Reflection on St John Chrysostom on the Anniversary of his Death, for the Eastern Christians Prayer Group, Fellowship & Aid to the Christians of the East

READING - Ephesians 4.1-7, 11-13

I, Paul, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in all.

But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The gifts He gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

REFLECTION - by Father Mark Woodruff, Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom

At first sight, St Paul’s address to the new Christians of Ephesus on the western coast of what is now Turkey is about our faith in the Persons of the Holy Trinity and the gifts with which our baptism has equipped us to serve the building up of all humanity into the body of Christ. So indeed it is. But look again, and St Paul is saying that this first comes out of a lived experience of adversity (his imprisonment), sacrifice of self (humility), endurance (patience, and bearing with others) and redemption that take what is amiss and converts it permanently into good (love marked by forgiveness, and God’s calling that makes good on hope), because the body into which we are baptised is that of the Father’s Son nailed to the Cross, which He endured to bring our salvation into effect.

St John is a second St Paul. His eloquence and spiritual imagination flow through abundant writings. 1687 letters and sermons reveal a lively mind, beautifully communicating from his direct encounter with Christ, and faith distilled through adversity for His sake. His preaching gained him the title ‘Chrysostomos’, the Golden Mouth, not only because what he said warmed people’s hearts and convinced their belief and discipleship, but because it rang true coming from John. What Paul said of himself, is true of Chrysostom too: “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” How did this life take shape?

He was born in the third city of the eastern Roman empire, Antioch, in around 345. An outstanding literary, philosophy and rhetoric scholar with a successful public career ahead of him, in 374 he chose instead to live for God in the severely ascetical life of monk. It was not until 386 that he was ordained priest, when his exceptional oratorical skills were revealed in the straightforward practicality, vivid imagery and convincing moral appeal of his sermons, as well as the rich insight of his commentaries on the Scriptures. Having brought about the reconciliation of the sees of Antioch and Alexandria with old Rome after a loss of communion for seven decades, in 397 he was the outstanding candidate to be the new Archbishop of new Rome, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire, Constantinople. The people of Antioch did not wish to lose him, so to evade opposition to his election, he left in secret to be consecrated away from the public eye.

Immediately, the consequence of faithful preaching “in season and out of season” in Constantinople began. While his inspiring illustrations of the Scriptures and his clear preaching, applying Christ and faith to real life, endeared him to the people, he inevitably showed up the lax lifestyles and the moral injustices of the rich and powerful. The empress Eudoxia flattered herself that these barbs were aimed above all at her. A synod was trumped up to depose him for supposed unorthodox teaching. Her husband the emperor Arcadius then exiled him in 403 to Pontus on the Black Sea coast. The people of Constantinople were in uproar. An earthquake frightened Eudoxia to thinking it too was all about her. Promising amendment, she begged the emperor for St John’s recall to appease God. Yet within months she would erect a silver statue of herself outside the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. The Golden-Mouthed John, whose triumphant return made his words more potent than ever, kept speaking vividly about the contrast between the life in Christ shown in the Scriptures and the moral shortcomings of those in power in a supposedly Christian empire, this time singling out Eudoxia. The following June he was banished inland, to the remote edge of the province of Cilicia. There were riots in Constantinople, and the first Hagia Sophia was burned down. St John continued to teach his people by letters. He was also able to correspond with Pope Innocent I in old Rome, who sent a delegation to the emperor to convene a Council to reinstate the patriarch of new Rome. Chrysostom’s powerful enemies, however, convinced Arcadius that the archbishop had insulted the emperor by contacting the pope, and now posed a threat. So in 407 St John was banished to even more remote exile in Pityus, a port on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. 310 guards ensured no one prevented his removal once and for all. The journey was harsh because of the terrain and the elements, some of the soldiers were cruel, and Chrysostom, now about 60, was weak, not having enjoyed strong health since the extreme ascesticism of his time as a hermit. He did not make it beyond Cumana in Pontus, not far from where he had been exiled four years earlier, and he died on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, saying, “Glory be to God in all things”.

Thus, like St Paul, a “prisoner in the Lord,” by the public humiliation and the physical afflictions he endured, he was indeed in his flesh “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”. Eudoxia and Arcadius failed to silence him or put the Church in its place. Instead, his faithful confession of Christ despite persecution, was “Christ’s gift” of an apostle and a teacher, who “built … up the body of Christ” towards our even deeper “knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

In the Orthodox Church St John Chrysostom is revered as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, along with St Basil the Great of Caesarea and St Gregory the Theologian of Nazianzus. In the Latin Church they are venerated as three of the Greek Doctors of the Universal Church, on account of their decisive and compelling teaching on Christ and the Trinity, that remains formative of the faith and worship of the Church in East and West to this day. Indeed the form of the Eucharist most often celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox and the Greek Catholic Churches is the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, believed to have been abbreviated under his influence for the practical purpose of the greater engagement and spiritual enrichment of the people.

His feast in the West is kept on the day before his death on the 13th September, and in the East it is transferred two months later to 13th November. He is the patron of the city of Constantinople where its Christians are today reduced to several thousands, pressed on all sides by an almost entirely Turkish Muslim population and government, yet determined, “with patience” like St Paul’s, to preserve the living roots of Byzantine Christianity for 260 million Orthodox worldwide. (Byzantium is the older name for the city of Constantinople). He is also the patron of Christian educators, lecturers and preachers that “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

PRAYER

Troparion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite

Grace shone forth from your mouth like a fiery beacon and enlightened the universe, bestowing on the world not the treasures of greed, but rather showing us the heights of humility. As you teach us by your words, O John the Golden-Mouthed, our father, intercede with the Word, Christ our God, for the salvation of our souls.

Kontakion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite

From heaven you received divine grace; your lips have taught us all to worship the Triune God, O blessed John Chrysostom. It is fitting that we praise you, for you are a teacher, clarifying all things Divine.

Collect for September 13 from the Roman Missal

O God, strength of those who hope in You, Who willed that the Bishop Saint John Chrysostom should be illustrious by his wonderful eloquence and his experience of suffering: grant us, we pray, that, instructed by his teachings, we may be strengthened by his invincible patience. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

Eyes speak to eyes and heart to heart: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, St Gregory, St Edward & St John Henry, at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, 13th October 2019

It is the outsider that the Lord encounters today. First, St Paul tells us to separate ourselves out from those in whose midst we live: “Go out from them, and you shall be My sons and daughters”. (II Corinthians 6.16-7.1) He says that this purification is the way God brings about the completion of our holiness. Then, in the gospel (Matthew 15.21-28), a Canaanite woman implores Him to relieve her daughter from terrible spiritual affliction – it has depressed her mind and her body. At first the Lord says that salvation comes according to a certain plan, all in due course: first, those who had lost their place in the house of Israel, ahead of anyone else. But the insistence of her faith crying out, which has driven the disciples beyond toleration, tells the story that no one is ultimately outside the scope of salvation.


There is St Paul saying, “go outside from among them”; and here is an outsider forcing her way in. St Paul points out the way for getting rid of the stains and pollution in our personalities, our attitudes, our hearts and our habits, so that it is clear for the Lord to come all the way along it, to fill us with His life and love and presence. This is another way of saying that His holiness becomes our character, difficult and outlandish as that may sound. And then the Gospel tells us that the purification we need does not come from our efforts, or turning our back on what is wrong with life, but by turning toward faith in the One who has come flooding into our midst. You get the impression that the Canaanite woman was not planning this. She just heard that Jesus had arrived, and it is her instinct to believe in Christ and no other that surprises the disciples. As we often find in the Christian life, faith precedes our confession of belief, and grace from God precedes our response to turn to Him.


Notice that when she appeals to Him, He answers not a word. It is the same as in the manger. It is the same as when He is baptised and transfigured. It is the same when He stands before Pilate. It is the same when He is risen from the dead. It is not wording that is being strung together, but the extent of faith that is being tested and explored. Christ is the Word that need not be articulated, because it is His Person and His all-pervading Presence and His sheer significance that cause the cleansing out of what stands in the way of encountering Him - of bringing His holiness in us to completion, of bringing to flower the faith that has been seeded within us.


Look at what will happen in our midst in a few moments. Will Christ who will come among us take one look and say to Himself, “Be separate from them; go out from their midst; be separate from them”? Or will He, like He did at journey’s end on the road to Emmaus, without scarcely a word and by His presence and act, make Himself known to us in the Breaking of Bread? The Lord of hosts and the Man of Sorrows, despised and rejected, acquainted with grief, the outsider of all outsiders, becomes our insider.

This Sunday in London, for the Latin Church of Westminster among whom we live, it is the Feast of St Edward the Confessor, whose crown adorns our monarch, and whose remains lie close to the High Altar of Westminster Abbey, where only a few years ago they were venerated by Pope Benedict XVI. The great king of the Anglo-Saxons remains the patron of good government in our land, and the bulwark against misrule and injustice as he has been for 1000 years. Here in our Church, we remember Gregory, a refugee from pagan Armenia, who learned of Christ for himself when he was raised in Cappadocia, at the heart of Greek Eastern Christian spiritual life and theology, to became the “Illuminator” of his people when he returned to organise his nation’s Church, so that the oldest Christian state in the world remains a proud Christian civilisation in the East and in diaspora across the world to this day.  And in Rome, John Henry Newman, England’s son and its greatest Christian teacher and theologian, will be included in the canon of the saints of the whole Catholic Church, on account of his life’s dedication to the binding nature of the Truth and the Lord whose salvation in the One Church of Christ he embraced.


One of Blessed John Henry’s phrases described his spiritual journey. It was not one of picking up or looking for hidden messages, but a path of realising the plain reality before his eyes. So he spoke of moving “out of shadows and illusions into truth.” He also said that this was because “heart speaks to heart.” If we are honest, we all know what these two sayings mean, since we have all encountered them, in our truer moments, in our souls.  The second phrase is adapted from something St Frances de Sales said in his Treatise on the Love of God (Bk VI):

Speaking to God and hearing God speak in the bottom of the heart … is … a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart. And none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak.

The Canaanite woman knew the silent conversing when she cried. The apostles cried back and told her to stop. But the Lord said not a word. For heart speaks to heart. And when St Paul told us to clear the temple of God that we are of all the clutter of noise to other idolised obsessions and our illusory falsehood, it is to make way for the presence and worship of God. Thus in the purity of lovers in relationship He may see only us as we are, and we may see only Him as He is, for “eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak”. This is why, when we pray to God, we do not hear with our ears; it is how we have an inkling that prayer is not something that we do to God, but what God does to us. It is the path of falling and being in love.

St Edward, St Gregory and Blessed John Henry all in their way knew what we are learning too. There is other light. There is no other faith. There is no other Church, save to be in that one place where He gazes in His heart upon us and we upon Him, where we are not alone, but see ourselves to be in the company of all the rest who have gone their way and found that it leads purely nowhere else than to the Church wherein He makes Himself know in this breaking of Bread. As St Bernard put it:

Jesu, the very thought of Thee/ With sweetness fills my breast;

But sweeter far Thy face to see, And in Thy presence rest.

O Hope of every contrite heart, O Joy of all the meek,

To those who fall, how kind Thou art! How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this/ Nor tongue nor pen can show;

The love of Jesus, what it is/ None but His loved ones know.

And so, with St Paul, the Woman of Canaan and her daughter, with St Gregory, St Edward, St Bernard, and St John Henry Newman, we pray:

Jesus, our only Joy be Thou, As Thou our Prize wilt be;

Jesus, be Thou our Glory now, And through eternity.

Sunday of Forgiveness: Homily at the Divine Liturgy, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, London, 12 March 2016

In the icon before us today, we see a penitent hermit in the desert of Judaea. There is the hill country into which Mary the Mother of God went after the Annunciation to visit St Elizabeth, the mother of St John the Baptist. There is purifying hyssop in the vale, blown in the wind that is the coming of God in Person (Psalm 28.5). There is the desert river whose flow returns, marking the turning round of our captivity, just as the Psalm tells us (Psalm 125. 5). There are the walls of the city of Jerusalem and on a famous outcrop of rock stands the Cross of Calvary. Looking up to the city and the Tree that surpasses all others is the entrance to the remote cave made into a monastery dwelling, where the hermit can fast and pray, and store up his heavenly treasures in secret (Matthew 6.21). We recall, too the Lord’s advice to His disciples to pray not for public attention, but for the loving intimacy of a child with his Father in a private place (Matthew 6.6), a sanctuary for the heart.

It is easy for us to imagine that this kind of life of prayer and returning to God in penitence is for experts and professional Christians, like monks, nuns and priests. But Jesus’ remarks on how, when and where to pray were for all of us. All of us need to find these opportunities, these moments, these words and silences, these places and spaces, where we can stand alone before God, just as He stands facing towards us with a heart and eyes only for us, each one of us, child to Father, Father to child. This is what we are concentrating on today, the last of the Sundays that herald the coming of Great Lent, the Sunday for repentance, for seeking God’s face, for coming back to him, for asking forgiveness.

Now, one of the criticisms that the Eastern Churches have about the Catholic Church - especially the Latin Roman Catholic Church - is its view of sin and repentance, forgiveness and virtue, in terms of law and duty, transgression and guilt, the mechanism of humanity’s Fall from grace and systems to repair it. Where is the Holy Spirit, and the compassion of the love of God when the talk is of breaking the law and observing the rules? Of course they are there in abundance in the western Catholic tradition; Pope Francis’s proclamation of the mercy of God, and St Margaret Mary Alacoque’s ardent devotion to the merciful and sanctifying Sacred Heart of Jesus both attest to this. But let us for a moment follow some thoughts on how the West’s approach looks to the East.

Saint Augustine, a Father to the Churches of both East and West, teaches about our standing in total need of God's grace, for no effort of our own takes us forward without His own. From Augustine's teaching, the Catholic Church takes the view that humanity as a whole fell from God’s grace, that this is part of humanity’s condition and experience, and that thus only by Baptism in Christ and His sacraments can the stain that in our nature that we have inherited be removed. The western Protestant Reformers exaggerated this. While rightly stressing our reliance on God’s grace and redemption for everything, John Calvin in particular went further than St Augustine and spoke of our "total depravity" – the complete corruption of our nature by sin, obscuring the image of God within each person. In response, the Catholic Church stressed how the image of God within every one of us bears the Light that the darkness cannot overwhelm (John 1.5) and remains sovereign beyond the power of sin, to urge our free will to turn to Him and seek His face. So we are not by nature completely wicked at all, but always open to God’s gift of faith and the workings of His grace. The great Catholic celebration of this insight is belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first of the redeemed. It sees the guilt of Adam’s Original Sin as broken by the power of Christ’s redemption to be worked on the Cross. By God’s choice, Mary is the first to receive this grace that makes her entirely free from the ancestral corruption of sin. So her life is entirely open to God’s gift of faith, and thus to the Incarnation of God the Son in her womb.

The Christian East puts it slightly differently. Yes, Adam fell from grace but, then, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23). His disobedience leaves its mark on us, and we have inherited his tendency to sin, and our sins are our own. Yes, Our Lady, the Mother of God, is Immaculate, without sin, and “all-glorious within” (Psalm 44.13), and this is entirely the gift of God. But just as much a part of human individuals’ situation of being mired in our ancestors’ tendency to sin is the inclination toward a new life in the Kingdom of God, to our true existence now, in the heights of Christ’s resurrection.

Think of what we have sung in today’s Troparion (of Sunday, Tone 8):

You came down from on high, O Merciful One, and accepted three days of burial to free us from our sufferings. O Lord, You are our life and our resurrection.

In other words, while the Western Christian tradition appears at first sight to stress law and obedience, the Fall, transgression and how amendment is made by redemption, the East, including the Eastern Catholic Churches, stresses the dimension of the liberation that is achieved by living Christ’s own risen life, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God. What is on high comes down and is buried in the earth, so that what is earthbound rises and becomes lodged in heaven. This is what Our Lord meant when He said in today’s Gospel, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6.21). Of course, the Western Latin Catholic Church believes this too – both East and West recall the apostle’s description of “Our true homeland in heaven” (Philippians 3, Hebrews 11). And the East believes that we are sinners constantly in need of making repentance, and seeking forgiveness.

As we begin Great Lent this Monday, today is the Sunday on which we think of this repentance and forgiveness. But it would be wrong to approach it all in terms of humanity’s total failure, and the futility of trying to follow Christ only to see that our footsteps will surely falter. No wonder the Protestant Reformers felt confronted by the idea of our total wickedness and powerlessness to do anything about it. It would be even worse to think of repentance as an exercise in de-humanising ourselves, making ourselves abject, guilt-ridden and fearful beings before God Who has already looked upon what He has made and pronounced it good. He took flesh from this, and we know Him as Mercy itself. Of course we have no merits of our own and we rely on God’s power alone: our sins, our characters, our behaviour and our attitudes are an affliction that make us weep for shame. We have all experienced those moments when we have turned back to God with tears of both compunction and relief. But this is not because God has brought us to rock bottom – it is because He is raising us up.

If you look at the Desert Father kneeling outside his room where he fasts and prays in secret, storing up treasures in heaven where his heart is, you will see not someone who is dismal and destroyed. Nor will you see someone going through the duties of religion, because otherwise he is lost and hopeless. Instead, you will see a person with arms uplifted, someone whose eyes are set upon the Cross of Christ with hope-filled vision, an open face, a single-minded heart, and not a craven, downcast spirit. What you see is adoration; it is love. It is joy at being forgiven; it is the sheer sense of unworthiness at finding oneself lifted up into the presence of God’s Kingdom and being there and nowhere else - not because of my own efforts, but by the mercy and love of God for the sinner. He is the Judge Who has no use for blame; he is the Justice Who wishes everything to be put back into its true balance, restored to what He deems to be right for each one of us, and in each one of us. Here, then, we who bear His image within us find ourselves - called back to Him, owning our sins and wickedness, pouring out our hearts to Him, finding His forgiveness, freed from the tribulation of this world as a life in the next tis poured into us, to lead already now.

In the Gospels, the word for repentance is not confession or penance, but metanoia. It means “thinking again”, or “changing your mind”. It means not only reviewing our sinful past thoughts, words and deeds, but embracing a completely new perspective on reality, a new outlook on life. Metanoia is also the word we use for the profound bows we make in our Liturgy, such as when we sing the Thrice-Holy Hymn and make the sign of the Cross, saying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”. In other words, repentance is not about our actions out of guilt and transgression, but the power of God in His holiness and on His Cross to forgive the past and make all things new. During our Liturgy we constantly sing, “Lord, have mercy”. This is not about our abasement in shame, unworthy as we are to stand where we do in God’s presence.  It is about our constant, repeated, never to be forgotten and always being recalled “thinking again” - our taking on a new perspective on reality, a fresh outlook on life. It means a life lived in the joy of the mercy of God. It means the adoration of the sinner who places every hope in the Cross. It means never the burden of law and duty, nor the misery of our fall from grace, but always the treasure stored up in heaven where our hearts truly lie.

Thus the repentance in Great Lent upon which we now embark is the life of the Mother of God without any stain: freedom from sin, and the liberation to enter the Kingdom as she is filled in every part with the Holy Spirit (Proverbs 24.4 and Ephesians 3.9). It is the complete pouring out of the heart and soul to God in love, as He pours Himself into us in the entirety of His mercy, the entirety of “His Presence and His very Self” (Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, Praise to the Holiest in the Height).

For reflection:

My God, I love Thee; not because
I hope for heaven thereby,
nor yet because who love Thee not
are lost eternally.

…

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,
should I not love Thee well,
not for the sake of winning heaven,
nor of escaping hell;

not with the hope of gaining aught,
nor seeking a reward;
but as Thyself hast loved me,
O ever loving Lord!

So would I love Thee, dearest Lord,
and in Thy praise will sing,
solely because Thou art my God
and my most loving King.

No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte, St John of Avila, O.C.D., 1500-1569
Translated to Latin, O Deus, ego amo te, by St Francis Xavier, S.J., 1506-1552
Translated to English, in the Lyra Catholica (1849) by Edward Caswall, Cong. Orat., 1814-1878

Homily for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London: The Plight of the Church in Iraq

Sunday of Christ Walking on the Water , Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, 10^th August 2014, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London

Troparion of the Resurrection, Tone 8. You came down from on high, O Merciful One, and accepted three days of burial to free us from our sufferings.  O Lord, our life and our resurrection, glory be to You.

1 Corinthians 3:9-17              Matthew 14:22-34

It is difficult at the present time to think of the Church as being built, when daily news arrives of our ancient sanctuaries being destroyed, either as collateral damage in war, or as a direct act of intended destruction on the part of violent, jealous men, who hide behind religious zeal their true identity as bank robbers, as perverts that rape girls and disabled old ladies, and as psychopathic serial killers that are even now murdering our brothers and sisters in the Household of Faith, or condemning them to the searing heat of the desert without food, water or shelter. It looks like the Church is being destroyed in the lands where it first took root, Iraq - the cradle of civilisation, where different peoples (such as the  Assyrians,  Arabs, Turkics and Persians) and different faiths (such as Sunni and Shia Islam, Zoroastrianism, Assyrian and Syriac Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox) have lived in harmony side by side for centuries.

 

But somehow and somewhere in all this we are to see the work of the Lord who is faithful to his people and to all humanity, even when we are tested, as St Paul tells us, in the fire. The apostle’s words recalls to us the Lord’s own parable of the house built upon sand and the house built upon the rock.  The point he is making is not about the relative strength of faith, but the strength of the grace that we rely on, as opposed to our own efforts. It almost goes without saying that the House of the Lord which is the Church of God in Iraq, led so nobly by the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon, Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, is a house whose foundations are the gold and silver and precious stones that really have been tried in the fire. The buildings and everything they have may have been taken away - as St Paul says “the builder will suffer loss”; and did not our Lord say “from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away”? – but the grace of God has been shown to be the foundation not just of an ethnic or religious identity, but of the house of their faith.

Compare this with the story of St Peter, bidden by Christ to walk on nothing more than water to meet him. Peter did not believe that it was possible, started out, thought again and began to sink. It was the Lord’s hand, not his own efforts and will power, that caught him.  Jesus questions the strength of Peter’s belief in him, yet at the same time makes it clear that everything that can be achieved and withstood depends not on our strengths but on the hand of God.

Paul speaks of testing construction handiwork by fire; the construction of Peter’s foundations in faith is flooded out by water. But it is the same story. In time, with the help and grace of the Holy Spirit, he rebuilt and became the Rock on which Christ was able to build his Church. Likewise the Christians of the old Roman Empire were able to face the onslaught, knowing what was to be demanded of them, because they saw that Christ is the centre and summit of all existence and of human society, whatever the appearances. Thus Paul clearly recognised the coming of a moment when God’s temple, where the Spirit dwells in Christ’s own people, would be destroyed.

I cannot presume to know what our brothers and sisters in Iraq are going through, having lost not only everything they have but, for the second time in a century for some of them, being driven out of their historic lands and holy places. I cannot begin to enter into their grief, bitterness, desperation and mourning: now is not the time for those in the comfort of Britain to exhort them to fortitude, courage and joy in adversity. But we and they can recognise in their suffering and destruction the Lord who trod this path before and who, as he passed through death, spoke somehow of forgiveness, redemption and the promise of paradise.

Because of this, we who are Christians pin all our hopes on the resurrection, knowing that it is not some far off after-life, or a dream to console us in our pain and misery. The resurrection of Christ back then, is the same as the coming of the Kingdom of God now. For as we sing today, “You came down from on high, O merciful One, and accepted three days of burial to free us from our sufferings.”

St Paul said that if anyone destroys God’s temple, the holy place which we Christians are, then God will destroy that person. So let our prayer today on behalf of all our suffering brothers and sisters in the temple of God, the House of Faith in which we all dwell in the Spirit, be that those who hate the Church and who hate the humanity made in the image of God’s Christ himself, may be brought not to the destruction of their lives but of all that is wrong in them. Let them now be put to the test – whether it be water or fire – so that all that is evil and vain, and resentful and unforgiving and merciless, may melt away and the underlying structure of God’s handiwork be revealed – a frame on which there can be more grace, more forgiveness, and more humanity. Let them be converted to the Lord and live.

And as for us, in this Cathedral of the Holy Family, under the patronage of St Joseph who provided a home for Our Lord and the Mother of God, which began as a Church for inspiring and consoling those in exile, and which now stands as a sign for nations and societies in whom the Temple of the Lord is being rebuilt, let us remember that we have nothing to stand on unless it is the Lord that reaches out his hand to hold us up. We stand because he has stood up having been beaten down by death. Now risen from the dead, he leaves nothing behind that calls out to him, “Lord save me.” For, seeing us, who call upon God’s help to be the human beings that God means us all to be – people of love, and grace, forgiveness and hope –the world recognises Christ and turns to him as Lord. So, hearing our words and our songs ringing true, could it be that those who do not know him and even now oppose him and would bring down his Kingship - could it be that they too - would sing:

O Lord, our life and our resurrection, glory be to You?

In hope of this, let us say with Patriarch Louis Raphael the prayer he has just written and issued to all the world that the cries of the Christians in Iraq will be our own in complete solidarity:

Lord, the plight of our country is deep
and the suffering of Christians is severe and frightening.

Therefore, we ask you, Lord,
to spare our lives, and to grant us patience,
and courage to continue our witness of Christian values
with trust and hope.

Lord, peace is the foundation of life;
Grant us the peace and stability that will enable us
to live with each other without fear and anxiety,
and with dignity and joy.

Glory be to You forever.

The Universal Prayer of St Peter Canisius

A short essay on this vernacular sixteenth century re-emergent form of the Prayer of the Faithful within the classic Latin Roman rite, popular for 450 years in the German-speaking Catholic Church, with a translation and three suggested workings for use in either the Ordinary or Extraordinary Forms of Mass.

Download the article here, to read the background and liturgical versions. Here is the translated prayer itself, with the groupings of intentions as St Peter Canisius intended, allowing for a response from the faithful after each, and with the introductory invocation and the concluding prayer to be said by the celebrant priest:

The Universal Prayer of Saint Peter Canisius

Almighty, eternal God, Lord, heavenly Father, look with Your eyes of undeserved compassion on our sorrow, misery and need.

Have mercy on all the Christian faithful, for whom Your only-begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, was content to give Himself into the hand of sinners and shed His precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

For the sake of the Lord Jesus, most gracious Father, avert our well-deserved punishments, present danger and future threats, harm and outrage, arms and warfare, dearth and misfortune, sickness and sorrowful, miserable times.

Enlighten and strengthen in all goodness our spiritual leaders and earthly rulers, that they may do everything to further Your honour as God, our salvation, the common peace, and the welfare of all Your people.

Grant us, O God of peace, a true unity in faith, free of all division and separation. Convert our hearts to true repentance and amendment of life. Kindle in us the fire of Your love; give us hunger and zeal for justice in all things, so that we, as obedient children through life unto death, may be pleasing to You and find favour in Your sight.

We also pray, O God, as You willed that we should pray, for our friends and enemies, for the healthy and the sick, for all Christians in sadness and distress, for the living and the dead. 

To You, O Lord, be entrusted whatever we do, whatever our path, our work and our dealings, our living and dying. Let us delight in Your grace here in this world, and attain the next with all Your chosen ones, to praise, honour and extol You in unending joy and blessedness.

Grant us this, O Lord, heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.