Reflection for the Third Sunday before Advent

Whilst over at St Matthias we offered a requiem for those killed in war, at St John's - whilst we prayed for the war dead - we read the readings set for the day and kept an ordinary 'green' Sunday.

We read from the beginning of Mark's gospel:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.  (Mark 1:14-20)

That invitation - "follow me" - is one that Jesus still makes. It is one that our baptism and confirmation candidates will take up when they celebrate those sacraments on the evening of 4th December.

It is also an invitation that those of us who are already baptised and confirmed have accepted. How are we doing at following Jesus?

We only have three weeks left in the Church's year (we begin a new year on Advent Sunday, 2nd December). Over these coming weeks, let's spend a bit of time assessing our discipleship, asking how generously we respond to Jesus' call to follow him. And then let's make some 'new years' resolutions', commiting ourselves to follow Jesus in the coming year!

Remembering

Today's Mass at St Matthias was offered as a requiem for all those who have died, over the centuries, through war and violence.

Remembrance Sunday is first and foremost a secular celebration, observed by people of all faiths and none, promoted by the State and the British Legion. What, if anything, do we as the Church have that is distinctive to say?

Well, there's quite a bit we can't say, if we are to be faithful to the gospel. To be frank, today is one of those days when people put pressure on clergy and churches to say, or sing, or imply things that we simply cannot, if our response is to be genuinely Christian, do. Our gospel is one of peace, which sees war as a product of sin. And our vision of the Kingdom of God is transnational. We are not in the business of promoting one country, its interests, and its history at the expense of other peoples'. The Church is, as we say in the Creed, Catholic - for everyone.

But, when all that's said and done, we are left with the pain, the memories of people who never came home, the awareness that this pain is shared by people all over the world, and the ongoing realities of bloodshed that we see, and are in danger of being desensitised to, on our television screens and in our newspapers. We cannot say nothing in the face of this. What, then, do we say?

First, we acknowledge the pain, and the ongoing turmoil. Black vestments are worn at today's Mass, as we hold the tragic violent history of humanity before God. Today's liturgy felt more sombre. There was more silence; the organ was used less. Quietly and reflectively, we bring the mess of this Earth to God through his Son, who has shared our pain, and himself suffered a violent death at the hands of an occupying army.

Second, we have a message of hope. This is important. Death and violence are not the last word in human history. Nor, we pray, are they the last word in the lives of those we have loved and lost. We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the word to come. However terrible, however unchanging, the violence of our world might seem, however tempted we might be to be overwhelmed by it, we believe that the ultimate victory has already been won by God in Jesus Christ. In that hope we commit ourselves to working for a peaceful and just world. In that hope also we commend all those who have died to God. We believe that, through Jesus, they have a future.

This is important: when we have no hope for the future of the dead, we have no option but to dwell exclusively on their past. If we do not believe that they can be redeemed in the future, we all too readily make futile attempts to redeem their past, by retelling their stories, by airbrushing history in a romantic way. This is when talk about remembering the war dead becomes dangerous; we forget the horror, glory in an imagined past, and sit back as a new generation are sent off to die. But, as Christians, we are set free from this. Those who have died have a future. And they have this because of Jesus. Which is why the best way to remember the dead, however they have died, is to do what we do every Sunday, to follow his command, "do this in remembrance of me".

Congratulations Fr John!

This week we've learnt who our new Archbishop will be. We hold Bishop Justin in our prayers as he prepares to take up office.

At St John's and St Matthias', however, we have a much more local reason to celebrate a new appointment. Bishop Richard announced last week that Fr John has been appointed as a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral.

Along with three other priests from our diocese, Fr John will take up the honorary post at Evensong on Sunday 3^rd March at 3.15pm in our Cathedral. Please join us for that celebration.

The Bishop said, in his letter announcing the appointment that Fr John and the other new prebendaries "are representative of so many priests and lay men and women who work tirelessly in this Diocese serving our Lord Jesus Christ, the people of God and all who live and work in this great City."

We give thanks for Fr John's life and witness in these parishes, and warmly congratulate him on this appointment.

And if, like me until a few days ago, you don't have the first clue what a prebendary is, see here!

Fr John letter from Miami

Oh and I told everyone that I was gong to Jamaica! Well by Gods grace Desiree and I will get there in a few hours time. Our carrier over booked our flight by 51 people and so we were offered a package that was hard to resist to travel via Miami to help them out. We accepted. Those of you who know me will know that America is the last stop that I would choose to make on a world tour, and yet here I am, it is 4.00am and I have just been out jay walking trying to find an English Cup of tea from the various "Gas stations" that line the 8 lane road outside our hotel accommodation.
As I walk all alone I love the fact that I have been paid to come to America and thank God for the extraordinary set of circumstances that have led me to this land of the free.  Of course of them is my dear wife who insists I hunt and gather a cup of English tea at 4.00am in a country where no one  seems to speak English - lesson number one for fellow governors at SMSJ as we devise a curriculum for our new through school Spanish is a must. Still I manage to get a cup of hot English tea for Desiree and  I know the day will only get better as a result.  I of course chose a cup of coffee, the choice was bewildering as was the conversation between myself and the somewhat non plussed " petrol attendant ". my coffee cup has a slogan printed on it " good coffee is good for the soul  " a quote attributed to one Sean O.  As welcome as it was I am not sure it nurtured my soul but it did make smile and As I walked back in the darkness I sang to no one in particular that wonderful hymn  as a dear pants for the water, so my soul longs after you....
Now we have to open and drink a bottle of sparkling  wine for breakfast as we our cases are too full to be allowed to leave Miami - Buck's Fizz is not a bad accompaniment to the rising of the sun at the beginning of ones holiday. Peace and blessings fr John

An extra thought for All Saints from New Zealand

Greetings from New Zealand! As we are 12 hours ahead if you I've already been to Sunday Mass before some have you have gone to bed on Saturday night!

I has the privilege if preaching at the Auckland diocesan girls school this morning for their Founder's day and the transferred feast of All Saints. It's quite a nice way of thinking of the Great Cloud of Witnesses. Those who set up the school, who established traditions and took a stand for something in the Mission of God and those with whom we are still surrounded (the Old Girls) inspire still our engagement in God's mission.

We can fall in to the trap (I think) of seeing those traditions and expectations as things we have to live up to. To emulate the lives of others. For me Jesus' words to us in the Beatitudes are not His expectations of us but His hopes for all of us, His saints, to live lives in keeping with those around and before us in the Mission of God. Not attempting to live the life of another but to live out who we are in the time and place we find ourselves. To make a stand for the glory if God.

All Souls Day

We human beings are very good at lying to ourselves. No more is this apparent than in the face of death. There is a poem which is often read at funerals. It's actually ripped out of context from a sermon by the great Canon Henry Scott Holland. It goes like this:

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

This is a lie. It is a cruel lie which doesn't take human beings, our deepest emotions, loves, and losses seriously. Death is not nothing. It is a cruel, and universal, human reality, which takes loved ones away from us. It brings tears, suffering, loneliness and unfulfilled dreams.



Today we acknowledge this reality. Without attempting to deny the bitterness of death, we bring the entire human race, living and departed, in all its brokenness to our heavenly Father. We pray for all the dead. We remember the good and the bad, the young and the old, those who were close to us and those separated by time and space. Every single human being who ever lived on this planet is today remembered by the Church, which commends them all to the God who wills that all might be saved.

We don't pretend that the hope of resurrection means that we, who still live, don't feel the pain of loss. Nor do we pretend that the dead were perfect while they lived. We commend them to God asking that loose ends be tied up, sins forgiven, and the relationships that were never healed on earth be brought to perfection in eternity.

We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. But our hope is hard won, through the Cross, through our own loss, and through that process of growth continuing through death that the Church has traditionally called 'purgatory'.

This is a bittersweet day, a day both of hope and of sadness. Come to Mass if you can - here we offer for all the departed the sacrifice of the One who wept for a dead friend, Jesus who conquered death. If you can't get to Mass, say a prayer for all the dead, asking God that they may come to share in the glory of the saints which we celebrated yesterday.





A Prayer for the Dead

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

All Saints Day

My only-slightly mispent early youth on the Isle of Wight was spent in no small part at discos. These were very much the in thing for your Isle of Wight teenager: people had them for their birthdays, schools put them on for special events. This was during the 1980s. The rest of the world had been into discos about ten years previously, and had by now moved onto other things. But this was, as I say, the Isle of Wight.

One of the the bands whose music one danced to most often at your Isle of Wight disco was the Communards. A synth-pop duo, one member of this has subsequently been ordained as a priest. I mention this because Fr Richard Coles, as he is called, has just released a book - Lives of the Improbable Saints. He has been trailing this on the Internet for some months, and I've been following it avidly. We learn about saints who sat on pillars, saints who annoyed everybody around them, saints who undertook the most absurdly pathological penances, saints who (apparently) levitated, and so on.

The saints canonised by Holy Mother Church were, on the evidence of this book, a bunch of weirdos. But they were God's Holy Weirdos.

And there's the point - frail, funny, things that human beings are, God calls us as we are, with our quirky personalities, peculiarities, weaknesses, and strengths. Warts and all God calls us to holiness, that is, to wholeness. God calls us as we are to, through his grace, be the people we were always created to be.

The saints recognised by the Church are a sign that this is possible, that God's grace can be triumphant in people like you and me. May they pray for us as we continue on our journey, growing into the people God calls us to be.