Easter Week 4 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 22(23); 1 Peter 2:20b-25; John 10:1-10

In the summer holidays of 1270, Thomas Aquinas finally got round to answering a query he had received a few months earlier from James of Tonengo. The two had become friends at Orvieto some years earlier when James was a chaplain at the papal court there and Thomas was the lector or teacher at the Dominican priory. Thomas had since returned to Paris and James had left the papal service and was now a canon of the diocese of Vercelli.

James’s question to Thomas was about the morality of casting lots as a way of making decisions about important matters, specifically about appointments to high office in the Church. The summer of 1270 marked the midpoint of the longest interregnum in the history of the papacy. Pope Clement IV had died in November 1268 but his successor, Gregory X, was not elected until almost three years later, his pontificate beginning in September 1271. In fact it was this three-year vacancy that led Gregory X, when he was elected, to institute the conclave as we now know it. The three-year delay had disturbed and unsettled everybody, leading the civil authorities at Viterbo firstly to lock the cardinals in, then to take the roof off the church where they were meeting, and finally to starve them slowly until they reached a decision.

James’s question to Thomas about casting lots as a way of making decisions was related to this interregnum. It was not a question about a breakthrough in the conclave itself, however, but about the appointment of a bishop in Vercelli. The canons were unable to agree who it should be, there was no Pope and would not be a Pope for a further 15 months, and so James is wondering about the option of casting lots as a way of coming to a decision. It might even have been thought that this would be a way of leaving more space for the Holy Spirit to make his mind known about the matter. We might be tempted to think that there is something in this: if human thoughts and desires and fears and preferences, all that goes under the name ‘politics’, were to be removed from the situation and the decision left entirely to God, would it not be better for everybody?

Even with 115 or 120 men voting nowadays to choose a new Pope we believe, of course, that it is God who is choosing the Pope. This may sound a bit startling, particularly in the days running up to a papal election, but on Good Friday each year, when we gather for the liturgy, we pray to God asking him to ‘protect the Pope you have chosen for us’. We know that Matthias was chosen to take the place of Judas and that it was by the casting of lots that he was elected. Would this not be a safer way of doing it still rather than leaving it to the uncertain politics of a group of interested human beings?

Thomas Aquinas, in his response to James of Tonengo, composed a short but very dense and nuanced treatise on the morality of casting lots, on what we might call alternative ways of finding out things that are hidden and of making decisions about the future. Casting lots as an alternative to making decisions may be acceptable in some circumstances, Thomas says, most of them minor, although he allows that the choosing of civil leaders could on occasion be done in this way. What he will not allow in any circumstances is the choosing of Church leaders by the casting of lots.

Far from believing that this would leave more room for the Holy Spirit to work, Thomas believes precisely the opposite. Where a decision is to be made by divine inspiration, he says, it is an insult to the Holy Spirit to withdraw that decision from human thinking and choosing. We believe that the Holy Spirit has come on the Church, Thomas says, something that had not yet happened when the Apostles cast lots to choose Matthias. The Holy Spirit instructs human sense to judge rightly, according to Saint Paul, so that the working of the Spirit in the Church is not apart from human beings but is within them, through their intelligence and their free judgements.

He quotes St Ambrose of Milan who says that one elected by lot is not contained within the responsibility of human judgement. So it is important that human beings accept responsibility for these key decisions and that the one who is elected knows that his election is within such responsibility. It is the concordia, the consensus we might say, of colleges of human beings that ought to produce Church leaders. (One might wonder in passing if this means that not only bishops of Rome but bishops elsewhere ought not to be chosen in some comparable forum as the conclave.)

I realise that I have not said anything about today’s readings on the Good Shepherd or about the fact that today is Vocations Sunday. On the other hand I believe that these comments of Aquinas about the casting of lots are directly relevant to both themes. What he says about the marriage of human spirits and the Holy Spirit in the making of key decisions, is exactly what he will say about the marriage of human spirits and the Holy Spirit in the following of Christ. The Holy Spirit makes us act freely he says in a paradoxical phrase, whenever we are seeking truth, practising good, discerning a vocation.

It is tempting to think that life would be easier if we could find magical ways of manipulating God, ways of seducing him into revealing his will and even making our decisions for us. Perhaps we could decide on a language, or a ritual, or a set of signs in which we could then invite God to make his will known. But God wants us to grow up and to become his adult children in Christ. As the adopted children of God, the sheep he calls by name, one by one, we live by the Holy Spirit of God. That is the deepest reality in us. Paul says that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God so that in our thinking, desiring, fearing and preferring the Holy Spirit too is at work.

The key difference between a secular consensus about something and a spiritual one is that the human beings involved in seeking the spiritual one pray. The deacons in Acts 6 are chosen, not by lot but after prayer. The decisions of the so-called council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 are made after prayer so the apostles can make the (apparently) outrageous claim that ‘it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to ourselves’.

How do we hear the call of Christ? We hear it through our human experience. How do we recognise that what we are hearing is the call of Christ? We recognise it if we have become attuned to the voice of Christ in prayer. How do we know that what is happening is not just the outcome of human thinking and deciding? Well it has to be the outcome of human thinking and deciding. What makes it spiritual, we believe, is the prayer which surrounds it and sustains it and which, allowing also for sin of course, ensures that the human beings who are thinking and choosing are open to outcomes that might surprise even themselves.

The first reading teaches us that the listeners to the Spirit-filled Peter are suddenly cut to the quick but that he takes a long time and many arguments to convince them. Both are true in the world of the Spirit where human effort is long and can seem unfulfilling but, to the eyes of faith, all is happening speedily, by the gift of the Spirit, and according to God’s wise government of the Church.

Saint Mark - 25 April

Readings: 1 Peter 5:5b-14; Psalm 89; Mark 16:15-20

There is a striking phrase about preaching in today's Office of Readings. Because the wisdom of the world has not helped people to find their way to God, it says, God decided to use 'that foolish thing, our preaching' as a way of bringing people to salvation.

Our preaching is foolish for many reasons. There is our ignorance and our sinfulness, with which we are all too familiar, and which are permanent obstacles to any understanding and to any effort at teaching others.

Both Mass readings speak about demons and devils abroad in the world. When we reflect on the apparent power of these demons then the foolishness of what we are trying to do is further highlighted. The first reading speaks of the devil prowling round like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. If such a beast were in the house we would be well aware of his presence. And often the demons are noisy and boisterous. They shout and make a fuss. 'Jesus', they shout, 'what have you got to do with us?' It means that some demons are easily identified even if we are not quite sure how to handle them. Their noisy presence is undeniable and we are rightly afraid of their violence.

Other demons act more quietly, more subtly. The gospel reading speaks of disciples picking up snakes and drinking poison, as well as casting out demons and speaking in tongues. Snakes and poison work silently but they are as deadly, perhaps more deadly, than the noisy demons. They can be more difficult to recognise, in time to take action against them.

So we face into the world ignorant and sinful, and we face into a world that is often cleverer and more well informed than we are. We do so knowing that both we and the world are afflicted and struggling with demons of different kinds.

The monastic tradition identified seven major demons and recognised also that the noisier ones are more easily seen. Think of lust, for example, or gluttony, or anger. They are honest vices, we can say, they come out into the open. It does not mean they are easy to manage but at least we know where we stand.

The subtler demons like pride and envy are much more difficult to manage, even sometimes to acknowledge, but their consequences for ourselves and for any living together can be much more serious than anything the honest vices can do.

Where does it leave us? Well both readings also speak today of the Lord confirming the preaching of the disciples. In the first reading we are told the Lord will strengthen, confirm and support us. And the gospel reading tells us that the Lord worked with the preachers of the gospel, confirming their words by signs.

In a seminar I lead on the history and spirituality of preaching one of the big questions that emerges is this: what are the signs that would confirm our preaching? Obviously unusual phenomena like those listed at the end of Mark 16 might work in that way. But the readings point us in another direction. They point us towards humility, patience and charity. Here is the most effective sign of the way of life that we preach. Where a Christian community is living in humility, patience and charity, we have the most convincing sign that here are people who practise what they preach, who believe what they say, who witness to the fact that the Lord is risen and is with them to support, strengthen and confirm.

The preachers of the gospel take on the world with that foolish thing, their preaching. They do it, obviously, not because of anything they find in themselves capable of overcoming the demons that gather round. They do it on the strength of their faith that the Lord is forever with them, and that he will confirm their words with signs, sometimes with strange and unusual events, more often than not through the witness of a community living the life of His Spirit.

Easter Week 3 Friday

Readings: Acts 9.1-20; Psalm 117; John 6.52-59

For the first half of his life he was Saul and for the second part Paul. He became the apostle to the Gentiles, the founder of Churches, a travelling preacher and a writer of letters. At the end he witnessed to Christ by shedding his blood as a martyr for the faith at Rome. January 25th is the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, the moment he ceased to be Saul and became Paul. By God’s grace he was destined to be one of the greatest saints of the Church, a man whose life and writings continue to nourish the faith of millions.

Paul describes himself as ‘one untimely born’ (1 Corinthians 15), brought to birth as ‘the last and least’ of the apostles, those privileged to encounter the risen Lord. His life before that moment – his life as ‘Saul’, culminating in his persecution of the Church of God – does not count any more.

It is true that in 2 Corinthians 11, Philippians 3, and Romans 11 Paul gives us a lot of information about his life and times, about his ancestry and education, and about the events of his life before and after his conversion. The Acts of the Apostles fills in many gaps and there is more to be gleaned from other letters of the New Testament.

But if we are to take his own words seriously, then the significant life of Paul the Apostle is his preaching of the gospel and his establishment of churches. His life in Christ is the life that counts. There is nothing before or around that that is worthy of much attention. This is because for him ‘to live is Christ’ (Philippians 1.21) so that ‘it is no longer Paul who lives but Christ who lives in him’ (Galatians 2.20). The fate of Paul is now completely entwined with the fate of Christ and of his Body, the Church.

Paul belongs to the line of Israel’s prophets for whom a vision and vocation inaugurate a new life. Isaiah, for example, saw God’s glory in the temple at Jerusalem, felt his own unworthiness, had his lips burned clean with fire, and then entrusted himself to the grace that made him the bearer of God’s word (Isaiah 6). Amos the keeper of sycamore trees is also turned into a prophet (Amos 7). Jeremiah is called in spite of his feeling that he is too young for the responsibilities involved (Jeremiah 1).

We can use the words of Isaiah, describing the effects of God’s presence in the temple, to say that Paul’s experience of untimely birth meant the shaking of his foundations and the filling of his house with smoke. He was confused and blinded for some time until a representative of the Church, Ananias, came as the instrument of God’s Spirit and guided him to his new birth (Acts 9). Then in baptism, as he has taught the whole Church, Paul became a new creation (2 Corinthians 5.17).

And so his life begins. We cannot doubt that Paul’s personal experience of Jesus on the road to Damascus and in the days that followed deserves all the attention that has been lavished on it. The Acts of the Apostles tells the story three times. (Artists tend to paint the scene with Paul falling from a horse but in none of these accounts is there any reference to a horse!) His teaching and the energy with which he travelled back and forth across the Roman Empire were the result of that moment in which Paul met Jesus and was forever overwhelmed.

What did Saint Paul then do all day? He tells us that he burned himself out in his anxiety and care for the churches. There are hints that he continued to earn a living through his trade of tent making (1 Corinthians 9). But this would have been a tedious distraction from his heart’s passion, which was to preach the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord, to become all things to all people that he might somehow win some of them. He preached to Jews and Greeks, to tradesmen and philosophers, to prison guards and political leaders, to men and women.

As an instrument of the Spirit he achieved remarkable things. He established and strengthened Christian communities in many places. He brought the gospel to Europe. He ended his life by dying a martyr’s death in Rome. He was privileged to follow Christ in more than a figurative sense. With his physical blood Paul completed the outpouring of his heart’s passion, his love for Christ, that love from God that had been poured into his heart by the Holy Spirit. He lived always in faith and love, never for a moment forgetting the grace of God working in him in spite of many difficulties and personal weaknesses.

Saint Paul is one of the best-known personalities of the ancient world who continues to teach and inspire millions of disciples of Jesus. On January 25 we recall the wonderful things God did through him. Let us, in Paul’s own words, ‘give thanks to God who gave him the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ’ (1 Corinthians 15.57).

Easter Week 3 Thursday

Readings: Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 66; John 6:44-51

The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are two parts of the same work, interrupted in our Bibles by the Gospel of John. So in fact, in this great two part work, the account of Stephen's death comes just eight chapters after the account of Jesus' death. We have seen how the trial and execution of Stephen mirror in so many ways the experience of Jesus. Similarly just eight chapters after the account of Jesus' appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus comes the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch whom he ends up baptising.

Similarly there are striking similarities between the events recorded in Luke 24 and those recounted in Acts 8. The protagonists are on the road away from Jerusalem. In each case we find a person or persons musing about God's dealings with the world. In each case we find a person or persons puzzled, to say the least, by the 'suffering servant'. He and they are wondering who this figure might be, what God could possibly be doing through him, The two disciples on the road to Emmaus thought he would be the one to redeem Israel. The Ethiopian is completely at a loss.

In each case the traveller or travellers are joined by a stranger who, beginning from a text, 'explains' the suffering of the Christ for them. In Luke 24 and Acts 8 we have a liturgy of the word leading to the celebration of a sacrament. In the gospel it is the breaking of bread, the moment in which the two disciples recognise Jesus, just as he is taken from them. In Acts it is the baptism of the Ethiopian - 'what is to prevent me being baptised?' (which has the ring of a question from an early Christian liturgy). The two sacraments are the ways in which those who have come to believe may participate in the paschal mystery of Christ, identify with it and make it their own. Baptism is the sacrament in which faith in that mystery is first bestowed, just as it conforms the baptised person to Christ in his dying and rising from the dead. And just as Jesus disappears in the moment in which he is recognised so Philip disappears after the baptism and the Ethiopian sees him no more.

Applying all this to our own experience we can say at least this much: that our liturgies and sacramental celebrations are similarly structured. There is a liturgy of the word followed by a celebration of the sacrament. We too need the riches of the scriptures to be opened up for us just as we need our hearts, minds and eyes to be opened to the presence of Christ with us. Just as for these first believers, the suffering of the Christ remains at the heart of things: 'was it not written that the Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory?' Had he not said (today's gospel reading) that the bread he would give would be his flesh, for the life of the world?

We continue to need help, whatever the direction in which we are travelling, whatever our perplexity or puzzlement. We have not yet entered fully into the mystery of the cross which remains a stumbling block and a folly. But whatever road we are on, whatever questioning we have, however far we might be from the destination, the Spirit seeks us out. He will find ways to assure us of the presence of Christ, help us to understand the mystery of His love, lead us to a deeper experience of the mysteries we celebrate in our liturgies and which we seek to live out in our lives.

Easter Week 3 Wednesday

Readings: Acts 8:1b-8; Psalm 66; John 6:35-40

Not for the last time we hear of external events that, in spite of themselves and even contrary to their explicit purpose, favour the spread of the gospel. Whether it is persecution, as here, or resistance and indifference, arguments among the preachers themselves, or the need to recover from a bruising encounter - there are many extraneous things that result in great leaps forward in the preaching of the gospel. Scattering because of the persecution that breaks out in Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen, a persecution whose most energetic promoter is Saul, the Christian preachers go to different parts of the Holy Land and so fulfil the second part of the prediction Jesus made at the beginning of Acts: 'you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth' (1:8)

Part of the original preaching of the apostles is that even the decisions and actions of the enemies of Jesus were used by God to achieve the purpose which had always been within God's intention. He sent the Son into the world because he loved it so much, so that everyone who believes in him might not be lost but might have eternal life. The Son is to lose nothing of what has been entrusted to him but is to raise it on the last day. These divine purposes are achieved through the events of the passion and death of Jesus, which seemed to bring an end to his mission and were designed by human agents to do precisely that, but which in fact were the means God used to bring that mission to its fulfillment.

So parts of John 6, such as the section we hear today, can seem to be not only about the Eucharist but about the whole event of the birth and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is as it should be because the Eucharist contains the entire mystery of the Incarnation. The Eucharist is, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, 'the source and summit of the Christian life', that from which everything flows and that to which everything flows. An earlier writer, commenting on John 6, puts it this way:

'Even if it were true that this chapter [John 6] does not refer to the Eucharist but to the whole work of Christ whose Incarnation feeds the souls of men, it nevertheless shows the place of the Eucharist in Christianity just as strongly as if its referenece were more directly Eucharistic. For the language of 'bread' and 'eating' and of 'blood' and 'drinking' is the Christian's Eucharistic language, and to express the Incarnation in the language of the Eucharist betokens the importance of the rite just as emphatically as to express the Eucharist in terms of the Incarnation' (A.M. Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, New York 1936, p.106).

In his commentary on John 6 Thomas Aquinas says similar things. As he puts it more succinctly in his antiphon for the feast of Corpus Christi, in the Eucharist we receive the whole mystery of Christ, we renew the memory of his passion, our souls are filled with grace, and we receive a pledge of eternal glory. In other words the entire work of the Incarnation is contained in the Eucharist - the Word becoming flesh to reveal the Father to us, the Son sent from the Father to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away, the Risen Lord recognised in the breaking of the bread. All of this is contained in the Eucharist, to human eyes a simple and routine ritual of readings, prayers and actions, but for those who believe the sacred banquet in which we feast on Jesus, our bread of life and our living bread.

Easter Week 3 Tuesday

Readings: Acts 7:51-8:1a ; Psalm 31; John 6:30-35

The people look for a sign and we are not superior to them: we too would like to be given signs that would confirm God's presence and action for us. But the readings today do give us a number of signs. Stephen is one sign, particularly his courage in speaking up to the authorities and in dying for the faith. We see it again and again in the readings from Acts of the Apostles: the transformation in the apostles and disciples after Pentecost is remarkable, striking, thought-provoking.

Stephen is also a sign in the way his passion, trial and execution so closely follow those of Jesus. Like Jesus he speaks of the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven and this provokes outrage. Like Jesus he prays for those who execute him: 'do not hold this sin against them'. Like Jesus he commends his spirit now into the hands of Jesus whom he sees standing, as his advocate, at the right hand of God.

An even more remarkable sign is in the making since we are here introduced to a man called Saul. We know that he will later be Paul and that one of the most extraordinary transformations of heart and mind will come about in him. That human beings would change so significantly, not only that they would change at all but that they would change in such striking ways: is this not one of the most compelling signs we are given as we read about the life of the first Christian communities?

Of course the greatest of signs is Jesus himself, and it is their communion with him which makes it possible for the others to change in the ways they do. He is the bread given by the Father. This refers to his teaching but also, as he will explain, to his very person. He is himself the bread of life and the living bread, given to nourish the life of God's people. All the other signs we see in the Christian community - the example of holy people, the works of charity, the courage of martyrs, the teaching of preachers, and so on - have their source in this great sign which is Jesus.

He gives himself to us in the Eucharist. It is a simple and remarkable sign, the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup. But in this way Jesus gives himself to people in all times and places, as their food and drink, to share his own life with them. This is the Sign of signs, the source of whatever power and grace we encounter in any of the other signs.

It is from this communion with Jesus that the saints draw their strength and inspiration, here they find nourishment and grace. Let it be so also for us sinners, that we may look always to this great sign and participate in it, receiving Christ, living from his life, allowing the transforming Spirit to turn us into the signs God wants us to be in the world.

Easter Week 3 Monday

Readings: Acts 6:8-15; Psalm 119; John 6:22-29

You can listen here to a homily for today