Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 8 September

Readings: Micah 5.1-4a OR Romans 8.28-30; Psalm 12/13; Matthew 1.1-16,18-23

Who do you think you are? is a popular television programme. It was first broadcast on the BBC almost twenty years ago and was subsequently taken up by television channels in many countries. It answers to a deep and universal desire in human beings, to know something about our ancestors. My identity comes in large part from the generations that produced me, and I am naturally curious about them. On the tombstone of the Irish poet Seán Ó Ríordáin are inscribed the words 'Níl ionam ach ball de chorp san mo shinsir', 'all I am is a part of that body which is my people'.

When you go exploring you never know what you will discover and this is part of the drama of the television programme. There will probably be saints and scoundrels in my family history, suspicious gaps, unexplained appearances and disappearances, perhaps a famous (or infamous) person or two. The most memorable moments in the programmes are those that generate surprise or sadness, perhaps deep dismay or great delight.

Today the Church celebrates the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. It does so by reading his genealogy as it is given in Matthew's gospel. There are famous people there, Abraham and David, Solomon and Saint Joseph, and likewise names that mean nothing to us.

And the list includes five women, about each of whose appearance on the list there is something unusual. Tamar is the first, remembered for having seduced her father-in-law Judah, from which encounter was born Zerah, an ancestor of Jesus. Next comes Rahab, the mother of Boaz. She was a prostitute who helped the Hebrews in their conquest of Canaan. So not a lover of her own people, then, a heroine to the Hebrews and presumably not so to the Canaanites. But she is exalted by the early Christians as a woman of faith (Hebrews 11.31; James 2.25): she was on the 'winning side'.

Ruth is the third woman mentioned, one of the most attractive figures in the Bible, for her gentleness, loyalty, courage and generosity. What is odd about her is that she too was a foreigner, a Moabitess, who adds her blood to the lineage of the Davidic dynasty, and so also to Joseph and to Mary. If you are looking for racial or ethnic purity, you will not find it in the family of Jesus Christ!

Not mentioned by name - a skeleton in the cupboard? 'that woman'! - is Bathsheba, with whom David committed adultery having arranged for her husband to be killed. The mother of King Solomon, she is the first woman to be presented in the role of Queen Mother, a role that took on great importance as the house of David continued to rule.

There are also many things to be said about each of the men mentioned in the genealogy but the gospel of Matthew draws our attention particularly to the women.

Mary's oddness is described in the second part of today's gospel: 'this is how Jesus Christ came to be born', and we hear about his virginal conception. The point is not in the first place to highlight her purity against the backdrop of the family history, though it does that also, very effectively. The point is to remind us that within and through this very human history, with all its moments of light and darkness, God is working out his purpose. The Holy Spirit is at work in a unique way in the conception and birth of Jesus, clearly. But it is not the first time the power of God has been at work in the history of this family, for the same Spirit spoke through the prophets who guided them as he came mightily upon the kings of Israel when they were anointed.

We celebrate Mary because she is the mother of the Christ, the anointed One, the king of the house of David born of her to be the saviour and redeemer of all people. We also belong within this genealogy, therefore. This is who we think we are, parts of that body which is this people, the people of God, now the Body of Christ. The story continues in our lives, in the light and darkness we add to it. We are probably no better or worse than our ancestors, but the Spirit is always present, animating the body of which we too are members and guiding its history. If our contribution to the story includes moments of sadness and dismay, we pray, with Mary, that by God's grace we may also contribute in ways that will evoke surprise, delight and gratitude.

Week 23 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew18:15-20

Some years ago theologian Peter Candler published an article with the arresting title 'Outside the Church there is no Death'. What could he possibly mean? He meant that it is only within a Christian understanding of human experience that the full reality of death can be appreciated. Only the person with the theological virtue of hope, and the understanding of the human person that is required by such a virtue, can look death straight in the face and see its full horror.

Most of the time we believers join our contemporaries in denying, in various ways, the reality of death. We speak of it as if it were no big deal, just passing from one room to another, imagining life continuing more or less as before except without headaches or indigestion, without blood or sweat or tears. The person of hope on the other hand does not have such a picture with which to console herself. The direct object of our hope is God, not some future form of human life. The object of hope is God who is love and who is life, in whose Word we trust when he speaks to us of a share in his eternal life. But we know practically nothing about what that will be or how that will be except that it will be a life, that it will be a life of love, and that it will mean the company of Christ and the saints.

Just as you can only be really courageous when faced with something fearful, so you can only be really hopeful when faced with something that presents extreme difficulty. Just as fear and courage are not incompatible but require each other, so too sadness and anxiety on the one hand, and hope on the other, are not incompatible but require each other. In fact hope makes true sadness possible just as courage gives us a true appreciation of what we fear. This, I think, is what Candler meant in saying that outside the Church there is no death: only within a Christian understanding of human  experience can we taste fully the reality of negative things such as fear, anxiety, sadness and loss.

The gospel reading today is about excommunication, the sad and difficult situation where the Christian community comes to the conclusion that one of its members, for reasons of belief or lifestyle, is no longer in full communion with the Church. We prefer not to think about such things, as we prefer not to think about the reality of death. In fact excommunication is a kind of death, a terrible wound in the body of Christ, a real sadness and a profound loss. It means we have failed to maintain the communion to which Christ calls us and for which he prayed in his last great prayer to the Father.

The gospel reading says we are to try everything to maintain that communion: talking privately with a person first of all, talking with them in the presence of one or two other people, and only if it is absolutely necessary bringing a matter to the attention of the whole Church. The conclusion is chilling and we might even wonder 'is it Christian'? Surely we can find a way to stay together, to remain in communion? But truth presses in also, not in order to serve some structure of power or to maintain some artificial conformity. Truth presses in because it is the truth of that communion itself: what if the basis on which we are joined is undone by what a person believes or by how a person lives? Our communion dies.

This passage of Matthew's gospel is about the difficulty of staying together and it reflects how, even in the early Church, it was realized very quickly that there would be problems in staying together. Sometimes people will do things, or will come to believe things, that even the Church cannot see as compatible with the life of the gospel. Of course we hesitate to use the word ‘excommunication’ but in human relations it is sometimes, sadly, the reality. Even having done our best, we do not see how some can be contained within the life of the community. Some ways of living and some convictions are not compatible, as far as we can see, with life in the Church. More often than not it is people themselves who make the decision to separate from the Church because they no longer share its beliefs or are no longer convinced about the goodness of its teaching. Much more rarely the Church itself makes this decision about a person or a group of people.

We can never be happy about the exclusion of a brother or a sister. It is a death and death is terrible, the last enemy of human flourishing, a final failure. But within the context of Christian hope, exclusion can never be the last word about a person or about our relationship with them. They remain always children of the heavenly Father called to be brothers and sisters of Jesus. I like to think that the two or three gathered in Christ’s name at the end of this gospel reading are the same two or three who have earlier confronted the erring brother or sister. They are praying, and prayer is the characteristic act of the virtue of hope. What is on their minds as they pray must be that same brother or sister whom the Church has decided it must relate to as if he were a pagan or a tax-collector. And there is Christ in the midst of them.

Outside the Church there is no death because the Christian life makes us more sensitive to the truth of what death really is. But outside the Church, we can say, there is no outside, because the prayers of the Church, like the anxiety of loving parents, follow her children everywhere. Even when we cannot see how unity and reconciliation might come about, we must continue to hope for those things, to pray for those things, and to work for those things. All the commandments are summed up, Saint Paul says, in this saying: 'you shall love your neighbour as yourself'. We know that our neighbour is everyone, those who are living and those who are dead, those who are sick and those who are well, those who are in joyful communion with us and those who are in sad separation from us. We reach the limits of our capacities but we know that the Lord, who was crucified for our reconciliation, stretches his arms across the widest horizons of this creation in order to gather in all the scattered children of God.

Week 22 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Psalm 37; Luke 5:33-39

One of the biggest obstacles to meditating on today's gospel reading is the power of the word 'new'.  Advertisers know that it is one of the most powerful words they can use: notice how often things are on offer with this description: the new iPad, the new model, the new and improved formula. But the parables about new wine in old wineskins and new patches on old garments are not simply saying 'the new is better than the old'.

If we only had the accounts in Matthew and Mark it might seem that this well-established, almost obvious, interpretation is correct. The fact that it was the arch-heretic Marcion who first proposed this interpretation ought to be enough to stop us in our tracks. It became the preferred interpretation of Gentile Christians from Marcion's time to the present day. Some of the most distinguished contemporary interpreters of the Bible continue to follow this line - the religion of Jesus is 'new', and so radically better than the 'old' religion of the Scribes and Pharisees. New Christianity is better than old Judaism: is that not what Jesus is teaching here?

No, it is not. It needs to be said again: this is not what Jesus is teaching here. And it is Luke's account, read today, that holds us back from lazily drifting into this interpretation. Luke alone adds a third parable to the ones about the patch and the wineskins: 'no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, "The old is good"' (Luke 5:39). This contradicts any interpretation for which these parables are simply saying 'the new thing I bring is better than the old thing you already have'. In this third parable Jesus says it would be absurd to prefer new wine to old: everybody knows wine is at its best when it is old and not when it is new.

So this gospel passage is, thank God, more complex than it seems at first. To get out of what now looks like a contradiction - new is better, old is better - some propose that, in his final comment, Jesus is saying 'of course some of you guys will want to stay with the old rather than embracing the new thing I bring'. They are stick in the muds. But this has no basis in the text and, once again, misses the point.

So what is the point? The main teaching of Jesus here is this: 'Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?' The clear answer is 'no, it would be absurd to fast at a wedding'. Fasting when you ought to be feasting is bringing together two incompatible things. The point of the three short parables is to underline this message with a number of other absurd possibilities. Would you put a new patch on old clothes destroying both (especially a valuable old garment)? Of course not. Would you put new wine in old wineskins, destroying both (especially valuable old wineskins)? Of course not. Now that we are talking about wine, would you prefer new wine to wine that has aged and matured? Of course not. These are all absurd proposals, and any right-thinking person will answer 'no' to all these questions. In the same way any right-thinking person will answer 'no' to the question 'should you fast when the bridegroom is present'.

To be in the presence of Jesus, the bridegroom, is to be in a joyful place. It would be absurd not to be joyful, not to celebrate, when we are with him. To suggest fasting in the presence of Jesus is just as absurd as putting new cloth on an old garment, or new wine into old wineskins, as odd as preferring new wine to old.

And that is that for the moment. At this stage in the public ministry of Jesus, his relations with the Pharisees have not deteriorated to what they would become later. They are still curious about his teaching, and open, it seems, to consider what he has to say. Jesus does refer to what was to come , a time when the bridegroom would be taken away. His being 'taken away' is a clear echo beforehand of his passion. And that sad time of loss and grief will be a time for fasting. To continue feasting then would be the absurd, incompatible, thing.

Here is the heart of it: the presence of Jesus means joy, the absence of Jesus means sadness. To confuse these two situations would be absurd. To think otherwise about either of them would be folly. This is the simple and profoundly rich teaching which our wise master wants us, today, to realise.

Saint Gregory the Great - 3 September

GREGORY THE GREAT AND THE ORDER OF PREACHERS

Here is a tale of two popes, Gregory the Great (died 604) whose memory we keep today and Innocent III who was pope when the Franciscans and Dominicans were founded at the beginning of the 13th century. Gregory famously wrote in support of the missionary and pastoral expansion of the Church at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Innocent was preoccupied with the need for a fresh preaching of the gospel in the ‘high Middle Ages’. At the same time Innocent hesitated about confirming an ‘order of preachers’ for the universal Church, something Dominic wanted him to do. Early Dominican sources use a slightly strange expression to describe Dominic’s project: he wanted to establish an order ‘that would be called, and would be, an order of preachers.’ Why stress this distinction between being called, and being in fact, an order of preachers?

The title – order of preachers – already had a long history in the Church. Innocent was presumably aware of it and its implications, and this perhaps made him hesitate to confirm immediately an ‘order of preachers’. In fact, it is in the writings of Gregory the Great that we find the first use of that title. He used it to refer to the preachers of the gospel who follow the prophets and the apostles in proclaiming the Word of God so that the Church will grow to the end of time. The phrase is found again in later medieval writers where it belongs with the glorious band of apostles, the noble company of prophets and the white-robed army who shed their blood for Christ. The ‘order of preachers’ in the sense in which Gregory used it referred to another such group fundamental to the Church’s identity and ranked along with apostles, prophets and martyrs.

This ‘order of preachers’ was associated with the end times, a band of preachers raised up by God to call people to repentance before it is too late. Gregory saw the order of preachers at work in two parables of Jesus, that of the workers in the vineyard who come at the eleventh hour (Matthew 20:6), and that of the servant sent by his master to bring people in to the banquet which is already prepared (Luke 14:17). The preachers are those sent out to bring people in, and to bring them in even when it is late and everything is ready. On Gregory’s interpretation the ‘order of preachers’ meant ‘the preachers of the last days.’

The turn of the 12th to 13th centuries was a time of great evangelical ferment, with important movements in thought, society and culture accompanied also by an extensive religious movement and an ‘explosion of preaching’. There was a growing eschatological, even apocalyptic, sense that the Church was in the last times and that therefore an order of preachers would emerge to call people to repentance and conversion before it was too late. The bull of canonization of Saint Dominic speaks of the ‘workers of the last hour’. And an early Dominican source says the order of preachers was established through Mary’s intervention: seeing humanity in danger of destruction she pleaded with her Son and in response he raised up Dominic to establish the Order of Preachers.

For Innocent III the established meaning of the title may have been a reason why he was reluctant to recognise one particular group of men as ‘the order of preachers’, a phrase that had not only eschatological overtones but which also seemed to belong to the Church as a whole and not just to one group within it. What would we think if a pope were to recognise a small community somewhere in the world as the ‘order of apostles’ or the ‘order of prophets?’ It may be that designating a particular religious community the ‘order of preachers’ would have been just as startling to Innocent.

Nevertheless, this is what his successor, Honorius III, did, recognising Dominic and his community of friars as ‘an order of preachers’. The title originates with Gregory the Great and it is appropriate for Dominicans to acknowledge that inheritance today, when we celebrate the liturgical memory of Gregory.

Week 22 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 3.1-9; Psalm 33; Luke 4.38-44

Tom Holland is a British historian who set out to show that the arrival of Christianity was a disaster for the world. that the violence and divisions it generated destroyed earlier pagan civilisations that were, well, much more civilised. Studying the facts closely, however, he arrived at the very opposite conclusion. Overall, and in spite of many dark moments, Christianity brought a gentleness and compassion not seen before. In this it was a direct contrast with the cruelty and indifference of earlier civilisations.

There are still jealousies and rivalries among us, as Paul sees among the Christians of Corinth, but as long as they - and we - maintain contact with our Christian roots, these things should not take us over completely. They remain demons with which we must struggle but the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness in this area also.

The Christians at Corinth were already dividing into groups in some kind of competition with each other. Each group had its chosen leader and Paul reminds them of how contradictory this is, as if Christ could be divided.

Instead, as we see in the gospel reading, Christ is focused and single-minded. He is intent on the mission with which he has been entrusted, preaching, healing and casting out demons. He most definitely does not set up a party of followers or supporters, telling the disciples that he mst go on to the other places and communities to which he is sent.

His disciples are not so focused, not so single-minded, and become distracted in all kinds of ways. Jealousy and rivalry are never far away. In the Letter of James it is jealousy and selfish ambition which are the bugbears, the very ordinary tendencies, we might say, that assert themselves inevitably wherever human beings come together for some shared project or purpose.

But the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. He is the Spirit of love, and it is only love that can cure our jealousies and our rivalries. The success of someone I don't particularly love becomes a threat to me and provokes envy. The success of someone I love is a success in which I share and provokes joy. It happens this way because it is love which binds us together as one family, making it possible for us to share life together and to rejoice in each other's gifts.

The love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit is the extraordinary, supernatural gift which carries us beyond ordinary relating and builds a new civilisation, what we call the kingdom of God. We are all God's servants, fellow workers with each other, tending the garden together, building the house of God together.

Week 22 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 2:10-16; Psalm 145; Luke 4:31-37

There are three kinds of spirit spoken about in today's readings: the spirit of a person that knows the depths of a person, the unclean spirit that troubles a person and is cast out by Jesus, the Spirit of God that knows the depths of God. We need to consider all three if we are to understand ourselves fully.

Our own spirit shows itself in many ways: memory and imagination, anxiety and desire, our capacities for knowledge, understanding and love. The human spirit is seen in literature, art, music, technology, the whole panoply of activities and interests that make us to be very extraordinary animals indeed. In poetry and music, philosophy and theology, and many other ways, the 'spirituality' of the human creature is to be seen.

Unclean spirits are realities 'in us without us', we might say, that are known through their effects. As well as obvious external difficulties and obstacles, there are many ways in which human beings are afflicted and distracted from within. We continue to surprise and disappoint ourselves. 'I do not understand my own actions', Paul says in the letter to the Romans. Mean-spirited and selfish, hard-hearted and yet profoundly vulnerable, given to addiction and led by the opinions of various publics: there are many ways in which we are disturbed by the unclean spirits. Christian tradition has identified seven or eight deadly spirits or capital vices: vainglory, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth and pride.

But there is also the Spirit of God who finally reveals us to ourselves. In the first reading Paul says that the depths of God are accessible to the Spirit of God in something like the way the depths of a human being are accessible to the human spirit, but then says that actually the depths of ourselves are only now accessible to the Spirit of God and not to our own spirit. He is speaking of a new possibility, a new spiritual life, that is not simply part and parcel of the nature with which we were first created but that comes about through a new presence of the Holy Spirit in us. If we are to understand the gifts God has given us we need the Spirit of God. If we are to plumb the depths of ourselves it can only be with the help of the same Spirit.

This relativises our natural 'spirituality', placing its conflicts and achievements in a completely new light. There is a new world of wonder and admiration to which we are called. Paul speaks of new human beings who are capable of judging the value of everything, human beings who have 'the mind of Christ'. Natural spirituality is a token or intimation of what the Spirit brings. When the Spirit, the love of God, is poured into our hearts, not only are the unclean spirits put in their place but our capacities for knowledge, understanding and love are opened up to a new and truly transcendent objective, reaching even to God, in the supreme spiritual activities of faith, hope, and love.

Week 22 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Psalm 119; Luke 4:16-30

The heroes of Greek and other militaristic cultures are always the soldiers. These are the characters in these cultures regarded as showing the greatest courage and they receive the greatest honour for it. There is a transformation of courage in Christianity. There it is the martyrs who are the great heroes, men and women ready to die in witness to Christ and the faith, and to do so, like Christ, non-violently.

This transformation of courage is one of the consequences of the gospel as Paul summarises it in today's first reading. I came among you in fear and trembling, he says, knowing only Jesus and him as the crucified Christ, so that my preaching might get its strength not from any worldly kind of power or persuasion but might be simply a demonstration of the power of the Spirit.

Nevertheless, the classical Christian account of courage as we find it in St Thomas Aquinas, for example, is developed not just from the Bible but also taking hints from Aristotle. There are two sides to courage, the ancient Greek philosopher indicates, an assertive and a sustaining side. One is the courage to put oneself forward in the world, to undertake great projects and to take action in spite of fear and apprehension. The other is the courage to be patient and persevering in the face of experiences that generate other kinds of anxiety and fear: coping with illness, enduring long-term challenges, living with rejection or mockery, martyrdom. 

For Christians this second side of courage is the higher one. St Teresa of Avila even says somewhere that it takes more courage to persevere in prayer than to die as a martyr.

So courage is required if we are to follow Jesus. One kind of courage is the kind he showed in the synagogue at Nazareth when his preaching was rejected and denigrated. The other kind of courage is enshrined forever in the mystery of the cross, a courage like that of the soldier facing death with its whole weight of fear, but doing it without returning violence, freely accepting it out of love for the Father and the Father's plan for the world's salvation.