The Birth of St John the Baptist

Today is the feast of the birth of St John the Baptist. You can read about it in the first chapter of Luke's gospel.

Almighty God and Father,

  you sent Saint John the Baptist to the people of Israel

  to make them ready for Christ the Lord.

Give us the grace of joy in the Spirit,

  and guide the hearts of all the faithful

  in the way of salvation and peace.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

  who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

  one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Reflection for the 4th Sunday after Trinity

Icon of Elijah

The story we heard from the book of Kings at Mass this morning is a beautiful one. Elijah, the great prophet, is told that the Lord will pass him by - an Old Testament way of saying that he will encounter God. And then lots of noisy spectacular things happen, a fierce wind, an earthquake, a fire... Yet God is not in any of them. Finally the Lord comes to Elijah, as the reading puts it "in the sound of sheer silence".

Elijah meets God in silence. We too can meet God in silence.

Time for silence is an important need in every Christian life. Silence gives us time to listen to God, to allow him to transform us and our desires. Silence is also a way of acknowledging that God escapes all our words and our concepts.

It can be difficult to find quiet time in this very busy world, with all the pressures of work and family life. However, we need to do so, however small the amount of time is that we find each week.

Sometimes it can be helpful to talk over our prayer life with another Christian, a 'soul friend', to share experiences, and get help about planning prayer time. The clergy at our churches are always happy to do this.

Creed and coffee

Have you ever wondered about the Creed that we say at Mass on Sundays? 'We believe', it begins - and it expresses the Church's central beliefs about God and what God has done for us. But what do the various things the Creed says mean? What is their history? And what do they say to us in the modern world?

We'll be discussing these things informally over coffee in Starbucks, West Hendon Sainsburys, during July. So if you'd like to learn more about our faith come along:

Friday 12th July - We believe in God the Father

Friday 19th July - We believe in God the Son

Friday 26th July - We believe in God the Holy Spirit

We will meet at 11am for about an hour. All welcome!

Reflection for the Second Sunday after Trinity

We're back today into reading through Luke's gospel on Sundays. Today we heard the story of the widow of Naim.

A woman in a desperate situation, not only confronted with human grief but also with the reality of loosing her only son, on whom she would have depended economically, encounters the power of Jesus. This power conquers even death itself, giving the widow's son back to her. It is a power exercised, as the gospel puts it, with compassion. It is a power exercised on behalf of someone at the 'bottom of the heap' socially.

This is the Lord we follow, a Lord who exercises power in a compassionate way. As Christians we need to proclaim both halves of the message. We cannot shy away from the reality of Jesus, the Son of God, who reigns in power and conquers death. But equally we cannot ignore his divinely human compassion - the message, of course, of last Friday's feast day - which puts down the mighty from their seats, raises up the lowly, and comes as good news for the poor.

Also in the news today!...

Congratulations to our Churchwardens who attended St Pauls Cathedral to make take their oaths of office and be part of the launch of Capital Vision 2010 Creative Compassion leading to a Confident proclamation of the Gospel




Well done to our two newest servers at St Matthias..

A feast of love, the Sacred Heart

Today we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Jesus' heart is a sign of divine love made human. God comes to us in fragile human flesh, like our own. He comes to share in our sadness and our joys. He comes to offer us love, no matter who we are or what we have done in life. There is nothing that we can do that stops God loving us. No matter what, he loves us, and calls us home to him.

Corpus Christi

To day we celebrate Corpus Christi, in the time honored language of the church – Thanks giving for the institution of holy Communion in the language of the modern Church of England.

The celebration of the Eucharist, translated from the Greek word meaning “thanksgiving” the Mass; the Lord Supper is not universal to the body of Christ but it is central to many of us within the body of Christ.

The Eucharist, with its roots in the last supper Jesus celebrated with his disciples on the night before he was betrayed is a meal that is not supposed to leave us unchanged. Meeting God is not supposed to leave us just as we were. Encountering the Lord in the sacrament or in any other way means that we change, and change for good, forever. What we do today changes us. And this one thing I have learned in all of these experiences of being part of a celebration of the Eucharist is – that we are loved and loved and loved by God.

For it is in this meal that we can find the most telling signs, the most powerful symbols, the most pressing reminders and the most startling revelations of that simple love of God who came and mingled with us and walked among us. The Eucharist is a reminder that God offers us the sustenance of faith and the intoxication of love, not just today but every day.

Corpus Christi affirms us in the human instinct that is in the blood of every Christian, that the most profound words we can ever utter are the words ‘thank you’. Once we grasp this, we see life in a new way, a Eucharistic way. The transformation of broken bread and poured out wine into heavenly food and drink becomes a symbol of renewed attitudes within us. G.K. Chesterton put it like this.

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the play and the opera, and grace before the concert and the pantomime, and grace before I open the book, and grace before sketching and painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip pen in the ink.

And, we should add, before we face the suffering, the deprived, the neglected, our brothers or sisters in whom the image of Christ is most to be honoured.

The Visitation

Today is the feast of the Visitation of our Lady, when we recall the story in Luke's gospel where Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth. Mary is greeted by Elizabeth as full of grace, and the child in Mary's womb (John the Baptist) leaps for joy. Mary sings her song, the Magnificat, which we use every day at evening prayer:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:

the Almighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel

for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

the promise he made to our fathers,

to Abraham and his children for ever.

There is a danger of spiritualising away Mary's words in the Magnificat, of thinking that all this talk of the lowly and the hungry is really about people who are inwardly humble, or who hunger for God (rather than for food*). No: the clear message of the prophets in the Old Testament is that our God is on the side of the poor and powerless, and this message finds an echo in Mary's song. In these times of economic crisis, it is a message we should take on board!



*Of course, it's a good thing to hunger for God - it's just that this isn't what this passage of scripture is talking about!