St Edmund of Canterbury, Loughton

Dear Friends in Christ, 

St. John the Baptist is an outstanding model of faith. His presence on the stage of salvation history is vital. Apart from the story of his birth, we know nothing of his early life other than he grew strong in spirit. His simple and uncompromising message of repentance and conversion has spoken down through the centuries. Jesus affirmed his greatness; and saw in his ministry the forerunner referred to by the prophet Malachi. The Lord also identified the Baptist with the return of the prophet Elijah.

By calling all people to repent, John the Baptist’s message and ministry took on universal significance. In Tertio millennio adveniente Pope St. John Paul II referred to this summons in the context of speaking about the Second Vatican Council as a turning a point in church history: ‘The Council, while not imitating the sternness of John the Baptist who called for repentance and conversion on the banks of the Jordan, did show something of the prophet of old, pointing out with fresh vigour to the men and women of today that Jesus Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, the Redeemer of humanity and the Lord of history.

The Second Vatican Council was the benchmark, challenging believers with a fresh renewal of penance and action. Most of us do not look forward to confessing our sins, acknowledging the wrongs we have done and repenting. Peter however, offers us a different view of repentance: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” To repent should not be a burden but a release. When we humbly acknowledge that we have done wrong, acted badly and sinned, there is rejoicing in heaven and, as the Syriac theologian Rabbula of Edessa pointed out, we are drawn back into Christ’s presence: ‘O Christ, you take the sinfulness from sinners, and when we repent you welcome us beside you.’ Sin is not a problem for God, because where sin abounds his grace super-abounds.

From the first moment Jesus gave his command to the Apostles to, ‘Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News’, the faithful people of God have responded! It is an invitation freely given by Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church, on her part has tried to the best of her ability to encourage and support all the faithful in their Journey of Faith. Sometimes along that journey people can lose their way, often taking other paths. But, they are still part of the family, and we really do miss them when they’re not with us. We pray for them, and I truly believe that Jesus is constantly searching out our brothers and sisters. We can also help in this mission; if you know of anyone, it may be a family member, or a neighbour or friend, who no longer actively participates with the worshipping community, have the courage to invite them to accompany you to one of our weekend masses. Obviously, there are so many other distractions out in the world today that it’s so easy to be distracted with regards commitment in faith; but the fact is that Jesus Christ came into our world to show us the way to God, and he doesn’t want to lose anyone along the way that leads to him. Sometimes, when people have been away from the practice of the faith, they often feel nervous and embarrassed about coming home. There will always be a Big Welcome! This is real Evangelisation, because it really can enable and help all of us recognise the importance of what it means to be a member of God’s Family of Faith. Have Courage!

Dear Friends in Christ, 

Other than the Sermon on the Mount, which contains the Beatitudes, Jesus taught chiefly through parables. In doing this he revealed the profoundly human fascination with the power of the story. We all like a good story don’t we? They capture not just our imagination but also our hearts.

Storytelling and the telling of parables was common in the ancient world. However, Jesus’ parables are unlike any others the world has ever known – they are unique. Scholars (among them many atheists), specialists in linguistics and ancient languages, testify that his parables reveal a mind the like of which the world had no seen before and never will again. Of course, faith teaches us that this is because the parables of Jesus are divine. When we read or study them, we are encountering the mind of God. The parable of the growing seed captures the generous and lavish work of God’s grace in our lives because God (who is the sower of the seed) spreads his grace lavishly and generously on our world and into our lives.

One of the greatest revolutions that still needs to occur in the Church is a paradigm shift in our thinking about baptismal grace. We need to cultivate a radical theology of baptism, for the grace we received at baptism is always at work in us, night and day, whether we are asleep or awake. Baptism is the gateway through which we all have passed into the joys of the Christian life, and God’s call and grace are irrevocable. We can often think that we are a long way from the baptismal grace we received but this is not so, for wherever sin abounds, God’s grace super abounds. The waters of baptism are more powerful than the mighty waves of the ocean.

Baptism is the precious pearl the treasure in the field, the seed sowed by the sower – baptismal sheds light on all the parables. Many, if not most of us, were baptised as babies, and as a result this incredible, amazing, life-changing event isn’t even in our memories: this is why we need to rediscover it, because the seed of baptismal grace is the key to living the Christian life.

‘The diver brings us pearls out of the sea. Be baptised and bring up from the water the purity that is hidden there , the pearl that is set like a jewel in the crown of the Godhead’ (St. Ephraem the Syrian)

Dear Friends in Christ, 

It is with great pleasure, that on behalf of the parish I would like to welcome Mr Michael Hoye, a Seminarian from the Pontifical North American College in Rome, who has come to spend a couple of weeks on pastoral placement. As you know through the years we have hosted many seminarians, many of whom are now priests back in the United States. Please extend Michael your warm hospitality. He has written a little biography as follows:

“Dear Parishioners, Greetings! My name is Michael Hoye and I am happy to follow a long line of seminarians who have studied in Rome and have served in your parish with Fr. John. I come from the United States and grew up in a small rural town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts named Sutton, which is situated in my home diocese of Worcester. Yes, both my town and diocese are named after those towns in England which you might be familiar with. I pray that being from New England does not act as a hindrance to our relationships while I am with you. I am the last of seven children and we all grew up playing soccer, sailing and working on a local farm picking strawberries and corn for our first jobs. Before entering the Seminary I graduated from Assumption College and ran cross-country and track and field while studying philosophy and theology for four years. I was sent to Catholic University of America in Washington DC to finish philosophy during my first year of Seminary; and after that short year my Bishop chose to send me to the North American College in Rome to study Theology. I look forward to getting to know you all as we worship our Lord and help to bring froth the Word of God into our world!”

I have always encouraged the seminarians to see as much of London and the surrounding district as possible. If anyone is going anywhere of interest and you want to ask Michael to accompany you, or to a football match, or if you want to invite him to your home, please feel free to do so! Michael will be with us until 25^th June; and then Matthew Duclos from the diocese of Albany, New York, will be arriving for five weeks until the 1^st August.

Tenth Sunday of the Year 2018

Dear Friends in Christ, 

‘The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis is a masterpiece and a must-read. If you haven’t read it, you really should try and get hold of a copy. St. Thomas More said: ‘Satan proudeth spirit cannot bear to be mocked’, but this is precisely what C.S. Lewis does in his amusing yet deadly serious account of the training of a younger demon by an older, more experienced one. He also 

wisely counselled: ‘There are two equal and opposite errors…about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.’

Certainly today many will say that belief in demons or Satan belongs to the ancient world, a bygone era. In our more sophisticated age, medicine and especially psychiatry shed new light on behaviour that once might have been called demon possession, but today is understood to be mental illness of one kind or another. Indeed, psychiatry and psychology are sciences which do explain a wide range of human behaviour. The problem believers have is that the New Testament contains accounts of deliverance from evil, the teaching of the Church since the beginning has upheld its belief in the devil and his realm, and saints through the ages have often engaged in conflict with demonic forces.

However, it is Scripture itself that is our greatest authority for the existence of evil. The author of Hebrews wrote: ‘so that by his death Jesus might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.’ James urged us to resist the devil and he will flee, and Peter described the devil as a roaring lion on the lookout for someone to devour.

We are delivered from evil in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but also by the blood of Christ. Faith gives us confidence by assuring us that the power of Satan cannot go beyond the limits set by God. Faith likewise assures us that even though the devil is able to tempt us, he cannot force our consent. Through the power of God we are able to triumph over evil.

Dear Friends in Christ, 

Today we celebrate the great solemnity of Corpus Christi, the last and eternal gift that Jesus left to his Apostles and the world at the Last Supper. As earth unites with heaven every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we are uniquely privileged to share in this most wonderful Sacrament of the Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour . There is no more intimate expression of love that we can celebrate than to consume the Body & Blood of Jesus at the celebration of Holy Mass. We become what we eat.

The respect we should afford Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is by making a reverential bow before we receive the sacrament. Through the miracle of the Mass, Jesus comes to us through the Species of Bread & Wine. That simple gesture which he shared at the Last Supper with his disciples was to become the means whereby Jesus, through his own self-sacrifice on the altar of the cross, would be forever present to us when we gathered together in memory of Him. There is no greater gift we could receive! Jesus wants us to be one with him in ‘Communion’. He fills us with his life giving body & blood. This is our spiritual nourishment along the journey of life and faith.

Dear Friends in Christ, 

The Sacrament of the Eucharist completes our Christian initiation – most of us as children, some as adults. The Eucharist was instituted at the Last Supper, on the night Jesus was betrayed, in order that the sacrifice of the cross would be perpetuated, from that moment on until the end of time.

The Eucharist is many things but most importantly it is a memorial of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a Paschal banquet. To describe the Eucharist, the Second Vatican Council coined the phrase ‘the source and summit of faith’ (Lumen gentium 11). This is because when we receive the Eucharist, we consume Christ himself, our minds are filled with grace and we receive a pledge of future glory. We are a people of the Eucharist, and our way of life is attuned to the Eucharist.

As early as the second century we have the witness of St. Justin Martyr, whose feast-day we marked only a few days ago, for the basic lines of the order of the Eucharistic celebration, which have stayed the same until our own day. Writing to the pagan emperor Antoninus Pius around the year 155, he explained: ‘On the day we call the day of the sun, all who dwell in the city or country gather in the same place. The memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read, as much time permits. When the reader has finished, he who presides over those gathered admonishes and challenges them to imitate these beautiful things. Then we all rise together and offer prayers… When the prayers are concluded we exchange the kiss. Then someone brings bread and a cup of water and wine mixed together to him who presides over the brethren. He takes them and offers praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and for a considerable time he gives thanks (in Greek: eucharistein) that we have been judged worthy of these gifts. When he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all give voice to an acclamation by saying “Amen.” When he who presides has given thanks and the people have responded, those whom we call deacons give to those present the “eucharisted” bread, wine and water and them to those who are absent.

Dear Friends in Christ,

There is a lovely Jewish proverb which captures, as only proverbs can, something so true about love: ‘Love thy neighbour, even when he plays the trombone.’ Imagine that neighbour playing his old trombone late into the evening – it would truly be hard to have very warm feelings for him, let alone love him, wouldn’t it? Love, rather like forgiveness, is a great idea until we really have to dig deep and love.

GK Chesterton said: ‘We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour.’ The problem is – and it really is a problem – that, for the Christian, love isn’t an option or a fanciful idea we can take or leave: it’s a command. Jesus says so very clearly: ‘This is my command: Love each other’. And if this weren’t hard enough, the pinnacle of love, its very height and essence, isn’t half-heartedly tolerating people, putting up with them or bearing with them, it’s laying down your life for them. This is the kind of ‘greater’ love we are called to. Jesus said: ‘Greater love has no one than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’

This is so challenging, so utterly beyond us, do difficult and frankly impossible that if we truly understood the call to love, we would throw up our hands in despair, sigh deeply and say, ‘This is impossible.’ Nevertheless, if we were open to the Holy Spirit we would hear him say to us: ‘What is impossible for you, for man, is possible with God.’ 

For perhaps the key to understanding love, the self-sacrificing agape love of the gospel, which is prepared to love your enemy, who just happens to also be your neighbour, is that we can’t love like this without God’s grace and power. Perhaps we only truly begin to love when we reach the end of ourselves and recognise our complete inability to love in a self-sacrificing, giving-our-lives-for- others kind of way.

‘Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ, vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory himself, is truly hidden.’ (C.S. Lewis)

Dear Friends in Christ, 

The vine is frequently used in the Old Testament as a symbol of Israel. Israel is the vine, but Jesus is the true vine. Developing this analogy of the vine we learn that we are branches and branches need pruning. We cannot produce fruit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, unless we are pruned. Furthermore, we cannot produce fruit unless we remain in the vine.

Now in nature a branch doesn’t have much choice but to remain attached to the vine and because of this can produce the fruit of the vine – the grape – which gives us the blessing and fruit of wine. In the spiritual life, however, we can easily separate ourselves from the vine, and in order to remain with the vine (Christ) we enter the doorway of faith and take up the battle of prayer. The idea or notion remaining in Christ is about practising the presence of God. We tend to think that professional religious people – months, religious sisters, the clergy – find it easier to ‘remain’ in Christ than we do. Their vocation obliges them to say the Daily Office and to cultivate an active prayer life. However, lay people are called to do the same. We may not say the Divine Office (although many do), but we can certainly practice the presence of God during our day.

Now we all this isn’t easy – we are easily distracted and often side-tracked. We can start off our day with the best intentions, but before we know it, the day is dragging us downwards, not upwards, and God’s presence seems very far away indeed. What are we to do when this happens? The answer will shock you: laugh, smile and rejoice. God knows we are easily distracted, God knows that we need help and strength to live in his presence.

God isn’t shocked by our weakness but rather assures us that when we are weak, then we are strong. We remain in God’s presence through taking simple steps, little gestures, and easy movements. Pray during the day today, ‘Lord have mercy on me a sinner.’ Or, ‘Lord, send forth you Spirit and renew the face of the dearth.’ These simple prayers over time, if we persevere, will allow us to live and abide in God’s presence during the day

Dear Friends in Christ, 

Today is ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’, and is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life. Jesus tells us in the Gospels that we must pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest. The old adage states: ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’! For us as Catholic Christians, our asking is our prayer, and if we don’t pray, then how do we expect the Lord to respond with provision of priests and religious.

Recent studies have determined that nearly all vocations to the Priesthood are rooted in the home, through the family. The example set by parents, in simple ways, by praying together, saying grace before meals, encouraging our young people to be involved with the Church, talking about the faith in mature and simple ways, not being ashamed of being a practising Catholic, having the courage to stand up for our beliefs, reading the Scriptures, reading spiritual books, having a real experience of the life of faith; the list is endless!

In truth, the reality of this present day is that there are fewer priests, especially in our own country and our own diocese. The recent Stewards of the Gospel initiative is addressing these issues. The possibility of priests assuming the responsibility of two and three parishes is on the horizon. So we truly do have to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send labourers into his harvest. We cannot rest on our laurels; if there is no priest, there is no Mass!