Low Sunday 24 Apr 2022 Sermon

Low Sunday (Divine Mercy) 24 April 2022 Extending mercy

Christ has entrusted to the Church the work of forgiveness (Gospel).

Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them: and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (Jn 20,23)  He would expect that the Church would be of like mind to Himself, especially on the point of mercy.

If there is one thing we know about Our Lord it is that He has a merciful Heart. He wants to forgive sinners, to restore them to the life which was intended for them.

He seeks out the lost sheep (Lk 15,4-7); He spares the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8,1-11); He forgives the Good Thief (Lk 23,39-43) and all who were crucifying Him (Lk 23,34).

By His saving death He has reconciled humanity to God such that anyone who sincerely asks for mercy will receive it, and be admitted or re-admitted to the fold.

For various reasons not everyone asks for mercy, but still Christ continues to offer it.

For our purposes His mercy is infinite; at no point does it run out. We have to be sincere in our contrition, but with that one proviso we can go again and again to draw from His mercy.

We would like to have a bank account where we could do that, but with Mercy we can.

God will do more than offer Mercy; He will exert some pressure on each person to seek it. Thus we can understand the things that ‘go wrong’ in our lives and in the world.

People ask, Why does God allow suffering? One reason is to force everyone to turn to Him in prayer asking for that mercy they now realize they need (cf ancient Israel who would come to realise why they were losing all their battles… if they would return to God they would win again.) Return, Israel, to the Lord your God… Your sins have been your downfall!... Say to Him:    “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously (Hos 14,12).

He wants His Church to be as lavish in mercy as He is Himself.

So we offer the Sacrament of Penance, which enables sinners to come back to life.

And our overall attitude needs to be merciful.

This may not always be easy. Sometimes we don’t want the sinner to repent; we would rather punish him, from a spirit of revenge.

Punishment has its place but it must always be understood as benefitting the offenders, not just emptying anger upon them.

It is very human to wish harm on our enemies, but not human enough – it is not the new humanity established in Christ which seeks the wellbeing of the offender.

He wants us to want the forgiveness of those who offend us. We want them to know the love of God and come to full union with Him

It is understandable if we don’t like someone who hurts us, but if that person changes then we can like him, and that change is what we seek.

Take St Paul, for instance. Early Christians might have wished him dead, but after his conversion he was a prize member of the Church.

God can see a lot further than we can. We must be careful wishing people dead!

We should not wish harm on others apart from salutary punishment which might help them to see the error of their ways. Even then we don’t rejoice in their misfortune, only sincerely wanting them to come to union with God.

When a sinner repents we rejoice cf there is more joy in heaven over one who repents (Lk 15, 7)

We rely too much on mercy ourselves to begrudge it to others. Instead, we ask mercy for all others, including those who begrudge mercy to others!

We drink from the chalice of Christ’s Blood, which is shed ‘for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins’…

It is difficult to act a certain way before we see the result, such as having to like sinners before they are likeable.

We call on Our Lord who died for us while we were still sinners. (Rom 5,8)

Easter Sunday 17 Apr 2022 Sermon

Easter Sunday 17 April 2022 Still true

Imagine that you are in the garden with Mary Magdalene on that original Easter Sunday, and  you do not know the story as you do now.

Imagine the sense of loss and grief in a moment turned to great joy, such as Mary experienced. And that is your position also.

Grief turns into joy. This is today’s feast.

But something has gone wrong. It should have been the case that from initial rapture the existing disciples would have held onto that Good News; and the Church should have become stronger and stronger, gathering more disciples and eventually just about everyone, into its ranks.

I saw a film once where some pre-historic people had just discovered fire. They had come across it accidentally, but not knowing how it started they had to be careful not to let the existing flame go out. Precisely the Church’s problem in every age.

We have moments of strong faith, clear insight, even a conversion experience. But how do we keep the fire lit? How do we take that intense joy of Resurrection morning and carry it all through the rest of our lives?

We face the choice: do we stay with Christ Risen or do we drift off into the vague world of unbelief and confusion?

Of course we know we should want to stay with Christ, but there are many obstacles in our way – either our own doing, such as our own sin; or the difficulties of living in a non-Christian world, such as we have everywhere we look.

My own sin complicates things, because when I defy God I am implicitly rejecting that moment in the garden. He is Risen, but sorry I am busy with other things.

The world around us complicates things because it has forgotten (or never knew) that it was created to know, love and serve God, and so pursues lesser objectives.

And people blame God when they should be blaming sin, for what goes wrong in the world.

We remember all the major aspects of our faith in a yearly cycle of seasons and feasts. All these events (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Second Coming) are put before us so that we can keep that flame lit

If we neglect to observe these events we will lose the light and the faith too.

We repeat our beliefs, such as in the Creed, not because we doubt them but to drive them home more firmly, so firmly that they can never be lost.

Some will say that the Resurrection never happened. It has as much evidence as other events around that time, events which nobody doubts (eg the Roman empire and all its doings).

And it is not difficult to believe in life after death if we believe in a God who has infinite power. It is no harder for Him to raise a dead body than to make a body in the first place.

Our own weakness and the surrounding environment make it harder to maintain faith, but not impossible. It just means we have to work harder to keep that faith at a high pitch, so we have some evangelistic effect on those around us.

Everyone who is converted would have others to thank for contributing to that result. Somebody helped to convert me; in my turn I help somebody else to convert, and so it goes on.

Go tell My brothers (Mt 28,10) Go and baptise all nations (Mt 28,19). Individual, or the whole human race, everyone needs to know that Christ is risen.

The news is still good, and still true. Good because of what it offers. True because time has no effect on it. Time might affect our response to the truth but not the truth itself.

Far from cooling off over time, our faith should increase as we discover more and more God's goodness and power.

If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him;  if we endure, we shall also reign with Him (2 Tm 2,11-12)

Passion Sunday 3 Apr 2022 Sermon

Passion Sunday 3 April 2022 Sacrifice

In His public ministry Christ revealed His high connections gradually and carefully.

He did not want to tax the peoples’ faith unduly.

We can understand why someone who did not know the whole story could be taken aback by Our Lord’s claims.

Many people claim to be something special, even divine. We are not accustomed to people being either that good or that powerful.

We could excuse some initial caution but the Pharisees maintained their hostility all the way, to the point of blind hatred. They should have been more humble and they should have checked their facts. Our Lord’s messiahship was all there in the prophecies if one looked carefully (eg suffering servant, Is 53)

His message is not so hard to believe if we come from the view that God is benevolent and totally in control. He is all-giving, lacks nothing, needs nothing, but likes to give to those who do need it.

He gives to the people at two levels.

One was to give outward signs of salvation, especially in the miracles of healing, and even raising from the dead. This much proves that God is kind and good, and powerful.

The other level was deeper and not so easily understood. It was that He would be the sacrifice for the sins of the world, replacing the previous sacrifices of animals and crops, with the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice. (cf today’s epistle, Heb 9,11-15)

He could have just gone on at the first level, working miracles left and right. And we would have been happy with that.

But there was a deeper point He was making. He wanted to heal the human heart, not just bodily illnesses, but the way people think, the way they love; to set them free from all that is sinful, or resulting from sin.

By being the perfect sacrifice He was giving the human race a new chance at life. They would no longer need to be punished – because now they have been reconciled with God the Father.

Prison doors could be left open and the prisoners come out, but unless they have changed their ways of thinking they will offend again. It is much harder to change the way someone thinks, but this is what Our Lord was aiming to do.

We offer the Lamb of God in atonement for our sins, and at the same time we are transformed within, and set free from any desire to re-offend.

Like Our Lord we operate at two levels. We do works of charity, and that is good. But we also make ourselves available to share in the Cross of Christ, so that deeper healing can take place. We might even die for the sake of Christ, as many have done.

Perhaps we are not strong enough for this. That strength will come with enough exposure to the influence of Christ.

Thus we help establish the kingdom of God, where His ways are given their due respect.

This life is as hard as it is because sin has made something very hard that should have been very simple. That God loves us enough to take on human flesh and to die for our sins. Our sins not His!

Through the Church and the Sacraments Our Lord can now reach people in every time and place, and anyone can call on His Name.

His perfect offering pleads for us at the throne of God, and God's mercy will change anyone who takes it seriously.

Let us enter the two weeks of Passiontide with humility and gratitude. May Our Lord continue to heal us at all levels.