Sermons by Fr Guy Nicholls (Cong Orat), our Chaplain, and Fr John Greatbach, plus one or two others

Today’s second reading at Mass from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:6-11) is one of the most beautiful texts in the New Testament; read it again when you get home from Mass and through the week as part of your daily prayers.

Paul asks to make our own, the mind of Jesus (Phil 2:5), in other words, to have the same attitude as Jesus. Paul tells us whatever was the attitude of Jesus, that is also to be our attitude. What was the attitude of Jesus? Paul goes on to give one example in the remainder of today’s reading: Jesus’ humility. Jesus was God but emptied himself, lowering himself to become human. As Paul describes Jesus’ humility, it is like going downstairs. The first step down is Jesus becoming human. The next step down is Jesus dying. The final and lowest step down is the type of death Jesus accepted, death on a cross.

It was completely shocking that Jesus allowed himself to die on a cross. Palestine was part of the Roman Empire then and crucifixion was the form of capital punishment the Romans inflicted on criminals. Crucifixion was the death penalty for criminals. Crucifixion was so brutal that the Romans did not inflict it on Roman citizens, only on non-citizens.

Paul continues: the Father raised up Jesus in his resurrection and gave him the name above all other names. What is that name? At the end of today’s reading Paul tells us every tongue should acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord (Phil 2:11). That is the name: Jesus Christ as Lord, the Lord Christ. The word “Christ” is the Greek word for “Anointed” and the word “Messiah” is the Hebrew word for “Anointed.” They each mean Jesus is the Anointed One of the heavenly Father, anointed by the Holy Spirit to carry out the Father’s task on earth.

Paul continues: all beings in the heavens, on earth, and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus (Phil 2:10). The name of Jesus is so sacred, in Paul’s mind, that every knee should bend at Jesus’ name and declare Jesus Christ as Lord. Compare that with the misuse of the name of Jesus that we hear all around us and on TV, radio and social media. God’s name in the Old Testament was considered so holy that when the Jewish people were reading Scripture, they did not even say the name God’s name but instead said Adonai. That was the reverence in which they held God’s name. There was one exception: the high priest could whisper God’s name under his breath on the one day every year when he went into the Holy of Holies in the temple. One of the commandments asks us not to take God’s name in vain and when we pray the Lord’s Prayer we pray “Hallowed be thy name,” in other words, may God’s name be hold holy. Again, Paul says all beings in the heavens, on earth, and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus.

At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer in every Mass, the priest elevates the Sacred Host and Precious Blood and prays to the Father, “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours.” So, we pray that through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus, all glory and honour from all creation go to the Father. How true indeed that prayer is. Our Father in heaven does receive all honour and glory as the priest elevates the paten with the Body of Jesus and the Chalice with the Blood of Jesus. How sad that the same name of Jesus is not always honoured in speech or on TV.

A priest blesses you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When a priest blesses you, to use an Old Testament expression (Num 6:27), it is putting God’s name upon you. So, when a priest blesses you, he is putting the name of the Father, the name of Jesus and the name of the Holy Spirit upon you. The priest pronounces the words, but it is God’s blessing through the priest. That is why people often ask a priest for his blessing. We are blessed at the end of every Mass with the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. How sad that we have to endure listening to the name of Jesus being used in a way not intended.

Paul asks in the second reading to make our own the mind of Jesus, in other words to have the same attitude as Jesus and he goes on to describe Jesus’ humility in accepting death on a cross, but the Father raised Jesus. That is why all beings in the heavens, on earth, and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and every tongue should acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord.

If Jesus’ parable today (Matt 20:1-16) were about employment and wages, we would be perplexed as those who clock in late, even as late as the last hour, get the same wage as those who clocked in at dawn. But Jesus’ parable is not about employment and wages; he uses the example of employment and wages to teach about the kingdom of God—that it is never too late to respond to God. In the parable, no matter how late in the day someone works in the vineyard, the wage is the same: life with God. There is always a welcome from God, a welcome from Jesus, no matter how late in life we allow God into our lives.

The landowner went out to hire labourers five times: at dawn, at about nine o’clock (the third hour in Matthew’s Greek; twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night, see John 11:9), at noon (the sixth hour in Matthew’s Greek), at three o’clock (the ninth hour in Matthew’s Greek) and about five o’clock (the eleventh hour in Matthew’s Greek). The parable shows us that God is merciful and welcoming, no matter how late we accept the invitation to allow God into our lives. That is also what we see in the lives of those who became Catholic and found Jesus at different times during their lives (including me!).

Most of you are those who were hired to work in the vineyard at dawn because growing up in this part of the world, you were baptized a short time after birth and have been following Jesus since then. Elsewhere in the world (except for people like me) you would be described as “cradle Catholics,” Catholics since infancy, to distinguish you from the many converts to Catholicism later in life.

At nine o’clock (the third hour) the landowner went out again to hire for his vineyard. This is like those who met Jesus early in life though not as early as infancy. One example is Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. The family became Catholic when Tolkien was eight years old. His mother was a huge influence on his Catholic faith. He wrote, “it is not to everybody that God grants so easy a way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary [his brother] and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith.” (H. Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: Autobiography p39)

At noon (the sixth hour) the landowner went out again to hire workers for his vineyard. Edith Stein was raised in the Jewish faith but in the summer of 1921, she read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila and said, “That is the truth” and was baptized and became Catholic on January 1, 1922, at the age of thirty. She later entered the Carmelite order taking the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and in August 1942 was sent to Auschwitz and killed seven days later. (L. Hanley Duquin, A Century of Catholic Converts p59-60)

At around 3 o’clock (the ninth hour) the landowner went out again to hire workers for his vineyard. G.K. Chesterton, the British journalist, lecturer, and author wrote many books and articles. In 1911, the family was surprised, to say the least, when his brother Cecil became Catholic. Chesterton had been leaning in that direction also but was holding off due to his wife. He and his wife went to the Holy Land and returned via Rome and in 1922 Chesterton decided he could wait no longer and became Catholic at the age of forty-eight.

Finally in the parable, at around five o’clock (the eleventh hour) the landowner went out again to hire workers for his vineyard. Some people became Catholic at the end of life or even in their deathbed. At the age of 70, the American actor John Wayne, well-known for his role in Western movies (and whose real first name was Marion), converted to Catholicism. There has been speculation for years that George Washington became a Catholic shortly before he died because he had a picture of Our Lady.

Then in 2010 The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was established in this country by Pope Benedict XVI which allowed Anglicans to come into full communion with the Pope and the Catholic Church, whilst retaining some of their Anglican traditions and liturgy – and that did include me! The Ordinariate receives people into the Catholic Church from all different back grounds, circumstances in life and from different age groups.

In all these examples, we see the landowner, Jesus, going out at all hours of the day to call people into his kingdom. There is another one we could think of: Saint Paul. In his late thirties, after witnessing the killing of the first martyr, St. Stephen, he was going to Damascus to arrest and terrorize Christians there when he met Jesus on the road and he too entered the Lord’s vineyard to labour in it. It became a labour of love for him as we heard him write in our second reading, “For to me life is Christ.” (Phil 1:22) After his conversion his whole life revolved around Jesus. That explains why twice elsewhere in his letters he encourages us to have the same mind as Jesus, to think like Jesus (Phil 2:5; 1 Cor 2:16) It is a lifelong task for us, as we convert more and more, to have the same mind as Jesus, to think like Jesus. So although we answered the Lord’s call to labour in his vineyard at dawn, even at the last hour, we are still clocking in and learning what answering the Lord’s call to us means.

It is good that God is merciful, merciful even if we clock in late, because we are all still learning what it means to properly answer the invitation to work in the Lord’s vineyard. But we know one thing: it is never too late to respond to God. There is always a welcome from God, from Jesus, no matter how late in life we allow God into our lives. Pray that more and more of our brothers and sisters will join us in the Catholic faith and church; to be part of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, on Friday afternoon I took part in the funeral rites of Lewis Palmer whom all of you here today cannot fail to have known. Lewis, as his nephew Mgr Wadsworth said in his funeral homily, was a ‘one-off’, and I think I can speak for us all when I say that Mgr was absolutely right. He was born before the Second World War and became both an engineer and a carpenter, in both of which skills he excelled, as his many friends attested not least by their presence at his Requiem. Many of you will also remember Lewis’s wife, Anne, who died 18 months ago after a long illness. She, too, was a regular member of this Sunday congregation for many years. Anne was an amateur dramatics enthusiast, and I think that she passed on some of her theatrical skills to Lewis, especially the art of the stage whisper. Who will forget the experience of quiet moments on Sunday mornings here at Carmel with Lewis quietly booming out a word of explanation to Anne or a cheery ‘Peace be with you!’ to all around him, and which even the sisters in their secluded chapel must have heard?

Lewis was a faithful Catholic who had come into the Church in his mature adulthood, thanks to the wonderful example of his wife Anne. Week by week they came here together and it was moving to see this very practical man looking carefully and devotedly after his wife during her long and gradual decline. But what is so striking, and so pleasing to record, was the fact that after his wife had had to go to live in a care home, he did not stop coming to Mass, not even taking the odd week off, but then and after her death, until as little as a month ago, he was here, faithfully in his place in good time for Mass and always at the altar rail to receive his Lord in Holy Communion, and cheerily greeting all around with his booming tones of ‘Peace be with you!’

Now I mention all this for two reasons. First, I wanted to give a special mention to Lewis on this, the Sunday after his funeral, because with his passing, a very particular family connection going back years has now come finally to an end. Mgr Wadsworth’s widowed mother had come year by year to Mass with her sister Anne and her brother-in-law Lewis, until a stroke obliged her to go and live with her daughter near London shortly before Covid. She was eventually buried from here. Then Anne and Lewis carried on, and with Lewis’s death, Mgr Wadsworth’s family is no longer represented here for the first time since, I suspect, any of us here can recall.

The second reason is also connected with last Friday afternoon. For the good news was reported that, against many expectations, yet another Assisted Suicide Bill, following on from those sponsored first by an ex MP of this constituency, Rob Marris, and next by Kim Leadbeter, and this time by Lauren Edwards, had been defeated, which had hardly been anticipated by anyone in or near Parliament or the Media.

I mention this in the same bracket as Lewis Palmer for a very important reason. At the heart of the movement for assisted suicide is not true compassion, nor simply the desire to allow people to die with so-called ‘dignity’, but the culture of death, a culture that is based on a fundamental pessimism about human existence, and a lack of self-sacrifice. Human existence, say the supporters of assisted suicide, is about quality of life, and that quality can only be measured by freedom from incurable terminal sickness. This completely and deliberately ignores love. Love is the true antidote to the culture of death and to its pessimism. Love says that a person, even one gravely and terminally ill, is still loved no less and wanted as much as ever in this life, not least by God and therefore by us too. There is something deeply horrid about the idea that the best you can do for someone you claim to love, but who is terminally ill, is to kill them. Because that is what assisted suicide really means. The person who would be judged capable of deciding to die would be actually incapable of committing the act themselves, but would have to depend on someone else to do it for them. Hence, even if supposedly carried out at the will of the one who is deemed to be dying, it must still be carried out by someone else.

Lewis perfectly showed the quality of this kind of true love in his last years. He took seriously and ungrudgingly the words he had solemnly promised at his wedding to Anne, ‘in sickness and in health…until death do us part.’ Not for him the idea that love no longer meant caring for a sick, even a terminally sick spouse, to the end. It cost him, I know, day after day, week by week visiting Anne in her care home, where Anne herself suffered greatly. One kind of human reaction might have been to say, ‘you wouldn’t let a dog live like this’. But of course, a wife, a mother, is not a dog, nor any mere animal. She or he is loved by God and given to us by God to enable us to show our love too. The care we show to a seriously and terminally ill loved one is not wasted, is not in vain. It is to draw out of us the real depths of our ability to show love in the darkest of times and circumstances. Lewis soldiered on through all the personal pain that Anne’s vulnerability and sheer helplessness cost him as well as her. And that, I must say, was despite the care she was given, and not because she was in any way neglected.

It would have been so easy to say, ‘Anne is never going to get better, therefore it is a greater kindness to her to put her out of her misery and give her a merciful death, quickly and painlessly now.’ But thank God Lewis did not want to do that. And he would not have wanted to do so even if the option had been there. And that is what is so important about the defeat of the Assisted Suicide Bill. If the option to put to death someone like Anne existed, and there are very many people like Anne at any time, others might well feel tempted to take it. It is all very well to say that it is assisted suicide, not assisted murder we are talking about, and that the person who is ill must take the decision, not anyone else however closely related, but it is so obviously a danger that many people in that condition of illness and helplessness would be inclined in themselves to think, ‘I am a burden, I am causing my loved ones pain in my sickness; surely it is better that I get out of their way, even a duty to do so, so that I no longer cause them any pain through my own suffering, and therefore I should ask for assisted suicide.’ Nor does that even allow for a further detestable possibility in some cases that a relative of a sick person may even suggest, if only by a certain tone of speech, not even by actual words, that it would be better for everyone if you were to accept the inevitable and go gracefully now before it all gets too painful and long-drawn-out.

Such are the dangers that an assisted suicide bill would inevitably usher into our society, which is already deeply wounded by the death cult of legalised abortion. Although it has now been pushed back once more, we cannot doubt that it will not be long before someone else in Parliament has yet another go at doing what Marris, Leadbetter and Edwards have so far failed to do. We need to be vigilant, and we need to be prepared to do all in our power directly to care for those who are terminally ill, or who are just elderly. For I make this warning now: that if at some point in the near future assisted suicide becomes lawful, then there will be no barrier to all forms of assisted murder as well, full-on euthanasia, certainly not the artificial barrier of supposedly six months left to live. And there will be no limit to who can be eliminated by legalised murder either. So we cannot afford to relax. We must do our best for those whom we can care for, and make sure that others see our example and can be encouraged to join us in pushing back the culture of death and gradually pushing the barriers back in favour of the culture of life.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, what does it mean to belong to the Church? The Church is that which, according to Christ’s own words in the Gospel we have just listened to, ‘is gathered together into His name.’ This is what our Lord actually says: not, gathered in my name, but into my name, though it is a distinction which at first sounds odd in English.

So, when we come together into Mass, we are being gathered into Christ’s name. But what does it mean? Christ’s name is the source of His power. Remember how after the day of Pentecost, Peter and the other apostles were able to go out among the people of Jerusalem and even further afield and do wonderful deeds ‘in the name of Christ’. When a cripple was begging at the gate of the Temple, Peter said to him, ‘gold and silver I do not have, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus, walk!’ Peter and John were arraigned before the Chief Priest and the Sadducees on the charge that they had been forbidden to preach in the name of Christ, and after they were punished by flogging, and the same command not to preach in that name was repeated, they went out rejoicing to have suffered on account of His, that is Christ’s, Name. When Paul met some believers in Ephesus he found that they had only been baptised by John the Baptist, and so he baptised them into the name of Jesus, and they then immediately received the Holy Spirit.

When we were baptised, we, too, were baptised into the name of Jesus. Now you may be thinking, but weren’t we baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Yes, we were, and so, presumably, were those Christians at Ephesus, since it is not in accord with our Lord’s command at the end of the Gospel to baptise ‘in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ So what does it mean to be baptised into the name of Christ?

The name of Christ is His power. It is that by which Peter and the Apostles worked many wonderful miracles. These miracles were signs of God’s healing and saving power at work through the prayers and hands of His servants and ministers. It is this that we are baptised into – this power, this personal presence, Jesus Christ our Lord and Head. So, when our Lord says to the Apostles today: ‘whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’, He is giving them His own power, His personal power, His presence through the invocation of His holy and powerful name. This is what it means to belong to Christ in the Holy Church, to be baptised into His name. The Apostles were all given the same ultimate authority to bind and loose, which you may remember we heard Jesus give to Peter in person in the Gospel only two Sundays ago. When Christ Himself forgave sins, He did that which the Pharisees rightly saw as belonging solely to God. And that is what loosing involves: the power to loose sin and to set free those imprisoned by its addictive and binding strength. But Jesus did not only forgive sins, loosing the sinner, but He also gave the same power, the same authority, to the Apostles. The same loosing was also what Peter and John did to the beggar at the Temple gate, who was loosed from his affliction and made to walk, just as our Lord had so often loosed people from both sickness or disability and from sin.

Now we who have been baptised into His name are members of the same body: the Body of Christ. That is what it means to be the Church. And that is why Mass is central to what we are; we gather together week by week on what we rightly call the Lord’s day to celebrate His mystical Body and to receive His sacramental Body in Holy Communion. Then we are united to Him and in Him. Then it is that He tells us that ‘if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.’

Now there is a difficulty about what our Lord says here. I am sure that all of us know of times, probably many times, when together with other Christians we have agreed to ask God for something and have not received what we asked for. How can Jesus say, ‘when you ask anything it will be done for you by my Father in heaven’? This is a saying of our Lord’s which is just as difficult as another one: ‘if your faith were the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, ‘be uprooted!,’ and it would be moved.’ These sayings may seem to us puzzling. But of course they cannot be false, since every word our Lord ever said is truth. Still, they are an example of our Lord’s way of saying something striking in order to make us stop in our tracks, a kind of exaggeration to force us to think about things we either take for granted or get wrong about God.

So what does He mean? He goes on to say these very consoling words: ‘for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.’ We ought to reflect often on these words. It is a great and extraordinary thing to realise that our Lord has indeed promised to be here in our midst when we are gathered together in His name. His word is truth. When He says, ‘I am in your midst’, He is here. When He says, ‘this is my Body’, it is Himself in person whom we adore and receive.

But to return to the question, what does He mean when He says ‘if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven’? One thing we must recall is that He Himself prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to be spared the chalice of suffering, and His prayer was not answered in that way. Was the prayer then refused by His Father? No. It was necessary that Christ should suffer and so bring about our salvation. Only by His death could He rise to new life, and only by rising could He prepare the way for us to share in His resurrection. But even before that resurrection, even now, He comes to us and prepares us for the future He intends to share with us, He is in our midst when we come together most of all in the Mass and comes into us most of all in Holy Communion.

It is then that He opens us up to the Father in the light of the Holy Spirit, so that we can learn how to pray. For, as St Paul teaches us, the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness, because we do not know how to pray as we ought to, but the Holy Spirit will do so on our behalf with what Paul describes as sighing or groaning that surpasses human language. This is what our Lord means by praying together in His name. It is this prayer which the Father grants, because it is the prayer of the Holy Spirit who knows far better than we ever can just what it is that is necessary for us to attain our salvation, and the salvation of those on whose behalf we might also be praying to God. This demands the exercise of our faith, the faith of which our Lord speaks as being like a mustard seed. This faith is not an attitude of our mind, nor something that is generated by ourselves alone, but is instead a gift of God given to us at our baptism into Christ’s name. That faith must be nurtured and exercised like a muscle which is given to us, but which we must exercise so that it may do what it is intended to do.

Prayer is the voice of faith, the muscle God has given us to pray for what we need to enter into Him, to be united to Him. Prayer is answered by God when He pours out on us all that we need to be made one with Him. Being a member of the Church means being united in the Holy Spirit who prays in us in ways that surpass our understanding. The Spirit so shapes us through His presence in us that we become filled with the likeness of Christ, so that, as the Preface today beautifully puts it, ‘God might love in us what He loves in His Son’. This is what it means to be members of Christ’ body, it is to be seen by the Father just as He sees Christ His Son. This is what it means for us, to receive from the Father what He wants to give to us just as Christ Himself receives what God gives.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, as I mentioned earlier this month, in a few weeks’ time we will celebrate the 800^th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi, one of the great figures of the mediaeval Church and indeed of all European history. Well, I don’t intend to talk about him today, except in one very important respect, and one that is not very well understood today.

Around 800 years ago in south-west France, in the region of the city of Toulouse and down to the Pyrenees, there grew up a religious movement that had a profound influence on people in those days. They believed that there were two powerful and contesting forces in the entire universe: one of them good and the other evil. But these were not, as we might think, the same as God and the devil. Why? Because, in the first place, these people believed that these two forces were both eternal and equal. For us, of course, such an idea is utterly wrong. We believe in One God, who alone is uncreated, almighty and eternal. The devil is none of those things. He is a creature of God’s own making, he is powerful, at least in regard to his dealings with puny creatures like us, and he began to exist in time when God made him.

These people believed that everything that exists was made either by the good god or by the evil one. The good God made good creatures and the evil god made evil creatures. However, human nature is not the product of one of these creator powers, but of both. For they believed that the good God made all that is purely spiritual, while the evil one made all that is of matter. Hence, they believed that the soul, being spiritual, is good and the body, being material, is bad. For this reason they believed that men should do everything in their power to separate themselves from the body and so to liberate their spirits or souls from that evil thing.

As far as religion was concerned, this meant several very serious differences from the Catholic religion. For a start, they held that to keep aloof from everything material was the true meaning of holiness, and the only way to become holy was to avoid all material things. Hence, they absolutely abhorred marriage as a physical relation between a man and a woman, which was not only unholy in its indulgence in carnal pleasure, but even worse, far worse, it brought children into the world, new souls mired in the filth of bodily existence. For this reason these people called themselves ‘the pure ones’, or in Greek, the ‘katharoi’ or ‘Cathars’.

Also, they did not believe in the sacraments. Why? Because the sacraments unite spirit with matter. Take the Eucharist; in this most holy sacrament, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Though entirely holy, they remain part of the material world.

They celebrated all those who embraced poverty as a way of withdrawing from the filthiness of matter, and who by remaining celibate not only refused to defile themselves with sex, but also refused to bring new children into the world. Better that souls, which are created by the good God, should remain free than be mixed up with the darkness and confusion of life in an earthly body.

I mention all this because these Cathars hated the Church, and the Church understood only too well what monstrous errors these Cathars held about God and about human nature and about good and evil. But how was the Church to fight such a powerful heresy which was respected because many seemingly good men held to these ideas. The Church attempted to destroy the Cathars in southern France by warfare. But although war can kill people, it can’t destroy ideas, especially when those ideas are embodied in seemingly ‘good’ men of integrity and high morals.

Two new religious movements arose at this time which were at last effective in uncovering the false ideas behind the Cathar movement: first the Dominicans, who combined sound Catholic teaching with a truly admirable poverty of life and spirit that outshone that of the Cathars, and secondly the Franciscans. Francis radically adopted the idea of poverty, not rejecting material things as evil, because he knew that all things come from the Creator of all, the One, True God, and therefore, no created thing is truly evil in itself, but only in its use or abuse. Francis’s kind of poverty didn’t reject material things as evil, but instead rejected the power of material things to corrupt the human spirit with greed, lust, and covetousness.

So, although Francis rejected the ownership of property for himself and his followers, he did not reject the goodness of matter; specifically he did not reject the goodness of the human body because, no less than the human soul, the body was created good by God. But of course, the body with its appetites needed to be controlled, lest left to themselves, they control us. That is why the Church requires fasting and self-denial of us, yet also looks forward not to the liberation of the soul from the body at death, but to the resurrection of the body on the last day. And the Church does not make the mistake of thinking that the soul can do not sin, but following our Lord’s teaching the Church requires us to mortify our souls through acts of prayer and almsgiving, and the forgiveness of those who sin against us.

St Paul expresses all this very clearly in this morning’s second reading.  He appeals to us, he says, ‘to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ He calls the offering of our bodies a spiritual worship. That is why we are here. Prayer, worship and liturgy (which is divine service) are never purely intellectual, but offerings of mind and body. Hence too, they are not simply private acts, but, especially where liturgy is concerned, public acts celebrated in union with others who share the same faith and purpose.

Paul also has another reason for emphasising the proper use of our bodily faculties and postures – kneeling, standing, singing together – in the proper worship of God, and that is because we need ‘not to be conformed to this world’. This means not being shaped in our thoughts by the world around us, by TV, internet, ideas in circulation, popular morals, etc. but instead, says Paul, to be ‘transformed by the renewal of your mind’, which means to be open to the liturgy, to the Church’s acts of worship which nourish our faith and our true identity as sons and daughters of God in Christ. This constant renewal strengthens us in mind, just as properly planned exercise strengthens the body, so that, as Paul says, ‘by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.’

Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, there are some events so important that we remember where we were when they happened. This Gospel was the occasion of one such event for me. It was the 21^st Sunday of Ordinary Time, towards the end of August 1978. I was on a pilgrimage in Lourdes and the previous afternoon the news had broken that a new Pope had been elected in the conclave following the death of Paul VI. It was the short-lived Pope of 33 days, John Paul I, still remembered as the ‘Smiling Pope’. As usual in Lourdes, next day the principal Sunday Mass was celebrated in the underground basilica of St Pius X. This Mass is always a most impressive celebration, attended by vast numbers of faithful from all over the world coming together for the purpose, concelebrated by many hundreds of priests, and presided over usually by a cardinal or bishop. Of course, on this occasion there was no cardinal present owing to the conclave in Rome at which all the cardinals had been present. But when the Gospel was being sung, as soon as the deacon reached our Lord’s words, ‘you are Peter…’ the entire congregation, thousands of them in that vast space, spontaneously erupted into enthusiastic cheering, ‘viva il papa!’, ‘vive le pape’, ‘long live the pope’, or suchlike acclamations, for quite a while before the Gospel could continue. Many of the people must have thought that this Gospel passage had been deliberately chosen in honour of the newly elected John Paul I, but it was not actually so. It was indeed a happy providence that this famous passage from St Matthew should be prescribed for this Sunday when a new pope had just stepped out onto the Vatican balcony less than twenty four hours earlier.

This Gospel passage has long been associated with the office of the papacy. In St Peter’s vast basilica in Rome, around the inside of that mighty dome over the altar, are inscribed in monumentally massive capital letters in Latin the words that we have just hear our Lord utter: ‘Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.’ –  that is: ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.’ Our Lord’s epic words stand as a two thousand year old testimony to the divine origin of the authority wielded by Peter. But we also hear what Christ says a little further on: ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’

What does all this mean for the Church and the pope? It doesn’t mean, for a start, that the Pope is some kind of emperor with absolute power and authority to do and say whatever he feels like. Take the keys that our Lord gives to Peter, for instance. They are symbolic. Of course our Lord didn’t actually give physical keys to him. So what do they stand for?

The first reading today, from the prophet Isaiah, speaks of a man called Shebna who is a steward over the royal household. A steward’s role is not to rule in his own right and name, but in the name of the one who appointed him. The one who appointed Shebna is the king. But for whatever reason, it is clear from this reading that Shebna has been found wanting. He has failed to live up to his duties. Isaiah here proclaims to Shebna that he is to be thrust from his office. His robes of office are instead to be given to a man called Eliakim, who will also now bear the authority previously given to Shebna. Isaiah says that Eliakim will not only now wear the fine robes of the steward, but ‘he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.’

The stewardship exercised in the king’s name therefore means a kind of fatherhood; a spiritual authority not like that of a king, much less like a tyrant, but like that of a father. It is a vital distinction, and it is about to be reinforced in another striking image. For Isaiah goes on to say that God will ‘place on the steward’s shoulder the key of the house of David.’ This sounds strange to us. Why would anyone put a key on somebody’s shoulder? Well, the answer is that in the kingdom of Israel, the key was large enough to be carried on the shoulders of the one who had the authority to use it, like an emblem of his true authority. Isaiah explains that the key gives to the one who wields it power to ‘open and none shall shut, [to] shut and none shall open.’

This explanation is clearly behind our Lord’s words in the Gospel. For He goes on to say that Peter, like Eliakim in the first reading, will have the authority of a steward and will exercise that authority as a father. What do the keys Peter now has actually do? They bind and loose, or to put it another way, they open and close. A key locks and unlocks, and so does Peter’s authority as Christ’s steward. That authority extends to heaven as well. For whatever Peter does on earth in the exercise of his master’s authority, that will be done too in heaven where the master reigns above.

Thinking of Peter’s authority in this way truly helps us to understand what it is and what it is not. It is not the right to do whatever he wants. It seems as though that is how Shebna in the first reading had been abusing his authority and now, as Isaiah sees it, the time of judgement and reckoning is come. This should also remind us that insofar as the pope is the successor of Peter, and is given the role and authority of Peter’s stewardship, he will be judged by the king on just how he has exercised the king’s own authority.

Another word for describing the pope as steward of God’s authority on earth is ‘vicar’. We sometimes refer to the pope as the ‘vicar of Christ’, since each pope exercises authority in place of Peter who was chosen by our Lord Himself to do so.

All later popes, right down to the present pope, Leo XIV, are chosen not by our Lord but by the cardinals. This is why the pope is also called ‘vicar of Peter’, since each pope exercises Peter’s authority from the time of his election. From that moment the pope has the authority of Peter. He takes the place of our Lord not as God and redeemer, but as ruler and teacher of the Church in our Lord’s name. He does not have power to make the truth but only to teach it in its fullness as Peter did, according to Christ’s own teaching. This is why we call the pope a ‘vicar’. For a ‘vicar’ is by definition one who exercises not his own authority, but only in the name and place of one who does have authority in his own right – in this case, Christ.

So, to sum up, the pope exercises a fatherly role in place of, and only by the authority of, Christ Himself. Hence we call him the ‘Holy Father’. He has no authority of his own whereby he can do or teach as he pleases. He will be judged on how well or otherwise he has exercised that authority. He must teach only what Christ teaches, and make it better understood to all Christians now. So, for instance, he can take the teaching of Christ in the Gospels and apply it to circumstances not pertaining to Christ’s time. He has to discern, always with the help of his fellow apostles, the other bishops, what Christ’s teaching means in modern conditions. This is what happens, for instance, when the bishops meet together as a body to discuss the teaching of Christ in the Church of today, just as they did some sixty or so years ago in the Second Vatican Council. When our Lord made him the rock of faith, Peter was simply given the position of first among equals, not king or emperor over them.

Pope John Paul I chose to show that he was not an emperor by refusing to be crowned at the beginning of his pontificate, as popes had been for many centuries. Instead he continued to wear exactly the same headgear as the other bishops at all times: the mitre. And all popes since him have done the same, to show their role as one among the bishops, not as one over them all.

We pray, therefore, for Pope Leo as the current successor of St Peter, that he may exercise his fatherly role with humility and paternal care for the Church together with all the other bishops who are his equals as successors of the Apostles, and that he may teach, govern and sanctify the Church as Christ wills and directs him and the other bishops, exercising the power of the keys of the kingdom to bind and to loose.

We should also remember to pray for past popes, particularly if they may not seem to have exercised the authority entrusted to them in a truly fatherly way. May they not be treated by the King and heavenly judge as was Shebna, who was ‘pulled down from his station’, but instead may they have the opportunity to atone, just as Peter himself was given the grace to repent and atone for his sin of weakness in denying Christ.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, this Gospel we have just listened to from St Matthew is one of the best-known of our Lord’s miracles, but mainly because of Peter’s reaction and his confirmation in faith. Three of the evangelists tell us of Christ walking on the water, including St John, who rarely includes those events which are told by any or all of the other three writers, unless there is some specific point he wants to make in contrast to them. St John includes this scene of the walking on the water and the calming of the storm between the Feeding of the Five Thousand and our Lord’s great discourse on the Bread of Life which took place at Capharnaum on the other side of the Sea of Galilee from where this event took place.

What is especially significant about our Lord walking on the Sea of Galilee? To understand that more fully we should certainly look at what has just happened. We heard this in last Sunday’s Gospel reading: St Matthew’s account of the miraculous Feeding of the Five Thousand with five loaves and two fish. Hence the first words today: ‘After the crowd had eaten and were satisfied, immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds…’ Only St John tells us why Jesus did this. It was because after the miraculous feeding, the crowds were suddenly filled with great excitement that Jesus had just given them the long-awaited sign of the coming of the Messiah: that he would give his people miraculous bread to feed them. This made them want to take him by force, as John says, to make him their king. We might feel that this was not a great deal. Indeed, why should it not be a really good thing? After all, Jesus is the Messiah! Why would He not wish to be recognised for what we know He truly is? Well, since St John is the only one to tell us that this is what happened, it is not surprising that he alone tells us what our Lord’s reason for caution was. Having won the crowd’s admiration, He now saw the opportunity to tell them that He was not a fighting King, but the Bread of Life.

Our Lord had to calm the crowd down since they were at fever pitch of excitement after this miracle. He also wanted to save the Apostles from the situation. Maybe they would have been in danger of getting caught up in it? Maybe it was simply that they had only come to that remote spot in the first place so that they could have rest, and our Lord realised that they had most certainly not been allowed to rest at all. Hence His instruction to them to get into the boat and go back to the other side, the populous side, to Capharnaum and await His return to them after He had dealt with the crowds and calmed them down. The Apostles would be able to get some rest after the excitement by crossing over without Him. What St Matthew tells us Jesus did next was to go up on the mountain to pray. How often mountains appear in our Lord’s prayers. High places in remote country were particularly favoured by Him. It is important to see how He in His humanity, needed to return to His heavenly Father and seek comfort in communion with Him.

In any case, the Apostles began their journey without Him, expecting to meet Him when they landed. But of course, they were struck by one of those sudden and very violent storms that occur on that inland sea, and the Apostles had often experienced them before, including that time when Jesus was asleep in the boat. What happened next is more significant than we may realise. Jesus Himself comes to them on the sea, but at the fourth watch. This is very late indeed, about four or five in the morning by our time. In other words, they had been battling away all night in the pitch black, battered by the wind and waves, faithfully trying to do what Jesus had told them to do, remember, to get to the other side as quickly as possible. They were still very far from land. All this alone is a metaphor for so much that befalls those who do as Christ commands, and having commanded, then He disappears!

But if the Apostles were fearful because of the storm, how much more were they afraid when they saw Him walking through the storm and upon the water! It was astonishing when He had calmed the storm by a single word of command from within the boat, but this was even stranger to behold. No wonder they thought at first that they were seeing a ghost. This miracle, a word literally meaning something to make us stop in amazement, was different from any other. Here He was not doing anything at somebody’s request. It was His own way to get to the Apostles in their great distress. This image of walking on water, still proverbial with us today, was something associated with divine power. The psalmist says: ‘Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen.’ (ps. 76:19) I doubt the Apostles thought about that on this occasion, but doubtless they would do so afterwards. His word of greeting is a reassurance to them: ‘Take heart; it is I; fear not!’

Fear not - what wonderful words! Peter, as so often the first to react and impetuously, looks for certainty that this is indeed the Lord, and asks for reassurance in the strangest of ways: ‘command me to come to you on the water.’ A strange idea, and hardly thought out! But Jesus takes him at his word and commands him. Peter does just that. At first all is well because Peter does not actually realise what is happening. But the moment he sees the wind he takes his eyes off Jesus and so begins to be afraid. Losing sight of Jesus, he also has no firm hold on his surroundings. Having been walking on the water at first, he sinks because he has stopped looking at Jesus. However, he instinctively does the only thing he can think of as he sinks beneath the waves: he calls to Jesus for help, Jesus grasps his hand and pulls him out, admonishing him, surely rather gently, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’

Together they get into the boat and suddenly all is calm, as the wind falls silent. The Apostles, too, fall silent in awe at the whole event. They worship Him: ‘you are the Son of God!’

Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, a little later this year we will celebrate the 800^th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi, which took place on 3^rd October 1226 near the Italian city of Assisi where he had been born in 1181. The precise place of his death was just outside the tiny chapel of our Lady of the Angels, an ancient chapel which had been given to Francis for his use by the Benedictine monks who had custody of it, and for this reason, Francis called it his own ‘little portion’, or in Latin, the Portiuncola. Nowadays, this primitive yet beautiful stone chapel sits inside the vast basilica of our Lady of the Angels which was constructed around and over it many centuries later to protect it. On account of its importance as a Franciscan shrine, the dedication to Our Lady of the Angels became a favourite Franciscan name given to many churches throughout the Franciscan world. That is why when the Spanish Franciscans brought the faith to California in the 16^th century, they built many mission churches, and one of them was destined to become one of the greatest of all American cities named in Spanish: S Maria de los Angeles, which most people know simply as ‘Los Angeles’.

The reason why I mention all that today is because this is a special day connected with S Maria degli Angeli (to give it its original Italian form of the name) all because of St Francis. One night Francis was praying in the Portiuncola, when Our Lord and Our Lady appeared to him and asked him what he desired.  Thinking of others and recognizing his own sinfulness, Francis spoke.  "O God, although I am a great sinner, I beseech You to grant a full pardon of all sins to all who, having repented and confessed their sins, shall visit this church”. Our Lord answered, "Francis, you ask much, but you are worthy of greater things, and greater things you shall have."

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The Lord granted what Francis asked and Pope Honorius III ratified it. So was born the Portiuncola Indulgence, a full pardon of all sins given to those who visited the chapel of the Portiuncola specifically on 2^nd August each year. Originally the Indulgence was attached only to the Porticuncola.  However, subsequent Popes expanded the number of places in which this Indulgence can be gained, yet it has always remained firmly anchored to this day, 2^nd August, which is why I am talking about it today, so that we may all have the opportunity to take advantage of it.

As I said, the Indulgence originally granted only to those who visited the Portiuncola on this day, was gradually extended to basilicas and cathedral churches, and final to parish churches. Alas, that doesn’t include this chapel! That leads me to the next point: what does one have to do when one gets to the right place to receive the indulgence? The Church’s requirements for gaining any indulgence which offers full pardon for all sins are straightforward: one Our Father, one Apostles’ Creed, and one other prayer at your own choice. In addition you must pray for the Pope’s intentions (e.g. an Our Father and a Hail Mary are perfectly acceptable) and you need to be detached from sin, without affection for even venial sin. Finally, you need to have either been to confession recently, i.e. within the last three weeks, or, failing that, you must actually do so within the next three weeks, – and most importantly, you must receive Holy Communion at the time of getting the Indulgence, so today.

When this Indulgence is properly received, you can enjoy remission not just of all past sin, but of all punishment due to past sins, including all those which you have confessed and for which you have done penance. For it is a mistake to think that going to confession and receiving absolution remits all that we owe to God’s justice for sins past. If, on the other hand, you are not able fully to be free from attachment to sin of some kind, then you can still gain the grace of the Indulgence, but not in full – only partially, but even so, this is still worth gaining. Every grace counts!

So you may wonder what is the true nature of Indulgences like this in the life of the Church, and specifically in the life of ordinary Christians like you and me? What is their meaning and how do they actually achieve anything? The answer lies in the mercy of God and its dispensation. God has chosen to give to His Church the power not just to forgive sins, but also the power to remit punishment for sins. But in order for us to reap the benefit, we must actively engage with the grace God offers us. Grace is not magic, nor is it a free pass to do as we like and not face the consequences. Grace is God’s loving power which has been won for us by Christ our Lord through His Passion and Death. This is why the Church has such power, given to her by Christ. He not only forgives sins, but transforms those whom He heals of sin by the power of His grace. It is that transforming power that can be made wonderfully effective by God’s own generosity in the form of indulgences. They may seem oddly mechanical at first: do this, go there, say these prayers, fulfil this requirement, etc. and there have been those who dismiss them for that reason, because they seem somehow unrelated to the love of God. But this is to misunderstand the way in which God chooses to dispense these graces.

First of all, the word ‘grace’, means a ‘gift freely given’. Some people falsely get the impression that the Church offers indulgences as something you can buy. The prayers we say and things we must do are like the price we must pay for that which God offers us. But this is entirely wrong. We cannot buy grace. We cannot buy anything from God. He gives us what He wills. What He asks of us is to show that we are willing to receive what He offers. Take the first reading from Isaiah as a good example of this. The prophet expresses these words of the Lord our God: ‘Come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and price.’ You see how Isaiah says that it is as though we buy what is offered to us, but in reality we don’t buy anything from God with money. When our Lord did His great signs or miracles, He did so only when those who asked for them believed that He could do what they asked. They did not have to pay, but they did have to show that they were willing to accept freely what was offered freely. Their faith was like ‘buying’ from God. So it is with us and when we receive indulgences. They are a gift from God, freely given by Him which we buy without money. The truth is that the price of what is given, the price of grace, far exceeds anything we could ever pay anyway!

But what is the Church’s role in this? Why did St Francis have to get Pope Honorius to ratify, that is, approve, the Portiuncola Indulgence which our Lord had said to him that He was willing to grant? It is because our Lord gave the Church he power of the keys to unlock and to minister graces. To Peter and the Apostles He had said: ‘whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ and on the day of Resurrection He said: ‘Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven’. This, therefore, is Christ’s own power, won for us by his death and resurrection and poured out in the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is why the Church has the power to administer the graces that come from the infinite merits of Christ. That is why the offer of an indulgence is an inestimably great gift, far surpassing all that we might have to do to receive it.

Does mercy overlook justice? Justice demands that everyone be given their due. So when is it right to show mercy and pardon to those who have acted unjustly or wrongly? The prophet Amos speaks of God forgiving transgression three times, but warns that God may not revoke punishment for the fourth (see Amos 1:3-13; 2:1-6). When Peter posed the question of forgiveness, he characteristically offered an answer he thought Jesus would be pleased with. Why not forgive seven times! How unthinkable for Jesus to counter with the proposition that one must forgive seventy times that.

Jesus makes it clear that there is no limit to giving and receiving forgiveness. He drove the lesson home with a parable about two very different kinds of debts. The first man owed an enormous sum of money - millions in our currency. In Jesus' time this amount was greater than the total revenue of a province - more than it would cost to ransom a king! The man who was forgiven such an incredible debt could not, however, bring himself to forgive his neighbour a very small debt which was about one-hundred-thousandth of his own debt. The contrast could not have been greater!

No offense our neighbour can do to us can compare with our own personal debt to God for offending him! We have been forgiven an enormous debt we could not repay on our own. That is why the Father in heaven sent his only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who freely and willing gave up his life for our sake to ransom us from slavery to sin, Satan, and death. Paul the Apostle states, "you were bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 7:23 ) and that price was Jesus' death on the cross. Through the shedding of his blood on the cross, Jesus not only brought forgiveness and pardon for our offenses, but release from our captivity to Satan and bondage to sin.

The Lord Jesus sets us free from a futile mind and way of living in sin and spiritual darkness. "You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers ...with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:18). Christ "gave himself to redeem us from all iniquity" (Titus 2:14). Iniquity describes the futile ways of wrong thinking, sinful attitudes and wrong behaviour, and disregarding or treating God's commandments lightly. We have been forgiven an enormous debt which we could never possibly repay. We owe God a debt of gratitude for the mercy and grace he has given us in his Son, Jesus Christ.

If God has shown mercy to us in granting us pardon for our sins, then we, in turn, must show mercy and forgiveness towards every person who has offended us. The willingness to forgive those who offend us is a sacred duty. If we expect God to pardon us and show us his mercy when we sin and disobey his commandments, then we must be willing to let go of any resentment, grievance, or ill-will we feel towards our neighbour. Jesus teaches us to pray daily for the grace and strength to forgive others in the same measure in which God has forgiven us (Matthew 6:12,14-15). If we do not show mercy and forgiveness to our fellow human beings, how can we expect God to forgive us in turn? The Apostle James says that "judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy" (James 2:13).

Mercy is the flip-side of God's justice. Without mercy justice is cold, calculating, and even cruel. Mercy seasons justice as salt seasons meat and gives it flavour. Mercy follows justice and perfects it. Justice demands that the wrong be addressed. To show mercy without addressing the wrong and to pardon the unrepentant is not true mercy but license. C.S. Lewis, a 20th century Christian author wrote: "Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety." If we want mercy shown to us we must be ready to forgive others from the heart as God has forgiven us. Do you hold any grudge or resentment towards anyone? Ask the Lord to purify your heart that you may show mercy and loving-kindness to all - and especially to those who cause you grief and ill-will.

“Who are we?” The Psalm today (Ps 95) gives us the answer to that question. We belong to God. We are the Lord’s flock. Who are we? We are God’s people. The Jewish people became God’s Chosen People through the various covenants God made with them in what we call Old Testament times—covenants with Abraham and Moses. We, in New Testament times, became God’s people when we were claimed for God when baptized “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” During Confirmation, God put his seal on our forehead when we were anointed by the bishop as he said, “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” In the past, baker’s put a seal on their loaves of bread showing the bread came from their bakery. The bread was their bread. (See John 6:27) We were sealed by God at confirmation and claimed for God at baptism. We belong to God.

Our Psalm today reminds us that we belong to God. It is prayed at the beginning of prayer every day by priests and religious. It begins beautifully reminding us to praise God:

Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord;

let us acclaim the rock of our salvation.

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;

let us joyfully sing psalms to him.

It is a beautiful way to begin every day; every day is another day to praise God. This is also the attitude to have as we come to Mass; we come to Mass to praise and thank God. That is what the word “Eucharist” means—thanksgiving. When we say we celebrate the Eucharist, we mean that we are giving thanks to God. We have come here today to praise and thank God. We make that praise explicit when we pray the Gloria at the beginning of Mass:

Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to people of good will.

We praise you,

we bless you,

we adore you,

we glorify you.

The Psalm today continues to remind us of who we are:

Come, let us bow down in worship;

let us kneel before the Lord who made us.

For he is our God,

and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.

However, the response to the Psalm today—  “O that today, you would listen to his voice! Harden not your hearts” (Ps 95:7-8)—is taken from a part of the Psalm recalling an unfortunate incident in Jewish history. It is a caution or alert to not allow it to happen again. We get a fuller account in the last part of the Psalm that we heard today:

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:

“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,

as in the day of Massah in the desert,

Where your fathers tempted me;

they tested me though they had seen my works.”

So, what happened? What is this all about? When the Jewish people were wandering from Egypt up to Canaan, they arrived at a place called Rephidim, a Hebrew word meaning “Place of Rest.” However, there was no water, and the people turned their anger on Moses, and he appealed to God. God answered Moses’ prayer and instructed Moses to strike the rock and water flowed out for the people. However, because of the extreme anger and complaining of the people—displaying their lack of trust in God when they should have known better because God had led them through the sea and provided for them up until then—Moses changed the name of the place to Meribah which means “quarrel” and Massah which means “testing.” (Exod 17:7) So instead of Place of Rest it became Quarrel and Testing. The people had a quarrel with God and tested God. Once again, this is the last part of our Psalm today:

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:

“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,

as in the day of Massah in the desert,

Where your fathers tempted me;

they tested me though they had seen my works.”

The Psalm is inviting us to remember who we are and not forget like the Hebrews in the desert when a challenge came their way. They should have known better and trusted in God to provide the solution as every time until then.

“Who are we?” The Psalm today gives us the answer to that question. We belong to God. We are the Lord’s flock. We were claimed for God at baptism and sealed with the Holy Spirit at confirmation. When we encounter difficulties in the desert of life between Egypt and Canaan, instead of turning our place into Meribah and Massah, Quarrel and Testing, can we keep our place Rephidim, Place of Rest?