Releasing the Arrow

1 Cor 1:3-9; Matthew 7:7-11

We’re here this evening to remember all the good things we’ve received: from our parents, our teachers, and our friends. For many of you, the friendships you’ve made in St Thomas’ will be very important, and I hope that you have found friends who will stand by you for the rest of your life. The great Dominican saint after whom your school is named, St Thomas Aquinas knew just what a blessing friends were. He said: “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship”. So, for those true friendships that we’ve found, for the things we have learnt, and for those experiences we’ve had in school which make us who we are today; for all the good that these have given us, it is right that we remember and be thankful.

Which is why we Catholics gather for a Mass. Because it is in this sacred action of the Liturgy that we remember and are thankful above all else to God. Because every pleasure, all love, and every good thing comes from God, given to us through our families, our friends, our teachers;  through so many people, events, and experiences. Whatever that is good, delightful, and life-giving ultimately comes from God. And so, it is right that we give thanks firstly to him. But in the Mass, we don’t just remember God’s faithfulness and goodness to us through these familiar ways. In fact, we remember and give thanks for the greatest gift our Father in heaven gave to humankind: his own dear Son, Jesus Christ. 

Because as Christians we believe that God came to live among us, and he knows our weaknesses and sorrow, as well as our joys and hopes. And so, he died and rose for our sakes, so that we can be united to him in heaven through the gift of grace. Which is God’s own life and activity at work in our lives, working alongside us to bring good out of everything we do, perfecting our imperfections, if we let him. And God does this, standing by us, if we ask him to, so that our lives will not end in frustration and pain, but will lead to unending joy. For all our human searching for truth, goodness, beauty, happiness, and friendship will find its most fulfilling answer in heaven when we shall see God face-to-face. But until we enjoy this true friendship with him we will never be fully satisfied, constantly looking for other lesser goods. 

So, continue throughout your lives to seek God’s friendship, and, whatever you do, open your hearts to him and trust in his love. He alone is the truest Friend of all humanity, always working with our spirit, our desires, and our reason and intellect to bring about our ultimate good, to satisfy our deepest desires for all the joys that true friendship brings. 

Even now, here in this Mass, Jesus gives us a preview of that heavenly joy, a promise of his faithful love and friendship: he gives himself to us in Holy Communion. If St Thomas is right to say that there is “nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship”, then let us treasure God’s gift of the Eucharist above anything else on earth, because in it we taste and see the goodness of God, our true Friend. 

HOMILY for 4th Sunday of Easter

Acts 4:8-12; Ps 118; 1 Jn 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

What does it mean to say that something is good? In the first instance, we’d probably think of moral excellence. But if I say that Cecilia is a good singer, we’re more likely to mean that she can sing well, and so possesses a talent or skill to a high degree of excellence. And what if I say that this wine is good? This probably means that it is exemplary, a fine specimen of its type; it is properly what it is meant to be. But each of these meanings of good is in some way pleasant, attractive, and enjoyable. Hence we also speak of a good time, or a good night out, and we are naturally drawn to good things. 

It is this sense of the attractiveness of the good that underlies how we should understand Jesus as the “good shepherd”. The Greek word being used here that is translated as ‘good’ is kalos. And its primary meaning is beautiful. But not a kind of superficial, skin-deep, cosmetic beauty, nor the debased sense of beauty we often have today which sees beauty as something purely subjective, but rather, beauty as something more essential and objective, that is independent of us, which belongs to a person or thing, and which we encounter and appreciate in another.  

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Acts 9:31-42; Ps 115; John 6:60-69

- preached on the CSU Pilgrimage to Traquair House

In a place like this where so many people suffered persecution and hardship, and risked their property, social status, and even their lives for the practice of the Catholic Faith, today’s Gospel has a particular resonance. For some of Jesus’ disciples complained because they found his teaching on the Eucharist too hard; they couldn’t tolerate it, and eventually they left him. And they wouldn’t be the last of Jesus’ followers to find the mystery of the Real Presence too hard to accept. It became one of the sticking points of the Reformation, and indeed, it still is a point of division between Catholics and Protestants today. And being persecuted for Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist is not a bygone thing. Only recently Richard Dawkins, with characteristic magnanimity, urged fellow atheists in America to publicly ridicule us Catholics for our belief in the Real Presence. 

And there are, I’m sure, many other beliefs that we would be ridiculed, reviled, and shunned for. Such as our beliefs concerning the nature of marriage being a covenant between a man and a woman, or the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception, or the dignity of suffering and dying naturally. At some point in our lives, each of these or some other aspect of our Christian faith, will have an impact on our lives, making demands on us concerning the way we live, and the choices we make. In those moments, Christ’s teaching may seem hard, difficult to understand, and maybe, even intolerable. And perhaps we may even be tempted to leave Christ, leave his Body, the Church, and go by a more tolerable, more up-to-date, more reasonable way. 

And yet, for centuries, as the people who lived and worshipped here remind us, Christians have clung to the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, prepared to endure fines, division among Christians and families, and even a grisly martyrdom. Why? What does their sacrifice and tenacity, their courageous witness, say to us today?

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1 Pt 5:5-14; Ps 88; Mark 16:15-20

My ‘CTS New Daily Missal’ provides a helpful summary of the tradition concerning who we celebrate today: “St Mark (died c.75), the author of the Gospel bearing his name, is often identified with the young man who ran away when the Lord was arrested. His Gospel gives the teaching and memoirs of St Peter. He joined St Paul and St Barnabas on their first missionary journey and later became St Paul’s secretary in Rome. He is thought to have established the Church in Alexandria, and to have died a martyr there”.

Except that, like the other evangelists, exactly who St Mark was is rather difficult to pin down. It’s like a detective investigation trying to track down the historical evangelist, and the traditional account of Mark’s identity is now thought to be a conflation of several different New Testament figures called Mark. 

But this is not new. In fact, the evangelists’ identities have been debated since the second century, yet it seemed unimportant to some of the Church Fathers such as St Irenaeus just who the person of Mark was. Hippolytus of Rome, however, rather tantalizingly refers to him as ‘Mark the stumpy-fingered’. It is widely accepted that Mark’s gospel was written in Rome, and Hippolytus’ mention of a Mark with a specific physical attribute suggests that the author of Mark’s gospel was known and remembered by the Christians in Rome. But what mattered most was not who Mark was but what he wrote, and although he need not have been an eyewitness to Christ’s life, his source must have been, otherwise the early Christians would not have accepted his writings as an authentic witness to Christ’s life, and disseminated it so quickly. From the second century, the Church Father Papias asserted that Mark’s source was no less than St Peter, first bishop of the Roman Church, and there is little reason for us to disbelieve this important apostolic basis for St Mark’s Gospel.  

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Optional memorial of Saint George

Act 6:8-15; Ps 118; John 6:22-29

– preached at the Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Edinburgh

Many of the readings of Eastertide have been about witnessing Christ’s resurrection. For example, yesterday’s Gospel ended with these words: “You are witnesses to these things”, and of course the apostles did see Christ die on the cross, and they saw his risen Body, and they experienced the new life of the resurrection through Christ’s mercy, forgiveness, and living presence. Thus, they are “witnesses to these things”. But after Christ’s ascension, there are many others who are called witnesses of the Resurrection, such as St Stephen. Although they had not seen and touched the risen Lord as the apostles had, they too experienced the new life of the resurrection through their faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. As St Luke says in today’s First Reading, “Stephen was filled with grace and power”, and “it was the Spirit that prompted what he said”. So, too, with us who are called to be “witnesses to these things” today. Through the same Holy Spirit, we are called today to be disciples of the risen Lord, to experience Christ’s resurrection through knowing his mercy, love, and forgiveness, and so, to live a new life in the Spirit. 

And one of the hallmarks of this new life is a new way of seeing the world and relating to it, and its novelty can seem threatening as it turns the logic of our world upside down. So, because of Easter, death is no longer a final nihilistic end but is the gateway to eternal life; suffering is, in some way, redemptive; and our God is found among the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized. Christians who see the world in this new Easter light thus live a life that bears witness to their new life in the Spirit. And sometimes, their faithful witness to this new Easter life may even lead to their death. Hence, those who die for the Faith are called Witnesses, in Greek, martures, martyrs. 

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Acts 3:13-15. 17-19; Ps4; 1 Jn 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

At first glance this Gospel seems very similar to last Sunday’s in that Jesus is proving to his disciples the physicality of his risen body. He’d asked Thomas to reach out and touch his wounds, and today, it seems, Jesus asks for some food to eat as an indication that he’s not a ghost. However, today’s Gospel is like last Sunday’s in another more important way. Last week, I suggested that being invited to touch Christ’s wounds is an expression of his trust, of forgiveness, and renewed friendship. And this week, we see yet another expression of reconciliation and divine mercy: Jesus shares a meal with his disciples. 

For the Greek phrase enopion auton that is literally translated as “he took it [the fish] and ate before them” can also be translated idiomatically as he ate ‘at their table’. And, as this scene immediately follows on from St Luke’s account of Christ’s appearance to his disciples at Emmaus, the theme of table fellowship is continued. At Emmaus, Christ was known “in the breaking of the bread”, and here, back in Jerusalem, the risen Christ is known through the eating of fish. And the use of bread and fish is not accidental but is full of symbolism because, earlier on in the Gospel, Christ had fed five thousand with just five loaves and two fish. So bread and fish are signs of God’s providence for his people, for his miraculous presence among us, creating a new world in which all “ate and were satisfied”. Moreover, bread and fish were early Christian symbols of the Eucharist, the table fellowship at which all are fed and satisfied by Christ himself. So, just as the Emmaus account points to Christ’s abiding presence in the Eucharist, so today’s Gospel continues Luke’s point about being able to recognize the risen Lord in the Eucharist. And as Jesus eats the fish at the table of the disciples as a sign of friendship, forgiveness, and reconciliation, so St Luke is reminding us that the Eucharist is our Christian sacred meal of friendship, forgiveness, and communion with God and one another. 

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Acts 4:32-37; Ps 92; John 3:7-15

Living in windy Edinburgh, I have been amazed at how the wind suddenly picks up, and comes rushing across the Meadows. From our priory above here we can both hear the roar of the wind, and see the undulating waves of the trees. In its power and unexpectedness, this wind is rather awesome, and I recall on one occasion saying: “the Spirit is active again today”. For, like the wind, the Holy Spirit is awesome, powerful, and can be rather unexpected in what he inspires. And, of course, in Hebrew and in Greek, one word is used for both ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’: ruah in Hebrew, and pneuma in Greek, so that we have a delightful play of words so that we can say: “the wind blows where it wills…”, and at the same time understand it as “the Spirit blows where it wills…” 

But I don’t think that Jesus intends primarily to say that the Spirit is like the wind. Rather, his primary purpose is to answer Nicodemus’ question about how one can be born again, and Nicodemus has understood rebirth in a physical manner. So, Jesus points out that the rebirth he speaks of is invisible; it is spiritual. And, like the wind, our spiritual birth is also invisible. But even though this is mysterious and invisible, we can also, as with the wind, feel the effects of being born again in the Spirit.

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Acts 4:32-35; Ps 117; 1 Jn 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

St Augustine calls these past Octave days of Easter “days of pardon and mercy”. For when the risen Lord appears to his disciples gathered as a group for the first time, he immediately offers them his forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation. And this is summed up in the phrase, “Peace be with you”. For peace is the first gift of Easter. Not peace in the sense of the absence of military conflict, as such, but something of greater cosmic significance. The peace the risen Christ speaks of is primarily the reconciliation between sinful humanity and God; it is God’s loving mercy and his forgiveness. 

And this reconciliation brought about by Christ’s death and resurrection, by his obedience and loving self-offering, effects a new creation. Like the first (old) creation, God accomplishes the new through his Word and the Holy Spirit. So, on that Easter evening, “the first day of the week”, the incarnate Word speaks the new creation into being, breathing forth the Holy Spirit, and the whole universe is renewed through being reconciled to God. Indeed, God’s Spirit of Love, is, as St Augustine says, “its very self the forgiveness of sins”. So, when Christ gives the Spirit to his disciples, and thus, pours his love into their hearts, he is forgiving them their sins, giving them his peace, and hence, bringing about his new creation – a creation in which God’s own love and peace is given to humanity, and dwells in their hearts; a creation in which we are offered God’s mercy and friendship. This is what we mean by the life of grace, which is initiated in every Christian by the sacrament of baptism.

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Acts 10:34. 37-43; Ps 117; Col 3:1-4; Luke 24:13-35

Amid the splendour of our Paschal celebrations, and the certainty of the Triduum that the fasting and penitence of Good Friday is followed by the feasting and abundance of Easter, it’s easy to forget just how frightening and puzzling the first Easter was. There were no trumpets, no angelic choirs, nor countless sung ‘alleluias’. Rather, in St Luke’s account, there were three women silently creeping to the tomb at daybreak. There were just two angels who simply announced: “He is not here but has risen”. And there is disbelief, the women’s words dismissed by the apostles as an “idle tale”! Their story just doesn’t make any sense to them. So, the two men we encounter in today’s Gospel are leaving Jerusalem with their hope dashed and their hearts full of doubt and disbelief. Although they are headed for Emmaus, they are interiorly lost and directionless; St Luke says: “they stood still, looking sad”. 

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Ex 12:1-8, 11-14; Ps 116; 1 Cor 11:23-26; Jn 13:1-15

- originally published on Torch.op.org in 2011

My mother used to remind me before every meal to wash my hands, and despite my juvenile reluctance, as with so many maternal pronouncements, this injunction made much sense. For it was a hygienic practice conducive to good health. But since we don’t generally eat with our feet, foot-washing in preparation for sitting down to dine is somewhat less obviously sensible. So, leaving aside the fact that this was typically the task of a Gentile slave, one can appreciate Peter’s consternation. Moreover, travellers customarily had the dust washed off their feet when they entered a home but Christ and his companions had already sat down for supper; the expected moment for foot-washing had passed. Without the Evangelist’s theological gloss, Christ’s action at this point of the supper is indeed puzzling. 

Given the superfluous nature of foot-washing at this juncture, Peter, once he realizes that it is a symbolic act, understandably asks that all of him is washed. But Jesus insists on washing just the feet of his followers. We’re probably familiar with this as a sign of Christ’s humility and loving service which we’re then called to imitate, and that is true. However, rather than to just look at what Christ did, perhaps we should consider what Christ washed: feet. 

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Isa 50:4-9; Ps 68; Matt 26:14-24

Thirty pieces of silver is reckoned in the Old Testament to be the price of a slave, so Judas becomes a slave trader. But the irony is that, in fact, the roles are reversed. 

As we’ve heard on previous days, Judas had an inordinate love for money. And it is greed, or an unchecked desire for material comforts and pleasure that can enslave us. The greed for more money, and more stuff, can cause us to look for ever more opportunities to enrich ourselves, to spend more hours at work, and so, neglect our families and friends. It is a betrayal of sorts, and certainly a kind of enslavement. 

And, in fact, the man whom Judas has just sold is the most free. As Jesus says elsewhere, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn 10:18). And he demonstrates this freedom in what takes place next in St Matthew’s Gospel: he gives his Body and Blood to his disciples, and institutes the Eucharist. Jesus’ radical freedom is this freedom to love, to give himself totally for the good of another. With his own life, Jesus pays the price for our freedom from the slavery of sin and death. 

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