Post-Retreat

Last week we had a retreat led by Fr Stephen Wang, the Dean of Studies at Allen Hall seminary in the Archdiocese of Westminster. He gave some excellent reflections. You can have a look at his blog, Bridges and Tangents, where he writes about faith and culture. He is also the chaplain to Youth 2000, which has a prayer festival in Walsingham every August bank holiday, as well as other such events in different locations throughout the year. There is a real emphasis on Adoration and Confession, and the days are well attended by lay movements, religious orders and diocesan priests, who help run workshops and give talks during the events for the young people that are present.

During the retreat I was rereading Pope Benedict's homilies on Priesthood when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. Here are a few things he said that I really liked:

On not procrastinating in vocational discernment:
"There is a moment of Jesus Christ which one cannot put off and calculate and say: 'Yes, I want to all right, but at the moment it is still too risky for me. At the moment I still want to do this and that.' One can miss the moment of one's life, and with prudence gamble away the real worth of one's life never again to be able to recover it."

On priests accepting their weakness:
"[The priest] learns how through him God does great things, through is very weakness, and is full of joy that God has found someone as mean as him worthy of such mercy."

On being a disciple of Christ, who Ratzinger compares to Elijah in his fiery chariot:
"...discipleship demands that we have the courage to stand by is fiery chariot; that we have the courage to be near the fire which he came to cast upon the earth that it might be kindled... we must be ready to be burnt by him, to let ourselves be set on fire, with our hearts burning with the power of his word."

On faith as the most realistic worldview:
"I think we should find this courage once again: to recognise faith as the real objectivity, as the understanding that accepts the world in its true language."

Funeral of Fr Ben

Yesterday was the Funeral Mass of Fr Ben Grist in St John's Cathedral, Norwich. Fr David Bagstaff, the diocesan administrator, presided. The day before, Fr Mark Hackeson presided at the reception of the body and Evening Prayer. It was wonderful that the whole of Oscott seminary, including the domestic staff, were able to get a coach from Birmingham to attend the funeral. And there were many other people there, who knew Ben from various places along his checkered journey. It was good to see his family there, especially his dad and his brothers. Please continue to keep the family in your prayers, as well as Fr Ben himself, that he enjoys now the fulness of the Trinity's glory.  

Requiesce in Pace, Fr Ben!

Many of you will know about the Ordination of Fr Ben Grist for the diocese on June 30th, after the discovery that he had advanced liver cancer in his third year at seminary. Some of you will also know that he passed away early this morning, peacefully and having been given the Anointing of the Sick. He will be greatly missed in the diocese and by the guys here at the seminary. As Ben himself would be the first to admit, he was always something of a "free spirit", and found it a challenge to adapt to the rules and routines of institutional life! But he was a person of deep piety, with a child-like heart, who knew how to appreciate small graces. He would often be found sitting out under the trees in the seminary grounds, reading a book and taking in the sunshine. With his outgoing personality he was also a great friend and evangeliser of the domestic staff at the college, as well as the doctors and nurses in the hospitals. I think these last months of his illness were a great blessing for him in many ways, as he came to terms with what God was doing in his life, and his new role as a priest in the diocese. When I spoke to him a fortnight ago, he said of his illness: "When you're not in control, God is, and that's a blessing. Everything is a gift".

Please pray for Fr Ben, that he go straight to God. I know I have no authority to presume his eternal state, but I have an unofficial hunch that he will be a great intercessor for our diocese, and I for one will be asking for his prayers in return.

Requiescat in Pace.

Happy Feast of the Confessor

Happy Feast of St Edward the Confessor!

When I say "Feast" I use that word as it is used in common parlance. Actually, in the English Church, today is a Memorial, which means liturgically-speaking that we don't sing the Gloria at Mass or the Te Deum at the Office of Readings as we would on a "Feast" technically so-called. We only use the prayers proper to him at Mass and the Divine Office.

Or so I thought... I've discovered (or possibly rediscovered since this time last year!) that at some point since the Breviary was published today's celebration appears to have been relegated to an Optional Memorial, meaning the priest can choose whether or not he acknowledges Edward by using his prayers in the liturgy.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems a shame that this national saint-king - the only King of England in fact to be canonised - is not observed with more ceremony! Along with our own East Anglian king St Edmund the Martyr, and Pope St Gregory the Great, St Edward was regarded as the official patron of England until St George was made so in 1351. There seems to be a lot of contention over the issue of whether St Edward was a successful monarch or not. Shortly after his death in 1066, England was conquered by the Normans. But he was apparently loved for his gentle and generous spirit. He avoided starting any wars. He did not enforce the Danegelt (a tax which Viking invaders had periodically demanded from England). He gave willingly to the poor. He loved participating in the liturgy. He built Westminster Abbey (though not as it appears today). Perhaps it was his gentleness that made him prone to pushy opportunitists like the Godwin family. Such was appropriate to his saintly gentleness, but let us not be meek on his behalf and allow him to go unnoticed!

I'm sure our historian confrere Simon could tell us more, and that more accurately, about St Edward. At any rate, let us invoke St Edward's intercession for those in government in our country, that they make decisions not based on superficial motives but out of a real love for what is true, good and beautiful. We can also pray to him, the Confessor, as a model for us in this Year of Faith. He can help us to live our faith in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, great or small.

The Year of Faith

So it begins! The Year of Faith which the Holy Father has inaugurated on the anniversary of the opening of Vatican II (1962) and the publishing of the subsequent Catechism (1992). It is a year in which he invites us to enter more deeply into the faith, as through a door into our true home:

"The door of faith" (Acts 14: 27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. (Pope Benedict, Apostolic Letter "Porta Fidei", 1) 

Far from being something closed, then, faith is something that opens us to the full panorama of our human horizons, where earth and Heaven touch. For this reason, the Catechism dares to say that

faith is already the beginning of eternal life. (CCC 163)

 In this Year, we are encouraged to renew our faith in two ways:

i) we renew our fundamental act of faith, by which we place our trust in God alone, whose initiative of grace invites this response from us. In this way we imitate Mary, who offered her life to God in complete confidence, thereby loosening the knot of Eve's disobedience (see Lumen Gentium 56).

ii) We turn again to the content of our faith, the fidei depositum. What do we believe? What has God entrusted to us through his Word in Scripture and in the Church's Tradition? Who is Christ? How does God act in human history? How are we saved? What is the Church? What is the purpose of the sacraments? What is the role of the saints? We ponder these questions anew as we reflect on our Creed. Again, we imitate Mary, who pondered in her heart the mystery of her Son, who is the fulness of revelation (Lk 2: 51).

So during this year I for one will be thinking of ways I can renew my confidence in and dependence on God, as well as how I can internalise the mysteries of the faith which God reveals in the Church for our salvation.

There is a Mass in St John's cathedral Norwich today to celebrate the start of this year. Though I cannot be there, I am thinking of and praying for the diocese as we enter into this privileged time!

Popular rock group professes Tridentine anthropology

Yesterday I bought the recently released second album from the alternative, English, folk rock group Mumford & Sons. The album, styled "Babel", was released on the feast day of Our Lady of Walsingham (probably a coincidence), and is the fasting selling UK album of 2012. In their first song their singer makes clear where they stand on the Reformation shibboleth of "sola gratia" ("grace alone"). Mr Mumford sings repeatedly: "I believe in grace and choice!"    

OK, perhap he just thought it sounded nice, and it happens to rhyme with the previous line. But funnily enough, this is exactly what the Council of Trent had to say on the issue.

In response to the Lutheran claim that our human nature is completely corrupt and our good works make no difference to our salvation because we are saved through grace alone, Trent said in its Decree on Justification in 1547:

"Those who through their sin were turned away from God, awakened and assisted by his grace, are disposed to turn to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace".

This two-fold profession of God's grace and our free assent is only a recognition of what is in Scripture, to which Trent refers:

"...When it is said in Sacred Scripture: 'Return to  me and I will return to you" [Zech 1: 3], we are reminded of our freedom; but when we reply: 'Restore us to thyself, O Lord, that we may be restored' [Lam : 21], we acknowledge that God's grace precedes us."

In other words, our salvation is the work of God's grace, without which we can do nothing; but we play an active part in cooperating with that grace. This is an optimistic understanding of the human person, acknowledging that our nature is good because created by God, even if it is damaged by sin. We are in the image of God because we are what Blessed John Paul II called self-determining beings, that is, on a human level we determine who we are by the way we choose to live and the habits we form. God's grace enables us to do this.

Choice, by the way, is actually a lesser, earthly type of freedom. In heaven the saints will not choose to love God, they simply will love him, because they have attained that higher freedom in which they participate effortlessly in the glory of the Trinity. 

So thank you Mr Mumford for recalling us to our Catholic anthropology.

Faith, Food & Fun (ie. Blessing of Beer)

I went to the baptism of the baby of some friends of mine today as the godfather, and after a beautiful ceremony we moved next door to the reception, where the the father asked me to bless the beer. Believe it or not there is such a blessing! Perhaps it seems a trivial thing to do. Of course it is not a patch on the mystical incorporation into the Trinitarian life that the baby received in baptism. But I think it highlights the truism that the Christian faith is something that engages the totality of human existence. By sanctifying the culinary dimension, the Church makes her home in our home. It reminds me of the late Bishop Michael advocating "Faith, Food, and Fun"  - perhaps we should change "Food" in this case to "Fermentation"! Moreover, I take my cue from Fiddler on the Roof. When the Rabbi is asked if there is a blessing for a new sewing machine, he says "Of course! There is a blessing for everything!"



Incidentally, the beer was East Anglian...



The Overwhleming Quality of Grace

On Wednesday, which is our free day at the seminary, I went to see Anna Karenina with a fellow seminarian. I'm ashamed to say I've never read the book, so I can't say how faithful an interpretation the new film is. While I was disappointed that there were a few unnecessary scenes, by no means fleeting (cue to close eyes!), I liked the way the public and social life of the characters was played out on a stage, but in such a way that it merged with reality. Cleverly done, and quite wonderful I thought. The selfishness of Anna, the title character, and her lover Alexei was fairly depressing. In their infantile infatuation with one another, all sense of commitment was thrown to the winds, even to the point that Anna spurned the near-heroic forgiveness and patience of her husband. They sought merely to indulge their own passions, and as a consequence, Anna began to doubt the authenticity of Alexei's love, while Alexei grew bored of Anna's emotional stranglehold on him. This doubt, resentment and disillusionment is the inevitable result of sin, even if sin presents itself to us in an attractive guise at first. God warns Adam and Eve that the illicit fruit leads to death, and this death is not just physical but spiritual. Sin makes us bored and boring.

Therefore I was moved by the contrasting story of Kitty and Levin. Kitty originally spurns Levin's suit to her in favour of the dashing Alexei, but when Alexei in turn spurns her for Anna, Kitty becomes sick and depressed. Later on in the film, Levin meets Kitty again, when she has learned of her mistake but has no hope that Levin will propose again after the initial slight. Levin is unchanged, however, and when Kitty discovers this from him she becomes tearfully overwhelmed by her happiness and gratitude for his faithful love. Call me a softy, but this was my favourite scene of the film. In contrast to the cynical, possessive love of Anna, who feels she deserves it, Kitty is the one who gratefully receives a love she knows she has not earned. The Cure of Ars said that if the priest knew what he truly was, he would die of love. I think that's the case for grace as well. If we truly realised how unmerited the grace of God is, for us human beings who have countless times spurned it, then we would be helpless with wonder and love in the face of such faithful gratuity. It would overwhelm us.

Happy Feast!

I know it's a bit late, but hope you've had a Happy Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham! I said her litany on behalf of the diocese today...

The Holy Land 2: Bethlehem

Bethlehem, as many of you will know, is one of the largest Palestinian territories, walled off from Jerusalem which it borders. I was surprised at how the suburbs of Jerusalem suddenly turned into the threshold of the town of the nativity as we drove along. The infamous wall is very imposing, and manned by young Israeli guards – all Israelis are required to do military service for a time. We usually got through the checkpoints without any fuss, though the Palestinians who have permission to come out of Bethlehem (for work, perhaps) are sometimes detained for hours before they are allowed to pass through. The Palestinian side of the wall is covered with graffiti recording the bitter tensions between Palestine and Israel. We should pray for an end to these tensions, and make an effort to support the Palestinian Christian population, which has been haemorrhaging in recent decades as many emigrate from their homeland. Most of the population seem to be Muslim, and I was awoken a few mornings by the imam’s call to prayer at 4.30 am...

As in Jerusalem, the Basilica of the Nativity is used by different ancient Christian traditions, with the Greek Orthodox once again appearing to have the biggest privileges in the original site. (The Church of St Catherine which adjoins the ancient basilica is where the Catholics worship, and it is the church in which Midnight Mass from Bethlehem is televised.) “Noble simplicity” doesn’t seem to be an architectural/ liturgical phenomenon with which the Orthodox are enamoured. I was amused at how there were gigantic Christmas baubles hanging all over the chapel! After all – unlike the White Witch’s Narnia – it’s always Christmas in Bethlehem! The site of the basilica dates back to the time of Constantine, who built a church over the cave which is believed to be the place of Jesus’ birth. This allegedly makes it the oldest continuous church in the world. But the present building is Byzantine in origin. The medieval Crusaders added to it, as they did many other churches in the Holy Land.



The interior, minus the Christmas baubles



One interesting change over time is the gradual reduction of the size of the front entrance. Originally a huge door, it got smaller and smaller as there was more need to defend the Church from invading horsemen. But this historical incident gives way to a spiritual interpretation. We can only enter into the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation by becoming small and humble ourselves, by becoming “poor in spirit”, like Mary and Joseph, or like St Therese in more recent times...

"The Little Way"



As well as venerating the cave of the Nativity beneath the sanctuary, we got to celebrate Mass in another cave under the church very near the old burial site of St Jerome, the Scripture scholar who translated the Bible into Latin in the 4th century. His body is now in St Maria Maggiore in Rome, as is the manger. So I prayed for all Scripture scholars, and for a new flourishing of the traditional four-fold sense of Scripture, not just the historical-critical method (more on that some other time).

The site of the Nativity

Here is a clip of an Armenian liturgy taking place in their side chapel in the basilica, very similar to one I witnessed there, only the one I saw was much more spendid, and the priest was wearing a blue crown while the cantors/ servers/ deacons (?) were wearing blue copes. Come to think of it, it might have been their celebration of the Assumption, which is later than ours.

More accounts of my adventures to follow!