24th Sunday, Cycle B.

As we go through the Gospel, things get very real. The Gospel is not a story but is given to us so as to bring us into it, so as to change us.

Jesus suffers and speaks of our share in that. What is our suffering? Whatever it takes for us to accept Jesus’ act of love, so that we are animated by Him (rather than by fallen human nature.) This 'suffering' saves!

Our suffering takes the form, not of crucifixion, but of humiliation, of rejecting our pride, of changing our life, of going against the culture.

But if we really embrace Jesus' act of love, nothing can get in our way.

Note in the Gospel that when Peter answers Jesus' question, he gives the right answer. But he has not learned yet what that means for him. This is why Jesus tells him not to tell anyone about him; Peter is not yet ready to give an authentic witness or understanding. Jesus knows that Peter still has to change - to be transformed by grace. In grace he will give an authentic witness.

The Eucharistic Congress in Liverpool.

Last week I took part in the Eucharistic Congress in Liverpool. Together with parishioners from St Ignatius' we were part of the Congress on Saturday in the Echo Arena.
It was a superb day with wonderful interventions from Bishop Barron, Youth 2000, The Rise Theatre Group, Mary's Meals and others. The whole day took place in "the shadow of the monstrance" which was unveiled at the end for a period of adoration. Eight to nine thousand people with a tangible desire to be in the presence of our Eucharistic Lord prayed Vespers together, with extended silences in which so much love was exchanged.
The interventions which made up the bulk of the day came from the "grass roots" and from the Movements. The day was about inspiring us, rather than equipping us. It expressed a deep desire from the participants for a perfomative, life-changing engagement with the Lord, rather than a day of information.
The Church of the National Eucharistic Congress is the Church that we long to see in all our parishes.
I took the above photo during Bishop Barron's first talk on the Mass, and the below photo during the lunch break - this photo shows the venue, and how it looked when it became for that day, a place of grace.

Images from Rosary on the Coast.

On 29th April this year we took part in the tremendous initiative "Rosary on the Coast". I did upload some images onto the lead website at the time, but they didn't seem to appear on the public domain. So, I place some of these images here below. 
Our parish group from St Ignatius', Ossett, were joined by the Friars of the Renewal from Bradford. There were about 35 people in the group, and we established ourselves just a few hundred meters east of the Humber Bridge on the north bank on the Humber, close to Hull. 

After the time of prayer for the country we went into Hull to visit the Lord in the wonderful church of St Charles Borromeo. It was a remarkable afternoon.

23rd Sunday, Cycle B.

I think of Handel’s Messiah and the passage of Haggai 2:6 “And he will shake the heavens and the earth … “ The vengeance of God is the healing of human woundedness, while he himself takes on the price of the healing; Christ heals and becomes a penitent. Responding to Christ means moving from alienation to friendship. A transfer of power from ourselves to Him. He has real power. What does real conversion look like today? Friendship with Christ.

This Sunday I will speak about the Eucharistic Congress in Liverpool which I will be taking part in.

Dawson, Part IV.

A summary of our considerations so far.

Ancient societies built their lives around the powers of nature. Nature was united with the spiritual.

In Classical times, nature was rejected in favour of a transcendent ordering principle.

With the advent of the Church, the transcendent is revealed as a personal God, indeed a Trinity of Persons, whose life is directed to the restoration of human life and activity, and in which human progress is suddenly expressed.

Because of the Incarnation, human beings are the place where the spiritual and the material are united. A new intellectual synthesis, during the Middles Ages, brought together the value of humanity and the natural order, and gave rise to science and law.

But as the European mind began to exploit the riches of the new scientific knowledge, as well as worldly power, it turned away from this flowering of mind and spirit enlightened by the Gospel, and sought a purely rational or empirical ideal of knowledge.

And so in the late Middle Ages there was a reaction against the idealism of Christian culture; nominalism grew and, as a result, a secular understanding of the world came into being – one in which God and life are separated.

In art, realism took the place of symbolism. In politics, the unity of Christendom was broken up by the growing forces of nationalism and secular culture; there was an emancipation from ecclesiastical tutelage, in favour of a new and self-made independent culture.

22nd Sunday, Cycle B.

Formation of the Christian subject today, cannot mean more moralism .

The Pharisees draw Christ's attention to the washing of pots. His attention however is on a far great problem. Sin has created a crisis in our hearts, and Christ promises the redemption of the heart.

In the Fall the human heart became self-focussed – for self-protection. Human beings can easily swop the things of life, the customs that we make and acquire, for the Word of God, and that these things then become our focus – what our hearts make for themselves. Christ in this segment of the Gospel is very strong in what he says about the human heart – that left to itself the human heart accuses and condemns itself. But it is this heart that he calls to; He wants to be alive in our hearts. So, in the formation of the Christian subject today, that process begins not with another set of rules or formulas, but with the opening of the heart by the announcement of the Gospel, and by an encounter with Christ. This is the way to the redemption of the heart and the building up of the person. I will speak about the basic vision and plan we now have in the parish, building upon Fr James Mallon's Divine Renovation, for the formation of the Christian subject.

Dawson, Part IIIb.

Christianity and the Rise of Western Civilisation, Part 2.

The Western, world through the lens of the Gospel, found its source not in cosmic principle, nor in mythological figure, but in the historical person of Jesus Christ.

Out of the encounter with him, the order of the Universe wasn’t an unchanging cycle, nor a fatal law of necessity, but a divine drama whose successive acts were the Creation and the Fall, and the Redemption – the glorious restoration.

The Church’s first fight was with Gnosticism, which sought to combine belief in spiritual redemption with the illusory nature of earthly change. No, says the Church, there is historical development!

The expansion of the Church in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries was not the natural culmination of the religious evolution of the ancient world, but a violent interruption of that process.

In doing so a real humanism arose within the culture – man is the centre and crown of the created universe. He is not subject to a cyclical process, but is the channel through which the whole of creation is united with God.

Created nature passes through some process of evolution and, as long as it acts in accordance with nature, this process will be progressive. But if it acts against nature, this process will be degenerative. In fact, the latter case is what has historically taken place – in the Fall man acted against his nature and the process of growth towards human fullness was abruptly terminated and set on a ‘fallen’ course. In response to this the Divine Nature united itself with mankind in a second creation, which restored and further developed humanity’s potential.

There was a sharp divide between what took place in the East and in the West. In the East, the nostalgia for the infinite turned people away from the world of experience towards seeking an eternal vision of transcendent Being.

In the West, Christianity became a dynamic and social force. A new civilisation arose in Europe based upon an ecclesiastical unity, not upon a political one. The Church was the universal society and the State was the weaker partner.

In the East, the State was the universal society within which was the Church.

In the West there was no common material culture; the formative element of civilization was the spiritual. The centre of Europe was a spiritual citizenship. Hence, medieval Europe we see the contrast between cruelty and charity, between beauty and squalor. But what arose from this this spiritual focus was a democratic spirit, in which voluntary associations and Guilds arose. This movement of communal activity transformed social life in the Middle Ages.

What didn’t arise in Europe was a theocratic Church-State, and what prevented this from arising was the spiritual revival in the 12^th century which focused on the humanity of Christ. The Incarnation spoke of the ennoblement of the person and his or her dignity. Instead of the Byzantine majesty of the Christ Pantocrator, the West placed the crucified Christ at the centre. Christ in his human weakness spoke of the personal relationship which he seeks with each of us, rather than a more theological piety. Medieval westerners sought to relive the life of Christ in daily life; faith and life became united.

In so doing the mission of that era of evangelization reached its zenith – faith and life together. It was Paul VI, who in 1975, first announced the new evangelization, recognizing the signs today that speak of faith and life having come apart. There is very much a real nostalgia in the Church in the West for that form of Christianity that is passing – faith and life united. But although the new evangelization began because these two have come apart, I think that a new and different form of Christianity will arise because of the new evangelization. I think that precisely because new ‘Christian subjects’ are going to be formed from ‘modern’ people, people whose personality and culture have the Enlightenment written all over them. Perhaps a greater conversion will come in the era of the new evangelization, a conversion which comes out of the depths of despair.