Integration, not compartmentalisation, is the key to Christian life.

A common feature of modern western Christianity, or English Christianity at least, is the tendency for Christian people to compartmentalise their faith.  What do I mean?  I mean the boxing off of that faith into an hour on Sunday mornings, into a slot which may or may not be inextricably related to the rest of life.

You may wonder what’s wrong with that.  Isn’t it better than not bothering at all?  Well, of course it is; and yet it’s a severe impoverishment of how the faith should be lived.

The Christian faith is unique is that it is an ‘incarnational’ faith.  What is meant by that is that, in the person of Christ, God entered this world, his created order, as one of us.  Our veneration of Our Lady reminds us of this truth.  God deigned to be born of a woman and live a proper human life; he was brought up in a human family and, in his human nature, endured a fully human death.  In the Incarnation, God identified with us; he didn’t simply look like us or appear to be like us; rather, he shared our life in all its facets, except our sinfulness whose hold over us he came to break. 

When we think of this, it seems strange that people should think it reasonable to box things off as we tend to do.  The challenge for us is to allow our faith conviction to permeate and affect every aspect of our life and being, precisely because God is there, everywhere, and in every situation of our lives through the mystery of the Incarnation.

In this part of the world, it’s common for Christian people to absent themselves from the altar at significant moments in their lives.  If I had a quid for every time someone told me that they won’t be at Mass (on a Sunday or weekday) because (for example) it’s their birthday (or someone else’s), a wedding anniversary, some other celebration, or because someone has died or it’s the anniversary of a death, I could book a very nice weekend away somewhere.  If we took the Incarnation seriously, and didn’t compartmentalise our faith, each of these instances would provide an extra motivation for being at the altar.  Whether it is ‘good news’ life events or times of upset and difficulty, God is there with us in Christ and we witness to this truth best by immersing ourselves in the practice of our faith.  If our faith isn’t a way of life, then it is nothing.

Another example of where many people could revise their approach to the practice of the faith is when family or friends visit.  Again, I have lost count of the times people have said, over the years, that they cannot be in church because they have visitors and there is too much to do.  I can never understand why visitors cannot be told that they are very welcome, but that we have a duty on Sunday to worship.  That’s what I have to say to visitors (yes, I have family and friends, too – people often speak to me as if I don’t!).  What a wonderful way to witness to the faith; and what an opportunity is lost when we yield to the easy option.  Then people wonder why the practice of the faith is on the wane and numbers of people in the churches are down.  It is so easy for us to undermine our own faith whilst at the same time regretting why more people don’t ‘come to church’.

Ours is the faith of the Incarnation, and there is not a single aspect of life where we cannot witness to it, quietly and effectively.

Leisure and Work

So, we again enter the month of August, that pleasant summer lull we all look forward to since it provides a real sense of natural rhythm in the course of the year.  The schools are off and many families find the time to go away on holiday.  The roads are quieter, at least in the mornings and late afternoons.  There is a sense in us that we actually need this period of comparative down-time; it seems right and natural.

There is a natural rhythm built into every week.  We have the five working days and then the weekend; and for those who have to work at weekends, there are days off elsewhere. We know we can’t and mustn’t work every single day.  As Christians, we acknowledge Sunday as a particular day of rest, instituted by our Creator and insisted upon by Holy Mother Church.  We are called to dedicate Sunday not to work (if we’re able) but to the worship of God and our own spiritual, mental and physical renewal.  It is to be a day, literally, of re-creation for ourselves.  We must not neglect it.  On top of all this, every twenty-four hour period has its own rhythm, when we must be both active and find restful sleep.

The problem is that, in our culture, we have forgotten to honour the principle of leisure for its own sake.  We justify leisure in terms of work.  So, we speak of going on holiday in order to ‘re-charge our batteries’, with the implication that we shall then return better able to work efficiently and well.  Holidays should, of course, enable us to work better; but surely leisure has more to it than that?

The question raised is this: do we live to work, or work to live?  I remember an article written by the Bristol University academic, Fernando Cervantes, back in 2002 (I can’t find it now), in which he argued that ‘the best ideas are in the bath’; he said that we have ‘lost the art’ of leisure.  His argument was that leisure time is more than simply a break from work, justifiable only by means of giving us the rest we need so that we can come back and work better; he argued that leisure time provides space for true creativity.  Endless frantic work gets certain kinds of jobs done, but stifles creativity because there is no time to think or use our imagination.  So easily, we lapse into a shallow utilitarianism which undervalues anything which is of no apparent and immediate use. 

There are several and various problems with this, once it becomes embedded in a nation’s culture, as it has in ours.  Working people are pressed increasingly hard by employers concerned only with the bottom line; it’s certainly arguable that our employment practices are going backwards in such a way that more and more people appear to be oppressed in their workplaces by rapacious employers.  The so-called humanities subjects (such as history and geography) and the arts (music, art and drama) are squeezed in school timetables and in our universities (where many theology, philosophy, music and classics departments have been closed down), in favour of more ‘useful’ subjects, (such as maths, information technology, science and, of course business studies and ‘management’).  This is having a de-humanising effect upon our society already, as our cultural life becomes more impoverished.  There is also an increasing sense that people do not know how to be quiet, or to behave appropriately in different contexts.  People often feel guilty about ‘doing nothing’ and about being still even when they are tired out.

In his article, Cervantes argues that leisure, far from being justified by reference to work, is actually our natural state.  He says that most of the really valuable things in life come to us without any effort on our part: our very existence and life, the love of other people and of God himself.  Yes, certain kinds of work can help us to flourish, but much of the work that people have to do has a negative effect on their flourishing.  This suggests that, as a matter of principle, we do not live in order to work; we work in order to live.

Our sacred rest, whether we are talking of Sunday or our annual period of holiday, is justified, therefore, without reference to work.  It is justified in itself.  It is important for our spiritual, physical and mental well-being.  It is the state of being which is our God-given default.  It is summed up by our Lord himself in the Gospel:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath (Mark 2: 27-28)

Why are priests called 'Father'?

I was in a local pub recently – yes, really – and someone asked me why some parishes call their priests ‘Father’ whereas it’s not the custom everywhere.  I explained it to him and he was very happy with the explanation.  The conversation, like other conversations I’ve had with people outside the worshipping community about other things, made me wonder about the extent to which people within the worshipping community know about our practices and customs.

One might trace the origins of this particular custom right back to the holy scriptures.  In his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4: 14-17), St Paul refers to himself as the ‘father’ of the believers; but, being too distant both in time and context, this can’t really be used as a basis for contemporary usage.  Prior to the Reformation, it was customary to call priests ‘Sir’ (meaning ‘senior’ or ‘elder’) followed by the priest’s Christian name (see, for example, The Voices of Morebath by Eamon Duffy, 2001, a book which traces the history of the church in one English parish through the turbulent events of the sixteenth century).  In some countries, notably Italy, the common title was ‘Dom’, from the Latin Dominus or ‘Master’; those who like champagne are probably familiar with ‘Dom Perignon’, bearing as it does the name of bubbly’s Benedictine inventor!

Prior to the 1800s, the title ‘Father’ was largely reserved to priests who belonged to religious orders, where it was sometimes rendered in its French form Pere or Italian Padre, the latter in general use in the British armed forces today.  It was only during the nineteenth century that the Roman Catholic Church in England adopted ‘Father’ as its preferred form of address for priests generally; and then it became gradually adopted by some parishes and institutions within the Church of England, too, as we see from accounts of church life in the decades following the beginning of the Oxford Movement in 1833.

The title ‘Father’ can, of course, be used in conjunction with the priest’s Christian name or surname.  The latter is more formal and it was the custom in the parish in which I served after my ordination in Birmingham.  It’s probably more common nowadays used in conjunction with the priest’s Christian name, which I personally prefer, at least among people who are familiar to me.

But to return to the question posed by my hostelry inquisitor: why do we have this custom?  There are two quite valuable factors in its favour.  Firstly, it is a title which can and should be used by everyone – young and old.  It has an objectivity about it which ensures that there is no ‘pecking order’ in a parish community based on age, social class or any other kind of status among the laity.  Secondly, it reminds the priest of his responsibilities in a way that is analogous to the father of a family; just as a father has no favourites among his children (or shouldn’t have), so the bit of distance that the title allows the priest to have from any and every individual ensures that he is not more distant from anyone, and that he can have an equal relationship with all his parishioners.  In parishes where the priest is not called ‘Father’, it’s common for different people to have a different kind of access to their priest – so, you’ll often find that the children address the priest differently from the way in which the adults do; which is undesirable in a parish community as it introduces distinctions based on status, thus undermining the common baptismal status which makes Christian people equals.

The title ‘Father’ has never conveyed to me a sense of superiority, as some people might argue that it does.  It reminds me of my responsibilities, not of my rights.  It helps me to bring to mind some words of St Peter, addressed to the elders of the fledgling Church: ‘Be the shepherds of the flock of God that is entrusted to you; watch over it…Never be a dictator over any group that is put in your charge, but be an example that the whole flock can follow (1 Peter 5: 1b-3).

CHRIST CHURCH CARNFORTH Lancaster Road (A6)
LA5 9LD

ORGAN RECITAL Sunday 23rd June @ 3.00pm

Do come and support Lancaster Priory's talented organ scholar, Javier Moral Agaso.

Javier is entering two international organ competitions, and this gives him a trial run! 

Free parking, free admission, voluntary collection.

An Easter Message

It was the sheer enthusiasm and commitment of the earliest Christians that drew people to join them in such large numbers.  We see this during Eastertide especially clearly, because we read through the Acts of the Apostles at Mass on the Sundays and weekdays of this most special season.  People were drawn by the preaching and proclamation of the apostles – those same apostles who had hidden themselves away fearful that they, too, might be made to suffer for their faith in Christ; those same apostles who must have felt shattered and let down at the ultimate failure of Jesus’ earthly life, as they would no doubt have seen it at the time of his crucifixion.  St Luke tells us, in the Acts, that on the strength of Peter’s preaching to the Jews ‘on the day of Pentecost’ that they ‘must repent’ and ‘be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of [their]sins’  on ‘that very day, about three thousand were added to their number’ (Acts chapter 2, read at Mass on Tuesday of the Easter Octave).

I sometimes wonder what would be the effect if we and Christians more generally could display this kind of boldness and confidence today.  I wonder whether the reason why the Church in the West is declining numerically is because we do not actually believe firmly and fervently enough.  What is our attitude to Jesus and his saving work?  Do we believe that he is the incarnate Son of God who, having been put to death, was raised bodily to new and eternal life for the forgiveness of sins and so as to be able to open up to us the fullness of life?  Do we really believe this?

If you stop and think about the central Gospel claims, which I’ve just set out, it’s hard to see how we can be lukewarm or indifferent to them.  There is no halfway house.  Either these claims are true, or they are a grotesque delusion which have led many people down the ages and across the world to what could only be described as pointless deaths.  Here is what the well-known Christian writer, C.S Lewis wrote on this theme, back in 1952:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic…or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to (Mere Christianity).

With all good wishes and prayers for a joyful fifty days of Eastertide. 

A Message for Holy Week and Easter

We are about to celebrate the very heart of our faith as we reach Holy Week and Easter.  The liturgies of Holy Week make present the events that redeemed us and which make it possible for us to lay hold of the gift of everlasting life.  We follow the events through as companions of Christ.  

Sometimes, we might wonder why Jesus had to suffer and die; and, indeed, God could of course have chosen to redeem us by some other means.  But the reason Jesus suffered and died is because that is what people did to him.  He accepted upon himself all that the world could possibly do to him and, in doing so, showed us that love is stronger than death and will always triumph over it.  But, yes, God could have redeemed us without all that.  He could, presumably, have forgiven us for our own sins and the sins of the world and simply bestowed eternal life upon us automatically.  But that would have rendered us powerless; we would have been reduced to a kind of robotic status; and that would have offended against the genuine free will with which God had endowed us in the first place. It would have rendered us incapable of making a loving response to him.

The medieval theologians made a helpful distinction between God’s absolute power (potentia absoluta), the power he could exercise; and his ordered power (potentia ordinata), the power he chooses to exercise.  This distinction helps us to see that, whilst God could have redeemed us any way he chose, he chose to do so by freely limiting the power he exercises.  This latter way was essential if our freedom to act is to be honoured.  Whilst this means that bad things can happen in the world, our freedom is safeguarded and we can therefore enter (freely) into a loving relationship with him and which has salvation as its proper end.

So, God’s exercise of his potentia ordinata meant that Christ might suffer the Passion and that God would choose to redeem us through the infinitely more difficult and costly way of love, inviting (not forcing) people of every time and place to respond to Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection freely and taking hold of the gift he offers.

We might say, then, that a world in which bad things can and do happen is the best of all possible worlds; since the alternative is a world in which we have no freedom at all.  And, of course, bad things do happen.  Just last month, 49 people lost their lives in a terror attack in New Zealand.  Many more people have been left bereaved or injured.  The attacker was a far-right, Hitler-admiring extremist who hated Muslims and anyone whom he perceived to be somehow ‘other’ than himself.  His psychological make-up is very similar to that of the Islamic extremists we hear about.  What they have in common is a sense that they are absolutely right, and that there is no doubt whatsoever as to the justness of their cause.  Only someone with such a mindset can become a murderous terrorist or a suicide bomber.  Thankfully, the vast majority of people, even those with very strong convictions - be those convictions political or religious - are balanced enough to see that others have insights to offer and that we can learn from those others through a healthy interchange with them.

So as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter, pray for those who have suffered as a result of terrorism, pray for the conversion of the hearts of terrorists and extremists of any kind; and pray that, as we celebrate the heart of our faith, others may be moved to make a free and loving response to the God who chooses to honour our freedom by merely inviting us to respond to him.  The message of Easter is that, no matter what happens here and now and no matter what our sufferings, his love will always triumph.

 A homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 3/3/19

Today’s scripture readings, or the first reading and the Gospel anyway, teach us that our words and actions reveal the truth about ourselves.  We might say that they invite to ask ourselves the question: What sort of person am I?

It’s a good question to ask ourselves right now, as we stand again on the threshold of the great season of Lent.  For Lent is about the purification of our hearts.  Originally, Lent grew out of the final weeks of preparation spent by adult converts to the Christian faith prior to their baptism at Easter. The word ‘Lent’ itself derives from the Old English ‘lencten’, which means ‘spring’.  In Middle English is derived the words ‘lenten’, ‘lente’ and ‘lent’.  The word appears to come from the same root as the word ‘long’, referring as it does to lengthening days as the earth moves from the winter solstice to the spring equinox.  So, as we are getting ready for the new life of the season of Spring, we are also preparing for the new life of Easter.  And just as those early converts prepared for their new life of faith, so we look to the Lord to renew us in faith as we open ourselves to his grace. During Lent, we seek to re-order our priorities again so that we can see the call of God afresh as the primary call of our lives.

This is why Lent is a penitential season.  It’s time to put in their proper place those things which so easily come to dominate us and enslave us.  It’s time to seek purification of heart and mind; to discipline ourselves so that we can be renewed in discipleship and address the sloppiness which affects us all and which diminishes the quality of our lives of faith.

So, today’s readings, although not set for Lent, are so apposite.  Our speech reveals the state of our hearts; as do the ways in which we relate to others. The authors of the book of Ecclesiastes and of St Luke’s Gospel convey the same message.  It’s not so much a time to watch what we say that bit more carefully, try to be less judgemental of others, or try by our own efforts to be better.  It’s time, rather, to seek interior renewal through prayer and through renewed discipline so that our hearts are changed.  Then, and only then, will our words, our dispositions towards others and our actions really change for the better.

Strangely, the ancient Greeks understood this, although they would have expressed it differently.  When we think of sin, for example, we tend to think of particular offences we and others commit, or might commit.  We address wrong action in a quite isolated way – ‘I did this, or I did that, and I shouldn’t have done’.  But the ancient Greeks and, implicitly, today’s scriptures, see the problem differently.  They seem to see it like this: that the reason I did this or that when I shouldn’t have done as being because my heart is not at rights – the individual wrong action is not so much something in itself, but a consequence of what’s inside me, the state of my heart.  The ancient Greeks thought of it as being to do with ‘character’ – the sort of person I am.  The biblical writers speak in terms of the heart.  In other words, if bad things are in my heart, or if I’m a certain sort of person with particular character defects or weaknesses, it is inevitable that I will say and do things I shouldn’t.

This means that the fundamental problem is an interior one, and not simply a matter of a particular wrong action, or word, or thought committed on a particular occasion.  This is not, of course, to argue that one shouldn’t confess particular sins – we should – but rather to say that, without a true conversion and purification of the heart, it is inevitable that we shall repeat that particular sin over and over again.  And, in fact, even when our hearts are purified, they need to be purified constantly through repentance – through turning again and again back to the Lord, seeking to begin to travel in a different direction.

So, as we stand on the threshold of Lent once again, let each of us commit ourselves to seeking a fruitful Lent.  There are lots of suggestions in the Parish Magazine for March to help.  Let our prayer be that during the holy season of Lent, our hearts be truly purified so that we can enter unencumbered by the baggage of sin that we all accrue, into the joy of Easter and the new life it brings.