The Great Martyr: Sermon on Low Sunday and the Feast of St George, Parish Church of St George, Hanover Square, London W1, 24th April 2022

Christ is risen!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 more 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.

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.”

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.

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.

St George the Great Martyr, pray for us. Glory to England. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory for ever. Christ is risen.

Glory 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

 + Glory to Jesus Christ!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

 

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.

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.

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.”

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”.

To 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

It is claimed that the word Liturgy means the work (ergon) of the laos, 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.  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:  

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. Romans 12.1

 

By reasonable worship, St Paul means an entire self-offering within the Reason of God: in other words, the Logos, 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 rationabilis, reasonable, as in St Paul’s word logike about our worship of complete self-oblation within the life of Christ the Word, and by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.

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 (Luke 17.21). Did not St Paul also conclude, “It is not I who live, but Christ Who lives within me”? (Galatians 2.20) 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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 (Hebrews 13.14), 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.” (Revelation 11.15)

 

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.

 

Having received, as we say, “the divine, holy, immortal,  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.  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.”

 

On this footing, at one with Christ, standing in His resurrection and ascension,  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”.

Homily 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

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.

 

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?

 

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 Sacred Head sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn

O kingly Head, surrounded with mocking crown of thorn… 

See me, for whom Thou diest; hide not so far Thy grace.

Show me, O Love most highest, the brightness of Thy face.

 

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. (Romans 14.8)

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 (Hebrews 12.2), for whom once again he will be the Forerunner.

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 (John 3.16; John 15.13; Romans 5.8). As the sole “head of the church,” Christ “loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5.23, 25).

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”? (Matthew 20.28). 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).

The wonderful hymn by Charles Wesley (And can it be) expresses it perfectly:

No condemnation now I dread,

Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!

Alive in Him, my living Head,

And clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach the eternal throne,

And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

 

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. Thus Charles Wesley has it again (Love divine, all loves excelling):

Finish, then, thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.

Let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee.

Changed from glory into glory, till in heav’n we take our place,

till we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.

 

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.” (The head that once was crowned with thorns, Thomas Kelly.)

The Waters of Galilee: Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B), Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden

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.

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.”

 

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.

 

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)

 

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).

 

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.

 

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)

 

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)

Still we wait: Homily for the Nativity of Our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ, Roman Catholic Church of Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, London, Christmas Day 2020

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.

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.

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.

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.  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.

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.  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.

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.

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.

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.

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  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.

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.  Peace, good will to us all, and glory to God in highest heaven.

Putting 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, W1

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

His 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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here I am: Homily for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Corpus Christi Church, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden: 19 January 2020

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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.

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.

Wider 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

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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:

How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given;

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin

Where meek souls will receive him still

The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray.

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell.

O come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel.

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.

Note: Hymns for Sunday in the First Tone

Troparion of the Resurrection

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."

Kontakion of the Resurrection

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.”

Theotokion

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!