven, not just those of the world. In a scarcely visible act, the Bread is lifted up and broken, and the priests share it as in the Temple - except that in the Christian dispensation the veils and doors of the Holy of Holies are opened up, and the Bread is brought out and shared with the all the people who are in that moment brought into the Kingdom.<br />
<br />
The Feeding of the Five Thousand provides us with the Living Bread that comes down from heaven and indeed we eat our spiritual fill and are satisfied. But more than this, we are drawn into living life according to the sequence and pattern of Christ’s life, from new birth, to suffering and bearing through our sin, taking up our Cross and being raised from the dead. This Cross we take up daily to follow Him. But, like His Body, it is our body that is broken to be remade, from the impurity and “natural limitations” that St Paul speaks of today, into His likeness. “The Bread which we break – is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”, says St Paul (I Corinthians 10.16). Indeed; and it costs us not less than everything if the old human is to go, and the new is to be made by the amalgam of what is redeemed from loss and what is given in grace. <br />
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But you and I know that, when we come down from this mountain of the Divine Liturgy, and we leave the Lord to be, in His solitary Majesty in that “desolate place” of the Trinity’s communion once near Galilee, or another time in Gethsemane, or Golgotha, or the cold Tomb, or today when we leave this Church, that we will think to ourselves that we have to return to reality, resigned to thinking of the heaven of which we have had an inkling but which is not yet. It is as though we are hypocrites, living one life in Church and another in the world. The Lord tells us about this, and his prayer is all about keeping earth and heaven together in the constant communion of forgiveness and our daily reliance on the Living Bread. But, back to those “natural limitations” and the world is quick to accuse of our double standard. We rebuke ourselves that our open Christianity, our worship with hearts lifted up, and our belief in following Christ are all, despite our efforts, constantly rumbled as putting on act. But have a better hope. The truth is that, not our worship and our discipleship, but our sin, our shortcomings, our impurity, our spite and our unkindness that is really the unnatural act we are putting on. Our life in the Liturgy, following God round the lake to hang on his word, to be filled and satisfied, to be blessed and changed by forgiveness: that is our true self. That is why we are here and that is why we constantly come to face the Lord and, in His Presence, give up the act of being what we should not be. And when we leave here, we do not return to “limitation” for our in our mind and our heart we are still turning round to face the Altar and the Iconostasis from which our Lord and His Mother look out into us, insisting we say over and over again until it becomes second nature, and then our first, “Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive …”
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-67222859278916394112019-07-14T19:27:00.001+01:002019-08-11T10:57:54.716+01:00Sunday of All Saints of Rus'-Ukraine at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 14 July 2019<br />
For today’s Feast of All Saints of Rus’-Ukraine St Paul exalts the eternal purpose of God (Romans 1.12-18) to identify those whom He will call, those he will make righteous as he conforms them to the image of His Son, and thus those He will fill with glory as all things work together for good by the power of His love. Who shall separate us from this our destiny, asks St Paul?<br />
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These few verses are luminous in the spirituality of what we Christians mean by sanctification, God’s holiness coming on us to make us His saints. We look to the officially canonised saints, and especially the Mother of God, as the evidence that human beings can become saints. This is not because they have become super-humans, but because we see in them that it is possible for mortals to be what the Lord had intended at the time of Creation, before we turn to the ways of deliberate imperfection and our preferred habit of falling short of the glory of God, something that we know as sin. We counteract this, as we pray for forgiveness and the restoration of our lost state, with a million, “Lord have mercy”s in our lifetime. Yet the popular expression in response to human self-indulgence or fallibility is, “You are only human”. But there is nothing “only” about being human. For it was his plan from the outset to clothe himself with the humanity He first given to us, and to take it for himself, so that, God becoming human by means of the indissoluble union that we worship in Christ the Son of God born of Mary, humanity may participate in the very life of God.<br />
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“Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?” demands St Paul. It does not in the end make a difference to the divine plan to take our flesh - and be united with us so that we could be united to Him - that we disobey his fatherly law and erred from His love. As we know from the parable of the Prodigal Son, it intensified His resolve never to part Himself from us, however much we exerted our wills to part ourselves from Him. As in Francis Thompson’s poem The Hound of Heaven, we know that it is the nature of God to pursue those who have fled Him. Thus a famously consoling English hymn sings, “O Love that will not let me go, I give Thee back the life I owe.” And in Psalm 138 it is the same:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
O Lord, You have searched me out and known me … You hem me in behind and before, and lay Your hand upon me. Where shall I then from Your Spirit, or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.”</blockquote>
This was always the plan, and the fact of our sin does not change the intention of God to unite us to Him, since what is added is our forgiveness, our redemption, our forgiveness and our restoration to place us back on our original track of reconciliation.<br />
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It cost the Lord not less than everything, of course; and we recognise the superabundance of his core self-giving, which is the very nature of the Persons of the Trinity, not only in miracles and blessings but in His blood shed and His life poured out upon the Cross. God’s justification for doing this is not only to free us from the power of guilt and sin, but because he was always going to do this - to live like us that we might live like him, letting nothing ever ultimately stand in His way. Thus the Cross is the road to the empty Tomb. Thus the thorough rout into the depths of Death and back is the road to ascending humanity into the glory that God always intended for it. Thus the resurrection into which we were baptised makes the Cross - contrary to worldly appearance - glorious and life-giving. Thus the kingdom of heaven long ago became the nature that abhorred such a vacuum left by the removal of the bars and gates that kept us pent up in death.<br />
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When I went to a Methodist service one day, I remember the expectant moment after the first hymn has gathered all together in dedication to the Lord, and the minister addressed the people with the dramatic words of the Apostles from the Letter to the Hebrews: (12.22-23):<br />
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to myriads of angels in joyful assembly to the congregation of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, You have come to the Judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect.”</blockquote>
Who does he mean? He means us! Think of it: here in our Divine Liturgy, as we move around the altar and come in and out before the presence of the Lord, we are surrounded by the saints at worship in perpetual love; and we see that people no different from ourselves have been made righteous, not through any merit of their own but by the sheer outpouring of goodness that is infinite to overcome our failings and our preference for something else. There is nothing “only” about being human, destined to be filled to overflowing with this grace. And then, as St Paul says to us, “Those He destined to be changed to conform to the image of Christ from the beginning” - that’s you and me – “He next called. Then after He had made them righteous” – not by our merits but from His own reasons to make us no different from His Son – “He made them perfectly the same. He glorified them.”<br />
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John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist spiritual tradition, was inspired by the Eastern fathers of the Church. So in his preaching and the classic Wesleyan hymns he stresses not so much the problem of our sin but the magnificence of Christ’s sinlessness, and his full forgiveness by the power of the Cross to free us from ourselves and the evil that we do. To Wesley, since we are forgiven and free, what holds us back from becoming united with God in Christ even now? And if we can truly find this unity with the Lord, no wonder we can say with St Paul that we have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the joyful assembly of the congregation of those enrolled in heaven. So Wesley follows St Paul to the great conclusion: If Christ by His power as God makes has impressed His own image into us and we are the very coinage of His Love, His buy-out conquerors in His competition with death and sin, what is there next but for Him to perfect what He has begun and make us perfectly holy, even starting here and now. So He works into us His holiness as He works out of us all that is amiss, making us His saints glorious as He is glorious. Saying none of this is to boast. As St Paul reminds us, “God forbid that I should boast save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by Whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” (Galatians 6.14) For to hope for glory and holiness in the midst of this life is to tell the truth of our sins and our need for God’s redemption and restoration.<br />
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In our Eastern Church we rely on those who have gone before us on this very same road. We know that they followed their Lord, passing through adversity and disrepute, scorn and unbelievability. Yet we see the saints as glorified, just as St Paul told the Romans. Their images on the icons show them not in earthly portraits but in their glorified state. These all knew their sin, yet hoped in the holiness that was to come. And at the forefront of them all, the Mother of God, most pure, immaculate and sinless, was made righteous throughout her existence by the pre-ordained purpose of the Lord to come to her above all others, for the taking of our flesh from her so that in the same instant we might be one with Him. So we touch her icon, as she touched the foot of the Cross. So we touch the icons of St Olga, St Vladimir, the monks of the Caves of Kyiv, St Josaphat, Blessed Klement Sheptytsky the Martyr, and so many others, because their hold on life here was the same as Christ’s, and because the prayers of them all are heaven’s hold on us.</div>
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At the end of our Divine Liturgy after Communion we shall give glory to Christ for being our sanctification. So we understand that what is true of the saints in the icons must become true of us - and it has already begun. We are to be the new icons, the new reliability of prayer for those who are to come after us. We are the spirits of righteous people made perfect. We are the congregation to which new people in Christ will come in joyful assembly, and say, “We have come to Mount Zion, to the City of Living God.” There is nothing “only” about being human. All is for His glory, and all His glory is for us to be holy, to be his saints defined by the very quality of the “nothing” that ever can separate us from the love of God in Christ, the Love that will not let us go.</div>
<br />Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-35789773258358058382019-07-14T08:36:00.000+01:002019-10-30T08:37:20.299+00:00Christ among us: Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday of the Year, Roman Catholic Church of the Most Precious Blood, The Borough of Southwark, 21st July 2019The great mystery, hidden for ages, but now delivered to us
is: Christ among us, so that we, His creation, can be brought to completion and
made perfect.<br />
<br />
In St Luke’s Gospel today (Luke 10.38-42), we vividly see
Christ among us, and the effect on Mary and Martha. Their altercation is renowned.
You can sense Mary losing track of time, spellbound by Jesus’ parables of the
Kingdom of heaven – the mustard seed, the sower, the Good Samaritan, the e Prodigal
Son – while Martha is no less absorbed in the pressured preparation of the feast.
Both are intent upon Him, but in different ways. Many see this Gospel passage
as a contrast between a practical Christian discipleship and a contemplative,
spiritual one. After all, does not Our Lord say that Martha, the listening one,
has chosen the better part than her active sister? <br />
<br />
But there is a spiritual side to the practical activity. Even
in hardship, our activity can proceed on a different plane when graces opens it
up to our spiritual dimension. Otherwise something is missing; we are not being
“holistic”. Thus Mary sits unmoved in the presence of the mystery, but she is
being prepared for her form of service. The Lord says to her sister, “It shall
not be taken away from her”; and to Martha it is indeed a mystery. But as St
Paul explains, it is the “mystery hidden for generations … and now revealed to
His saints” (Colossians 1.24-48) - “Christ among you”, Emmanuel (Matthew 1.23).
Thus Martha understands, that her active preparation and serving come to the
same point: to find purpose and meaning when she comes to a stop in His
presence. As St Paul puts it, “This is the wisdom in which we thoroughly train
everyone … to make them all perfect in Christ.” (Colossians 1.28)<br />
<br />
The call to come and be trained for moving into the practice
of being disciples, because of the impression made on us by Christ in Person,
may not be something we feel, or even remember. But it is what is familiar to
us in every encounter we have with God in worship. We say that a sacrament is “an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. The spiritual
within has outward form – and our outward life is formed by the spiritual
reality of Christ’s grace among and within us, to “train everyone … and make
them all perfect” in Him. We understand this as our sacramental life, where
sacraments are not objects, or events that happen to us. Instead they form the
shape and dimension of our existence. It is not that we were baptised and
confirmed in the past, but that we are perpetually the baptised and the confirmed:
existing in the new life of Christ, not some old one. We are not so much
breathing in the Holy Spirit, as if He were “top-ups” from outside, but, like
Christ on His Cross, breathing Him out from where He dwells within us (II Timothy
1.14); and, like Christ raised in His Tomb, breathing Him as He gives our
mortality the over-riding quality of Resurrection (Romans 8.11). Furthermore,
it is not that we just come week by week for the infusion of strengthening grace
from His Body and Blood. It is far more than that. We become the Communion we
receive. St Paul says, “His Body, you are. Each one of you is part of it.” (I
Corinthians 12.27) And he goes on to say, “It is not I who live but Christ Who
lives within me.” (Galatians 2.20).<br />
<br />
In other words, we are not just people who come to Church,
or listen to Christ’s words. We do not merely attend upon Him here, or seek His
blessings, or follow Him in our hearts and our conduct. As Christ our God
became human, so we are humans who are become divine. We live the life of His
Body. We think the thinking of His mind (Philippians 2.5). It is not an earthly
life we live now, but that of the Son with His Father. The old life is gone. St
Paul tells us how it is: “You have been raised… Set your minds on things above,
not on the earth. Now your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians
3.1-4)<br />
<br />
“Hidden with Christ in God” is what St Gregory of Nazianzus
called the rotation around one another of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is
where we, who are made in the image of God, find that Christ is among us. He is
not just among us here; He has also transferred us to be among us where He
lives (cf. John 14.3 & I Peter 2.9) in the divine life of the Trinity. He
is training us to be joined in as part of it, and He is bringing us to our completion,
in living God’s life as He has lived ours.<br />
<br />
This is what Abraham was confronted with at the Oak of Mamre
(Genesis 18.1-10). He saw the three, but beheld one. We are often told that the
Trinity is difficult to understand, that it is a mystery. Of course it is, if
we are approaching it as a theory to grasp, or an idea to try and envisage. But
it is none other than how life is in Christ. For in His Church, God has come
near to us, surrounded us and entered into us, that we might come near to Him
and enter into Him. What Abraham saw beneath the oak, is what was at play at
the Lord’s incarnation. The Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary as He once
covered the firmament in the moment of creation; the Angel was sent with the
Word of the Father; and the Word took flesh in the womb of the Mother of God.
And at the Lord’s baptism, once again: three Persons, one God. The voice of the
Father was heard; the Holy Spirit descended over the Lord like a dove; and
Christ was unveiled as God the Son of God the Father. When He was transfigured,
the Father’s voice was heard; and the Holy Spirit shines the glory of the Lord
through Christ’s form, to reveal that Christ must suffer to fulfil the Law and
the Prophets before His resurrection and ascension. <br />
<br />
At the Lord’s Crucifixion, we heard the thunder just as the
witnesses heard at His Baptism, assuming it was the voice of the Father. Christ
breathed out with the Spirit; and, in the moment of His death, tore the veil of
the Temple that He might mystically enter the Holy of Holies from the Cross and
complete the atonement for our sins, then to emerge not only with forgiveness
and healing salvation, but resurrection and eternal life. Three Persons, One
God. Once again, at the Ascension and Pentecost, the Holy Spirit covers the
mountain top. This time the glory of the Lord takes the form of the cloud, which
we remember from the Passover of the Hebrews out of slavery to the Promised
Land, as the Son ascends to the Father. Then the Son sends into His own People,
His Body in the world, the Spirit from the Father, to ensure His abiding
presence, the “Christ among us”. “Baptise in the Name of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit,” He has told us. For thus, “I am with you always, to the end of
time.” (Matthew 28.19-20)<br />
<br />
How can we know this? When the Lord disappeared from view at
His Ascension, where was He to be found? In us, who have been incorporated into
Him by consuming the Eucharist. At every Mass, we see all these mysteries of “Christ
among us” played out again and again. Christ offers Himself to the Father in
sacrifice; His words are spoken; and in the priest’s hands the Holy Spirit
covers the Lord’s gift of Himself and He makes Himself known to us in the
breaking of Bread. We receive Him; and in the same moment in heaven He receives
us. We are joined up into the rotation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit around
one another, where Christ is among us, training us to perfection.<br />
<br />
This is why we may not sin. This is why self-righteousness,
or special pleading, or self-justification, self-advancement, or shortcomings
or excuses, or deferring our attention upon God until later, have no place.
They may all have a reason here; but there they make no sense. Our confession
of sin is not an apology to a judge. Instead, it is a perpetual turning of the
heart and mind towards God, away from all else and into His life and the
joining in of us all with the Persons in Trinity.<br />
<br />
It is also why we must waste no opportunity for coming into
the presence of “Christ among us” while we are also here in the world. Mary
came to rest in silence as she listened to Jesus and absorbed His words about
the Kingdom. She does not avoid work and service; she is prepared. She goes on
to anoint the Lord’s feet and wipe them with her hair, preparing Him in turn
for death and burial (John 12.8). Martha, too, prepares a house, but also
herself, to receive Jesus. She works and waits on Him. Seemingly she receives
nothing, until she in turn comes to be still before Him and recollects the
mystery that stands among them. It happens in a different order, but it is the
same rotation of the Persons of the Trinity. It is the same surrounding of one
another that we are being joined into, for the day of our ultimate completion,
“hidden with Christ in God”.<br />
<br />
Every time we come to Church, then, it is no occasion for us
to be talking to each other socially. It is a rare moment in this world for us
to be in Absolute Quiet, to be in the presence of “Christ among us”, with all
our attention turned on Him and nothing else - just as all His attention is
turned on is. In numerous French churches, where just as with us there is much
talking before the service, while some people try to make their devotions,
there is a notice which reads, “Si vous parlez ici, o<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ù</span> priez-vous?” – “If you talk
here, where do you pray?” If Christians do not pray, or practise now being in
the presence of God for eternity, why should anyone believe us, or follow the
path we are on? What is the point; how is it different?<br />
<br />
But the difference that has been made to us is that we
desire, with all we love, to be at the heart of the mystery, Christ among us.
So we fall to silence in His presence, to absorb all His speaking to our hearts
and our consciences. We anoint his feet with the tears of returning to our
long-lost Friend. And we enable Him to train us, to perfect us, to put into
effect our service as His disciples all our days, unready as we are, until we
are brought to our completion, joined in for ever with the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. <br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-49168266265316722482019-07-08T18:51:00.000+01:002019-10-29T18:54:15.978+00:00The Rule of Peace: Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Corpus Christ, Maiden Lane<br />
<i>Peace</i> feels like a gentle word. <i>Peace</i> in English
and <i>Friede</i> in German, can mean stillness, the banishment of disturbance,
the relief at the end of hostility. Yet we talk of winning the war but losing
the peace; and so we have an inkling that peace can be uneasy and
unsatisfactory, lacking resolution and perpetuating the injustice that caused
the strife in the first place. We are still living with the consequences of
short-sighted fixes from the First World War onwards. The massacred Armenians
of Turkey and the Mediterranean were never given their homeland. The Christian
Assyrians, inheritors of a 2,500 year-old civilisation, are still at the
oppressive mercy of Islamic Kurds, Arabs and Persians alike. The Greeks and
Turks dispossessed of their ancient foothold in each other’s lands seem
perpetually irreconcilable. The price of peace in Eastern Europe, the Middle
East, India and Africa has been modern boundaries to states that do not unite
people but force some into dispossession and migration, or oppression and
persecution under the yoke of others. Without naming them, all are the results
of poor peace-deals that have led to unending conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So forgive me if I place a question mark
against our instinctive definition of peace.<br />
<br />
<br />
If, however, you turn to Latin you will see that the idea of
peace is not necessarily so gentle, but comes with force and impact. Indeed,
impact comes from the Latin word <i>pax</i>. You can tell that this word is
hard-hitting – <i>pax</i> in Latin, pace in Italian, <i>paz</i> in Spanish, <i>paix</i>
in French, and our own English words derived from Latin – pact, impact,
compact,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>impinge, punch, pacify. They
all come from the idea of fastening things tight together, and thus making a
binding agreement you could never wriggle out of. At the time Our Lord Jesus
was born, St Luke tells us that the Emperor was Augustus and he had brought the
whole world to peace. This “Pax Romana” was a peace imposed by authority and
force of arms, after decades of exhausting and ruinous civil war for control of
Rome and the riches of its expanding empire. St Luke evidently thinks such a
condition in the world was a herald for the coming of the Prince of Peace. To
St Luke it was a force for good, but a force none the less. When he records the
song of the angels that at Christ’s birth there is not only glory to God in the
highest but peace on earth, he means no mere gentle sentiment or merely the
absence of war, or even its abolition. He means a new driving force, to be
constantly at work in the world leaving nothing unchanged.<br />
<br />
Each of today’s readings refers to peace in exactly this
way. Let us see if we may understand their meaning by using a different word
for peace that still comes from the Latin word <i>pax</i>.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The prophet Isaiah (66.10-14) says, “Rejoice
Jerusalem. For thus says the Lord, Now towards her I send flowing with <i>impact</i>
like a river, and like a stream in spate, the glory of the nations.</li>
<li>The Lord says to his 72 disciples, “Whatever
house you go into, let your first words be ‘Impact upon this house’. And if a
man lives there who has already experienced this impact, your own impact will
go and rest on him; if not it will come back to you. Cure those who are sick and
say, the Kingdom is upon you.” (Luke 10.1-12, 17-20) He goes on to discuss with
the disciples the impact that the very mention of His name had had on the
devils who had fled from them.</li>
<li>Lastly, St Paul tells the church at Galatia, a
group much like our own this evening looking to Christ for the answers to life,
that peace comes to all who follow the rule that the true cause of transformation
in the world is the Cross (Galatians 6.14-18). For once we have been struck by
the Cross and the Lord Who was crucified on it, we are now a new creature. We
new creatures have marks all over us: not of what or who we were, but the same
as those on Christ. Peace to St Paul is therefore the most massive impact on
our souls and bodies. It changes how we think. It changes our vision of the
world. It alters the way we speak. It turns the way we behave inside out. Peace
is not the disappearance of difficulty; it is the beginning of an impact taking
its lifelong effect. Its mark we can never erase. It is the mark of the Cross
on our forehead at baptism. It is the wound that became a scar that everyone
ought to be able to recognise as soon as they catch sight of us.</li>
</ul>
<div style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
But there is more. In the Hebrew, Aramaic and Semitic world
in which Christ and the apostles lived, “peace” is a normal, everyday greeting.
We know it as <i>Shalom</i> in Hebrew, <i>Salaam</i> in Arabic, and <i>Sliem</i>
in Maltese. It can mean tranquillity and wellbeing, wholeness and completion,
concord and harmony, just as peace does in English. But it can also mean
something pacified, something atoned for, something submitted to and accepted.
There is a clue in the word Islam, which speaks of achieving peace only when
you have submitted to the one God. For the followers of Jesus Christ, who is
that One God, he reconciles everything in harmony, resolving all things that
were at odds, abolishing our evil that is hostile to God’s good, bringing
wholeness to the world of people, and achieving completion to His work of
creation by one means alone: He makes peace by His Blood shed on the Cross
(Colossians 1.20-22). The greatest peace of all, then, is that river in full
spate of which Isaiah spoke. It is the impact of the Blood of Christ which no
other force can withstand. It is the arrival of the new creation which is the
Kingdom of God, coming with all its force and impact, whenever the Christian
utters the name of Christ and announces the effect of the Cross.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Peace, be still,” cries Christ above the storm and it is
still. How often do we call out with His Name as a curse of casual indignation
or the bare-teeth howl of attack. It is not always easy to be a man of peace,
or a woman of peace, even with that Name on your lips.<br />
<br />
<br />
But in our quieter and most clear-sighted moments, the Name
of Jesus Christ is not only the tranquillity and wholeness for which we long. It
is the lifelong and sustained effect which transforms us, and the whole world
of people among whom we belong, into the Kingdom. We believe in Christ because
of His impact on our every thought, word and act - whether they have originated
from His Kingdom, or whether they are what needs immediate correction so that
we are set back on the course that is true. We believe in Christ, not just
because it is our culture, or a personal belief. We believe in Christ because
this is how the entire created universe has been constructed. It is there we
can see that Christ is its universal King ruling everything, especially
everything hostile that disobeys Him. It is there we can see how everything
fits together to make His Kingdom, which we pray will come on earth as it is in
heaven.<br />
<br />
<br />
When we pray for someone who has died, we say, “May they
rest in peace.” But this peace is no escape from the world or a departure from
its struggles. It is to witness by Christ’s light the impact of His Kingdom
taking its effect in every soul one by one, as they are won for Christ in this
world and the next. Thus in a few moments’ time we will worship the Lamb of God
who takes away the sins of the world to grant us peace. “Peace,” says the Lord,
“not as the world gives,” but the peace that is to see the Father in Christ,
and to know the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send, so that we may always
dwell in Christ. Do not be afraid of this, he says, because these words are
part of the last conversation Jesus has, before He is betrayed and condemned to
shed His Blood for us on the Cross. It is no wonder, then, that the Lord told
us that if we would be His disciples we must take up our cross daily too.
“Peace to all who follow this rule.”Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2473691298350903999.post-34468708353967686942019-05-14T09:57:00.001+01:002019-05-14T09:57:31.483+01:00Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearers: Homily at the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 12th May 2019
<br />
Why are we looking at the visit of the myrrh-bearing women to the Empty Tomb today, a fortnight after events? Their role was noteworthy on Good Friday, when we knew that there was a matter of hours between Jesus’ death and the beginning of the Sabbath for Joseph of Arimathea to procure the Holy Body, wrap it in linen and fragrant spices, and lay it in the Tomb. There is not enough time for the women to anoint him, but, like Joseph who lived in expectation of the Kingdom to come, they follow faithfully beyond the end, witnessing the place where He is laid. On the Sabbath morning when nothing can be done, in the midst of death, all they can do is to cry out, “O Christ as You foretold, show us Your resurrection.”<br /><br />It is twenty-four hours before they can come to anoint the buried Lord properly. Thirty-three years earlier, three wise men had come with gold for a king, frankincense for a God, and myrrh for anointing the one who is to suffer and save us. Likewise on the first Pascha, Mary Magdalen, Salome and Mary the mother of James come as Wise Women to replay the scene in the cave of the Nativity in the cave of the Burial and see it borne out, honouring the one whom they recognise as The Lord, the Divine Son, and the Servant who must suffer. But although they have been told of the Resurrection like the other disciples, and desire with Joseph to see it , they do not expect it when it comes. <br /><br />This is why we have waited for two weeks to hear the account of what confronted them, for it to dawn on us as it needed to dawn on them.<br /><br />The Gospel we have heard today is from the close of St Mark’s Gospel, widely recognised to be the earliest of the Gospel texts to have been written down. Famously, there are several versions of how it ends. In our Church, we have the long ending, which summarises The Lord’s appearance to Mary Magdalen who then goes on to announce the resurrection to the mourning apostles (which is told in fuller detail in St John’s Gospel) , then His appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (which we know from St Luke’s Gospel), and finally to Peter and the other Ten remaining apostles exhorting them to baptise the whole of creation and bring those who believe into the Kingdom of heaven (which we hear in St Matthew’s Gospel). What we have in St Mark’s Gospel is the presentation in the hours and days immediately after the astonishment of the resurrection, a vivid moment in which The Lord is both drawn up into heaven and remains working with the apostles to confirm their words by new miracles - in other words by the Holy Spirit that He sends and gives in power. But only a few verses before, are the words describing the first reaction of the myrrh-bearing women, the last words of St Mark’s Gospel on which all authorities and Churches are agreed:<br /><br />They went out and ran away from the Tomb, trembling with amazement. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.<br /><br />Why should the gospel end there – which of the endings is original – have we lost the true ending? Well, that is not how to look at it. The entire thrust of St Mark’s Gospel, which relies so heavily on the direct witness testimony of St Peter himself, is how those who are drawn to follow Jesus genuinely believe Him and everything He says about the Kingdom of God (some of it very difficult to hear); and, while they accept that it must all be true, because of the casting out of evil forces and the miracles that confirm His words at every significant turn, but that they barely have faith in Him until after the resurrection. Until that confronts them, they fail to grasp what He means about the coming of the end that will lead to the coming of God. It has not sunk in about the God Who will endure through and beyond it all (Mark 13.31), Who will be seized and made to suffer because His prayer in the Temple alone is valid as that of the Divine Son of Man, Whose appearance as the true Messiah is made clear not because He curses a fruitless fig tree, but because the attachment of His body will bless the Cross that will kill Him, yet be the source of inexhaustible forgiveness and salvation. They cannot absorb His principle that only through entering into this dark reality can one age end and another achieve its inauguration. Indeed the disciples believe His words and love His talk of the reign of God, His Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven; but it is not the faith by which their lives are shaped - until they have been through what is to come and come out the other side. <br /><br />So James and John the sons of Zebedee asked Him (Mark 10) if they could sit on either side of Him in the glory He kept talking about in the Kingdom; and He replied that they would have to be baptised with His baptism, and drink the cup that He must drink, and become a slave bound to the service of all - a ransom for the release of all the rest, and not His own, if He would truly be set free. To drive home the point, The Lord straight away goes on to heal a blind man, who has cried out, “I want my sight back”. The message could not be louder: the disciples are sunk in complete mystification; despite everything they have heard, they are dazzled by a fantasy. Instead, it takes someone who is physically blind to perceive that here is a simple question of faith. Can The Lord endure, can He be trusted to save, can He be relied on to turn the impossible inside out? The blind man has foreseen the Cross, because He trusts that Jesus’ mercy can cause His fruitless vision to wither, like the fig tree did, into the clear sight of Christ in His true light. The disciples had seen this on the mount of Transfiguration; they worshipped, but in that moment they only saw the light, without realising where the light was to come from and how it would shine in our side of the firmament of creation. For the One Who is all Glorious Light in Heaven must in this world inevitably take the form of a human body beaten on the head with dead wooden sticks and disfigured on the beams of a tree.<br /><br />Those with faith like the blind man, those who had been along the same path of sorrow yet knew to trust and endure, had an instinct that the light of Transfiguration, the darkness of destruction in one age, and the beginning of the new, were all part of one piece; a seamless robe, so to speak. <br /><br />Mary Magdalen, Salome, and Mary the mother of James had been through it all with Jesus, to the Cross, to the Tomb with Joseph, and now came back to be first witnesses that the Tomb was empty of burial and death. Their belief and trust was transformed by the Cross and the resurrection into the life of faith. It is too great to absorb, so they run away and say nothing out of sheer fright and shock. But they do go to Peter and tell him of the new beginning, back in Galilee where it had all started out. Thus Peter, who denied the Christ he followed, becomes a man of faith in the Risen Lord Who endured the shame to give His life as a ransom for the release of all. Thus the wise women who kept seeing and recognising The Lord anoint not the buried Christ, for he has been raised. Instead, their anointing is realised in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the new age that is the Church, producing for ever more not just believers and followers, but people who have embraced the whole of Christ as He has embraced the whole of them, people of faith whose entire life and mind and soul has turned on this point, that The Lord who was dead is risen.<br /><br />It took the three women hours to deal with this realisation. It took the other disciples and apostles days. It took St Thomas a whole week. We have been given two weeks to absorb that the Son of Man risen from the dead dies no more and what that means. This changes everything about how we view the creation, the purpose of our belief, other people in it who do not follow in this belief, the nature of religion, our relationship with the Person of God the Son, and the entire dimension and trajectory of human nature. Our faith is not some department of our personality, an add-on belief system. Since Christ is not dead but raised in our own flesh, our faith is simply how life is. As the man who wanted his sight back realised, Christ has turned the impossible inside out and the resurrection is now in our nature.<br /> Mark Woodruffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13625552975907817257noreply@blogger.com0