Sermons by Fr Guy Nicholls (Cong Orat), our Chaplain

Dear Sisters, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, St Paul tells us this morning in the second reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians that ‘Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.’ And in the Sequence, the beautiful hymn that precedes the Gospel, this theme was repeated and developed, where Christ is described as our ‘Paschal victim’. Once a year, in Spring time, the Jewish people celebrated the Passover, commemorating the Exodus, the event in which their ancestors had been brought out of slavery in Egypt, including the passage through the Red Sea which we heard so dramatically described in last night’s Easter Vigil, the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and the entry into the Promised Land – all this was recalled in a solemn ritual meal in which a lamb was eaten. The lamb had been killed in preparation for the feast not simply as an act of butchery, necessary in order for the lamb to be cooked and eaten, but it had been killed in a sacrificial rite in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Now our Lord, you will recall from the Gospels, was killed at the time of the Passover. In fact, as St John tells us, He was crucified at the very same time that the lambs were being sacrificed in preparation for the Passover feast that would be kept the following day. This is what John meant by referring to the Jewish Day of Preparation as the day on which Our Lord died and was buried. St Paul takes this even further. It was not just a coincidence that Jesus was killed in Jerusalem on the day before the Passover feast, it was exactly God’s plan. St Peter will tell the crowds in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost of the Christian era that ‘Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.’ It was God’s plan from the beginning that Jesus should die at the Passover because God intended that His Son should die as a sacrifice, a complete and total offering of Himself on the cross out of love for sinful humanity.

But where in the Old Testament a lamb was required, God’s plan to be completed in the New Testament was for a man to be offered as a sacrifice. This is why our Lord said, at the Last Supper: ‘This is my Body which is given up for you’, and ‘this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which is being poured out for you and for many’. The Last Supper was the commemoration of the Passover, and it was at that commemoratory celebration that our Lord was giving the entire Passover a new meaning and purpose. No longer was a lamb to be sufficient for a sacrifice and a sacred meal, but now there was to be a new lamb, a new victim of sacrifice, and that lamb, that victim, would also be the food that we would eat and drink.

This is why St Paul talks to the Corinthians in this way: ‘Let us therefore celebrate the festival’, meaning the Passover, in a new kind of way. One of the significant ways in which the Passover was celebrated was by the use, special to this time of year, of unleavened bread. To this day, the Jews go to great lengths before the Passover to ensure that there is not the slightest trace of yeast, or leaven, anywhere in the house. It is to this that Paul is referring when he says: ‘cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, (that is of dough)’. The old leaven he associates with ‘malice and evil’, and this is the reason why he urges the Corinthians to drive it out. But what does this mean to us? We don’t clear out leaven or yeast from our homes at this time of year, so isn’t this all a bit meaningless to us? Well, no. St Paul sees in this ancient practice a symbol of something spiritual and real to us. He sees it as a symbol of sin being driven out by God’s grace. It is Christ who drives away sin, and this He did when we went to confession before Easter. He is then the new unleavened bread of what Paul calls ‘sincerity and truth’, which come to us as the fruit of His resurrection which we celebrate today.

But we are not simply recalling an ancient event, as though the death and resurrection of Christ were simply in the remote past. We are actually making His death and resurrection present here and now in our midst on this most sacred and joyful feast. How is that possible? We do so by doing what our Lord Himself commanded us on Maundy Thursday night at the Last Supper: by taking bread and wine and transforming them into His Body and Blood which we then offer to God the Father as a sacrifice for the taking away of our sins and for the giving of the new life of grace in the Holy Spirit. This is why St Paul talks today of Christ as our Passover Lamb being sacrificed. We don’t sacrifice lambs in the Temple of Jerusalem like the Jews of old, but we do sacrifice The Lamb of God in the Temple which is His Body, for we remember how He said, ‘destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up’. By this He meant two closely connected things: first that the temple of which He was speaking was His own Body and it would be ‘destroyed’, so to speak, on Calvary; and secondly that three days after it had been put to death, He Himself would raise that body to a new life.

That new life He now shares with us. How? First through baptism which was celebrated all over the Catholic world at the Vigil last night, and secondly through the Mass and Holy Communion. Mass is indeed truly the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Temple which is His Church, made not of stones but of living human persons of flesh and blood and spirit. We, too, become partakers or sharers in that very sacrifice by taking part in the Mass and by receiving Holy Communion.

At the end of the Offertory, just before the Preface the prayer which I will pray says this: ‘Exultant with paschal gladness, O Lord, we offer the sacrifice by which your Church is wondrously reborn and nourished.’ Then the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer sings that ‘it is truly right …at all times to praise you, but above all to acclaim you, O Lord, on this day, when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. For He is the true lamb who has taken away the sins of the world; by dying He has destroyed our death and by rising He has restored our life.’ And again at Communion we repeat the same words from St Paul that ‘Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, therefore let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of purity and truth.’ Let me end with the triumphant words of psalm 117 which were the response to the psalm: ‘This is the day that the Lord has made: let us rejoice in it and be glad! Alleluia!’

Dear Sisters, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, earlier in the week just ended we heard the familiar story of the betrayal of our Lord by His own disciple, Judas Iscariot. We heard how he judged that this act of betrayal was worth being paid thirty pieces of silver by the chief priests to bring about. We also heard how Judas complained loudly at what he called the waste of a very expensive perfume which Mary of Bethany poured out upon our Lord’s feet just days before His death. What does this tell us? Well, it says that Judas had a terrible sense of value. There are some things that cannot be given a price, they are so valuable, and I think that is what our Lord was telling the Apostles in general, and Judas in particular, when He told them to leave Mary alone. That bottle of perfume was worth nearly one year’s wages for a labourer; it would have taken someone spending many gruelling and back-breaking hours day after day for the best part of twelve months to earn enough to buy that perfume. But our Lord recognised that it was quite simply a symbol of Mary’s love and gratitude to our Lord for having raised her beloved brother Lazarus from the darkness and stench of the tomb in which he had been buried for four days.

To Mary, then, the perfume was hardly precious enough for what she wanted to show, and our Lord knew that, and so He firmly defended what she had done. For Judas, such an anointing could only be waste because he couldn’t recognise the meaning of the symbol and the real cost of true love and gratitude.

Then we consider the thirty silver pieces, which the Book of Exodus sets as the value of a slave, telling us that: ‘if an ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner of the ox must give thirty shekels of silver to the slave's master.’ This, then, is how not only the Chief Priests, but more shockingly, Judas, arrived at a calculation of the worth of our Lord in their eyes. He was no more valuable than a slave. Worse still, it was as though Judas was saying that Jesus is just a commodity to be traded with, no longer even a person, let alone one to whom Judas owes unswerving loyalty as a friend and a disciple whom he has followed for the last three years.

But why, on this most wonderful of nights, do I go back to those events from last week? It is because they should remind us of another transaction, another exchange, which, while it is equally shocking, is also infinitely more joyful and fruitful. For whereas Judas’s sale of his Lord leads only to two deaths, Jesus’s and his own, this other exchange leads to life, and eternal life at that. For if Judas showed only greed and contempt, and Mary of Bethany showed what love she was able, yet still without being able to save Jesus from death, we are faced with something infinitely greater and more powerful, that is love without limits on the part of the infinite God Himself; a love which cancels out Judas’s miserable perfidy on the one hand and praises and perfects Mary’s generosity of gesture on the other. It perfects it by utterly shattering the bonds of death itself, the bonds in which our Lord has just been enchained as a result of his Passion and death on the cross.

During the Exsultet, the mighty and ecstatic hymn which sang of the joy of Easter following our entry into the chapel this evening, these words were sung to God the Father: ‘O wonder of your humble care for us! O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son.’ Well, what can we say? If Mary’s gesture of love was extravagant and powerfully symbolic, how much more powerful and effective was the Father’s outpouring of His own Son’s life on the cross? Unlike Mary’s sign of love, the crucifixion was no mere gesture, but a total giving of God himself. Father and Son alike did this for one reason and one reason only: love - infinite love, totally extravagant and unselfish love. To ransom a slave God was prepared to pay not thirty pieces of silver, not the price of a powerful perfume, but the price of His own Son’s Passion and death.

But who is the slave? Quite simply, the slave is not just all of us, but every unique and individual one of us. When we reflect on those words: ‘to ransom a slave, You gave away your Son’, just remember that those words mean that to ransom me God gave away His Son to suffer a terrible death. Am I worth that much? God not only thinks so, but has acted in the only way that can prove it: He has done it. The death of Christ is a fact in history and its meaning is this: To ransom me, God gave away His Son.

This gift of Himself is the Sacrifice of Calvary. In it God acts out of infinite love for every single one of us here tonight. To God, then, each of us alone is worth as much as the entire human race. This must surely strike us as an astonishing thing to say! Yet we are that valuable to God. Even if God had thought we were worth no more than thirty pieces of silver, the value of a slave, that would surely be something, but God does not stop at a mere trifle like that: he does not stop at anything less than the complete offering up of His Son as a proof of His infinite love, and as the means of bringing us out of that slavery in which we had been condemned to live and die until our Lord paid the infinite price of His own precious life’s blood on the cross.

Mary’s precious perfume was the best she could offer to show her thanks for the life of her brother. But Jesus here does more than raise Lazarus: by means of His own rising from the dead He promises to raise each and every one of us along with Him on the last day.

So now, on this most holy night we give thanks for that price which has not merely bought us out of slavery, but has crowned us with the dignity of the new life of the resurrection, the life in which each of us is already a first-born son or daughter of God Himself. That is how much we mean to God, to our Father and to his Son our Lord. To ransom a slave, that is you and me, He gave away His Son. And now, the Father has raised His Son to life so that He might be the first of many brothers, the first fruits of the plan that God has had for each of us from all eternity. As St John says, ‘we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is’. May this joyful and holy night bring us all closer to the infinitely loving heart of the Father and prepare us for that final day when He will raise us to the fullness of the resurrection of His only Son, our Lord and Saviour who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Dear Sisters, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, at the end of last Sunday’s Gospel of the Temptations, St Luke told us that Satan left our Lord, only to return at an opportune time. I then observed that that time to which St Luke briefly alludes when Satan would return would be on Maundy Thursday night, in the gloom of the Olive groves of the Garden of Gethsemane. That event will be referred to directly in the Preface of the Mass today. Meanwhile, St Luke’s account of that fateful Maundy Thursday evening includes many important details, some of which I hope to speak about on the last Sunday before Palm Sunday, so I will leave further mention of that till three Sundays hence.

However, there is something worth pointing out here today about what we have just heard, which connects with the events in Gethsemane. It is the phrase, which only St Luke among the evangelists tells us, that during this event which we call the Transfiguration, our Lord was speaking together with Moses and Elijah ‘about His departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.’ It is this reference, so short and so very allusive or elliptical, that can easily escape our attention. What does it mean? In one sense it is quite straightforward; the word St Luke uses in Greek is one that anyone will recognise straightaway: ‘exodus’, which means ‘way out.’ The Exodus of which we all know, of course, is that of which we hear so in the reading from Book of the same name at the Easter Vigil: the dramatic departure of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, led by Moses himself, who has just appeared in the Gospel we have heard, conversing with Jesus in glory.

Exodus, then, is the name of an event which is at once in the remote past for the Jewish people, and in the imminent future for Christ. In the past the Jews were brought out of slavery at great cost. Moses had to struggle against the will of Pharaoh who was determined not to allow the Jews to leave Egypt. God brought down several plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharoh finally gave in to Moses’ demands made in God’s name. Yet even then all was not over. First of all, as the Jewish people waited to cross the Red Sea and so to leave Egypt for good, Pharaoh once again changed his mind and began to pursue the fleeing Jews by force of arms to compel them to return to Egypt as slaves. But as you know, Moses, directed by God, stretched out his hand over the sea and opened for the people a passage between the walls of water on either side of them, through which they walked safely and dry shod to the far side and to freedom. Meanwhile, the Egyptians, pursuing them in their chariots, followed into this passage in the sea only to see Moses on the far side stretch out his hands in command to allow the walls of water around them once more to crash down to their proper place and so to overwhelm and drown the pursuing Egyptians. It is this miracle of power which forms the climax and defining image of the Exodus of the Old Testament, the event which began the life of freedom of the people of Israel.

Nonetheless, one cannot possibly ignore the vital fact that it was only a beginning. There lay ahead of the people some forty years of trial and testing travelling in the barren wilderness, before they would finally be enabled to enter the land God had promised them, and how much would befall them of disaster and rebellion against God and Moses in those forty years ahead! This is something to remember when we think of the Exodus from Egypt. It was the beginning of an arduous and difficult process, not just of nomadic wandering, but of learning slowly an dpainfully who God was for them, and how much they needed to be transformed in order to become His people, capable of serving Him in true freedom. And we know, do we not, how even after they did final reach the Promised Land, they would go through many centuries of rebellion against God and of repentance, constantly renewed and strengthened by the promises of God made through His prophets – men like Elijah, whom we have also encountered in the Gospel today, - promises that one day He would send them a Saviour who would be a new Moses and even more besides.

Can we begin to see, then, how the figures of Moses and Elijah mean so much by their appearance in today’s Gospel, and by the mention St Luke makes of our Lord’s ‘Exodus’ in Jerusalem? What we need to do next, of course, is to discover what our Lord’s ‘Exodus’ actually means. He was not going to pass through the Red Sea, but He was going to pass through the even more terrible passion and crucifixion. Our Lord’s Exodus was not a passing out of the land of slavery towards a new freedom in God, but He was about to pass through death to a glorious victory and new life in the resurrection. It was indeed His death, but it was endured for our sake, to free us from slavery to sin and Satan, and to bring us into the freedom of the children of God.

The first Exodus was the opening up of a passage for the chosen people through the waters of the Red Sea, the new Exodus was the opening up of a passage from death to life through the waters of baptism. St Paul connects the first Exodus with the sacrament of baptism in the first epistle to the Corinthians, saying: ‘our fathers … all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses … in the sea.’ This is why we read the passage about the Exodus at the Easter Vigil, the night on which the whole Church celebrates the new birth of those baptized that night, not into Moses, but into Christ.

We know only too well that our baptism, though it is the moment in which we enter into a new and wonderful union with Christ as our head, is by no means the end of our journey to God. Just as the Chosen People wandered for forty years of hardship through the desert on their way to the Promised Land, so too we must pass through the difficulties of this life before we make our final Exodus to the Lord, which takes place at our death in this life and our entry into eternity. It is the forty years of the chosen people wandering through the wilderness that represents our own earthly life’s journey. For although we have been liberated from original sin in the exodus of baptism, we still have to learn how to do away with sin in our daily lives before we can enter the kingdom of God for ever. And that is why the forty days of Lent have a special significance for us, representing the hardships and deprivations through which we must pass in this life so as to become ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’.

St Paul explains this for us in another way today. He reminds the Philippians that they are not citizens of this world, but of heaven. This world is a wilderness compared to the joys of the Promised Land of heaven. We must keep our hearts and hopes set on that future beyond our own exodus from this life. St Paul also makes the connection for us between what happens to our Lord today in the Gospel, namely His Transfiguration, and what will happen to us after our own wilderness years and final departure from the world have been achieved, telling us that: ‘the Lord Jesus Christ…will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body.’ His Transfiguration is the sign of our future transformation into glory. Just as in baptism we enter into union with Him in order to enter the wilderness of the forty days of Lent, so at our future exodus or departing from this life, we will by His power and glory enter into an everlasting glory in union with Him and all the saints. He has the power to do this because He has made all things from nothing and can transform them by His own command. So we continue on our way through these forty days looking towards the triumph of Easter glory, which is itself the foretaste and anticipation of our final victory which will last not for fifty days like Eastertide, wonderful though that season is, but for all eternity. Amen.

This Gospel we have just heard is framed as it were by spiritual powers, one positive and light, the other negative and dark. At the end we are told that Satan departs after tempting Christ in three ways, yet already preparing to return to the attack, while at the beginning we are told that our Lord has left the Jordan after His Baptism ‘full of the Holy Spirit and has been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tried by the devil’.

Let us think first of the Holy Spirit’s role in what we have just heard. We are taught that we should always seek to avoid temptation whenever we can, certainly not to seek it out, for fear that the devil will overpower us. After all, he is much more powerful and intelligent than we are, and he knows exactly how to confuse us, or to beguile us into thinking what is evil will actually be for our good or our pleasure. We might therefore assume that our Lord is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness only because, being God, He will obviously outsmart the devil; but this cannot be enough. The devil does not definitely know that Jesus is God. All he can tell is that Jesus is a man, although an exceptionally good one. We might think also that the devil only tempts wicked persons, or uses easy ways to tempt those who are struggling. Surely the devil can’t tempt a completely good man? But this is exactly what we hear happening in this Gospel passage. We must also remember that the devil is as determined as he is subtle. He does not give up easily. Ever since he conquered Adam and Eve, it has been his strategy to employ different kinds of temptations for different kinds of people. The devil concentrates all his efforts into looking for different ways of tempting a good man. But we must not forget that it is the Holy Spirit who has set this scene up in the wilderness. The Spirit positively wants the Temptations to take place. In order to understand why this is so, let us remind ourselves of what exactly the Temptations are.

The first temptation of our Lord is straightforward. Our Lord is hungry, enough perhaps to make him look at hunger in a new way, not only for himself, but for all mankind as well. The devil also knows that if our Lord has power to change stone into bread, he, the devil, will know it is not by his own satanic power that Jesus will do this, but by the power of God. On the other hand, our Lord also knows that if he gives in to this temptation, the temptation to do away with hunger and famine at a stroke, and for all time, then he will actually cause mankind to lose something precious: they will lose the need for faith. This was the temptation of the 5,000 who were miraculously fed. ‘Sir, give us this bread always!’ they said to him when they saw the miracle he had worked with five loaves and two fish. But what good did it do them? This is what our Lord saw ahead, and so he quotes a different passage of scripture to the devil, ‘man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’. Hence of course those words we will hear at Communion today, reminding us that the heavenly bread we receive at Mass is not ordinary bread, the sort which will only satisfy our hunger for a short time, but rather this bread is the Word made flesh, who has made Himself into our lasting, spiritual nourishment.

So the devil proceeds to his second temptation. If our Lord cannot be made to do something to address His bodily needs, why not see if He will be drawn to power and to glory? Hence the vision of all the kingdoms of the world, all of them in Satan’s power. Satan is the one who rules the way things are done in this world: lust for power, desire for domination, compromise of the truth, fear of being marginalized or ridiculed, denial of God’s law and rule. The devil promises that he will give all of this over to Jesus, for him to do what he will with it, on one condition: Jesus must worship Satan. But of course to do that would be to become enslaved to Satan anyway, so there would be no victory in that, no sense in trying to control the world while it still lies ultimately in the power of the devil.

It is then that the devil makes his last and most subtle test of our Lord’s resolve and understanding. We note that it is in St Luke’s account that the second and third temptations are the other way around from St Matthew’s account. It is here in St Luke that the third temptation begins with something very significant: having failed to tempt our Lord in those other ways, the devil now quotes Holy Scripture to justify his temptation. ‘Throw yourself down from the Temple as a magnificent gesture of your trust in God’s protection, and a sign to people that you are specially guarded and guided by God’. He supports this with a quotation from psalm 90: ‘He will put his angels in charge over you to guard you’ and ‘they will hold you up on their hands lest you hurt your foot against a stone.’ How ingenious! To use God’s word to justify a temptation! St Luke has seen that this is the most subtle of all the temptations on account of its appeal to Sacred Scripture, and this is surely why he has put this one last of the three. The devil says: You have God’s word for it, the assurance of Scripture itself, therefore it cannot be wrong to do what I am suggesting to you!

But our Lord parries this thrust from the devil with a reply also drawn from Scripture: ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ What this exchange shows is that you cannot simply use Scripture to justify any action, unless it is guided by Christ and the Holy Spirit. One passage of Scripture taken out of context, may easily be contradicted by another. Hence St Peter tells us that the interpretation of Scriptural prophecy is never a matter for a human person, because no true prophecy ever came from a human person’s initiative. The only way we can guarantee that an interpretation of Scripture is the correct one, is by ensuring that it is Christ’s own, and that is guaranteed in His Body the Church, to whom He has given His own authority to interpret Scripture and use it as a proper guide. Without that guide, even Scripture could lead us astray.

This is why the Church has always taken a measured view of the availability of the scriptures to the faithful. It is not true to say that the Church ever in the past actively prevented the faithful from ever knowing the Scriptures, nor that the Church was frightened that free access to the word of God would somehow damage its power and prestige; this was the devil’s lie, and the protestant reformers fell for it, and have deceived many by means of it. For the truth is that the Church has always recognised that Scripture needs to be handled with great care, and that its true meaning can only be made clear by reference to Christ’s and the Spirit’s guidance. Otherwise, there is always the danger that the devil can twist Scripture to his own purposes, to deceive many.

Today’s liturgy reminds us of this in an arresting way. The introit and the responsorial psalm were both taken from psalm 90, the psalm quoted in today’s Gospel. But who quoted it there? The devil! So we now hear these texts from psalm 90 not as Satan used them, to deceive, but interpreted to us by Christ in his mystical Body, in the Mass. That psalm is here given its true Christological explanation. The introit takes God’s own words from the psalm: ‘He shall call upon me and I shall hear him’; it is the Lord God who speaks, and it continues, ‘I will deliver him and give him glory.’ God delivered Jesus from the temptations and gave him the glory of the resurrection that comes from his faithfulness to death for our salvation. As we set out on our Lenten path, we acknowledge with joy that although we undertake this hazardous journey, tested by the devil’s subtle temptations, we are always heard by God and are supported by his power when we cry out to Him in prayer in our need. Finally, we are reminded that the devil still did not give up after three times failing to make our Lord fall. St Luke tells us that he would return to tempt him at the appointed time. This will be Gethsemane, the last and most devastating of all the temptations our Lord had to grapple with, but that is for another day.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren, last week I began telling you about the background history and practice of the Jubilee, or Holy Year. Today I am going to tell you in more detail about what it means, how it affects us, and how to get the graces that are given so generously by the Church in this year. First of all, I want to tell you what the Church is doing in granting graces from God. It goes back to the words of our Lord to the Apostles on the first Easter Day: ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ (Jn 20:23). That means that while Jesus Himself had the power that belongs by right to God alone, He shared it with His Apostles who in turn shared it with their successors, the bishops, right down to the present day. Remember how the Pharisees and Scribes had been indignant when Jesus forgave sins, protesting, ‘who does He think He is? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ Now Jesus has given that power to the Church!

All sins, whether original sin or personal sins, are forgiven and remitted in baptism. But what happens if you sin after you have been baptised? A great difficulty arose in the persecutions of the Roman emperors, when under terrible pressure and out of fear of torture or death, many Christians who had been baptised committed the sin of apostasy, of publicly abandoning the faith, in order to save their lives. Then, when the persecution died down, as it often did, they repented and begged to be allowed to return once more to the faith they had denied, rather like St Peter who had denied our Lord three times out of fear, and then after the resurrection had been both forgiven and restored to his former state as the prince of the apostles. If it could happen to Peter, could it not happen to ordinary, frail, fearful Christian souls, if they sincerely repented of their sin and longed to return to the faith?

In this way the Church began to develop in the exercise of the power that Christ had given her: the forgiveness of any sins, so long as they were truly repented of. There could never be forgiveness without repentance, but so too, if there was heartfelt sorrow for sin, then there could certainly be forgiveness. But such sorrow could never be a matter of mere words. ‘Sorry’ is such an easy word to say, but proving it is more demanding. Hence the Church set about devising penances, tasks that demanded great humility and determined perseverance, that penitent sinners had to undergo in order to be readmitted to the Church’s life and sacraments. It is worth recalling that for many centuries in the past, the season of Lent, which we are about to enter, was not only a season of preparation for those looking forward to being baptized at Easter, but also a time of penitence and mourning for the baptized who had fallen away and were now out of sacramental communion. They could not go to Communion, which is what the word ‘excommunicated’ means. Those who were accepted as truly penitent by the Bishop, who alone at first exercised the power to forgive sins in this way, were given long and arduous penances to perform all through Lent, or even for longer if the sin was considered serious enough to warrant a longer period of penance. It was for the bishop to impose a suitable penance on each sinner. It might be fasting on bread and water all through Lent or even several years, or wearing sackcloth and ashes and kneeling for hours on end at the door of the church, unable to enter it until they were publicly reconciled by the bishop, or going on a long and dangerous pilgrimages such as to the Holy Land. Finally, on Maundy Thursday, having completed their penance, they would be presented to the Bishop and were ‘absolved’. Their sins were forgiven and they were readmitted to the life of the Church; thus, at last, they were ‘reconciled’ and could receive holy Communion once more.

All this is at the root of what we mean by penance, absolution and reconciliation, which we are able to receive in the sacrament of confession or reconciliation, but it is now administered to us in a far more gentle and lenient way. When we sin, we also may repent and confess our sins and ask to have our sins absolved and to be reconciled with God and His Church, so as to be able once more to receive Holy Communion. This is why, when we have confessed our sins and expressed our sorrow in the act of contrition, we are given a penance to perform to show our true penitence, our firm purpose of amendment and resolution to turn away from sin once again, for good.

But what does it mean that we can seemingly achieve by a few ‘Hail Marys’ what our ancient Christian forefathers had to achieve by far more rigorous penances? It means that our forgiveness, our reconciliation, is achieved with far less apparent demand on us now. Yet God’s justice is still the same as it was in the 3rd century or in the 13th. Our penances for sin are also meant to help us make amends. When you do wrong and you are sorry, you must do more than simply say ‘sorry’. You must make amends. And the more serious the wrong, the more demanding the restitution we must make in order to restore the balance of God’s justice. If you steal something, you must restore it. If you keep what you have stolen you cannot be truly sorry. You must give it back as well as say ‘sorry’. The same is true for any sin, whether greater or lesser in nature - we must make restitution for it in proportion to its seriousness. But there are some sins that you cannot easily make restitution for, such as murder or adultery. In such cases the restitution has to be a penance of a different kind. In the early Church penances would be both a sign of sorrow for sin and a restitution. Nowadays, it is often the case that we can’t or are not able to make restitution, and we must do a token penance in place of that greater act of restitution. If I murder someone, I cannot bring them back to life, but I must still make amends in some way, and that restitution will be more demanding of me than the penance due for losing my temper when the traffic lights turn red.

Now this brings us to the idea of indulgences. An indulgence is a special kind of gift of God’s generosity which we can gain in place of having to do a heavy penance. Let’s say that for committing a murder the penance imposed by the Bishop was to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or even more than one pilgrimage if the murder was of a really great person. Let’s take human justice as an example; you commit a murder, and the judge sentences you to twenty years in prison. That sentence is meant to be a kind of restitution so that the murderer makes up for his crime by the loss of freedom and all that goes with being imprisoned, for a very long time. This is retributive justice. The same principle applies, in a way, with God. Remember, we are not talking here about forgiveness of sins. God freely grants that to anyone who is truly repentant. But justice still needs to be done. We need to make restitution for our sins even when we are sorry, even after we have been forgiven. Now this is not simply the same thing as going to prison. In God’s justice there is not just restitution to be made, but our conversion to God must be brought to perfection. When we have committed sins, those sins make us less like God, less holy. So we need to be made more like God, more holy, and this is what penance and restitution do for us. So this is why it is never enough just to go to confession and do a penance, we also have to make restitution and in that way grow in likeness to God. This cannot be done automatically, like switching on a light, but takes some time and some commitment on our part. We cannot become holy without our own cooperation in this process, and it can be arduous. Lent is given to us partly for this purpose, to allow us time and commitment to prayer, almsgiving and fasting so as to grow in holiness and reparation for our sins. But there is also the special grace of the Jubilee, the Holy Year, when the means of our achieving holiness are made more generously available to help us, and some of the arduousness is lifted from our hard work of atoning for sin and growing in holiness.

Back in the year 1300 the first Jubilee or Holy Year was declared by the Pope. The Christian people were invited to make a pilgrimage to Rome and there to fulfil certain acts of devotion, prayer and penance so as not only to make restitution and atonement for their sins, but also to draw down upon themselves the holiness of the saints who have gone before us but whose holiness in heaven can aid us here on earth. When we pray to the saints for their assistance, we are praying to those who have themselves passed through this life, they were sinners who did penance and were reconciled in confession and became holy, which is what the word ‘saint’ means. Now that they are in heaven, their holiness can help us, it can help to make amends for our misdeeds. God can take away some of our personal debt on account of what the saints can present to him on our behalf. Therefore, we can under special circumstances do smaller penances, but still get the full effect of larger penances thanks to the holiness of those who have gone before us, and of course, all such holiness really comes from God in the first place. Because it is a smaller penance than we really deserve, and yet gets us the same resulting state of grace, it is called an ‘indulgence’. So an indulgence is not the forgiveness of sins, which is given in the sacrament of penance, but rather the lessening of all the heaviness of the amendment or restitution we owe to God for the offences we have committed against Him and against our neighbour.

So, in each of the many Holy years called by the Church ever since 1300, the Church in the person of the pope has invited the faithful to come to Rome on pilgrimage and there to pray at the tombs of the great saints, above all of Peter and Paul, and in all the other holy places where saints are buried in Rome, which we call the ‘holy city’. The Church has the power to decide exactly what form of words and deeds we should fulfil in order to gain this grace. We have to visit a named place of pilgrimage, to pray for the Pope’s intentions for the good of the whole Church, we have to go to confession and communion, we have to do some act of charity or mercy to our neighbour. All of this is designed to do two things together: to make amends for past sins, and to form within us the habits and attitudes of holiness of likeness to God. That is why it is never mechanical. You cannot become holy by putting money in a box. So you cannot get an indulgence by putting money in a box, either. You can only get it by doing what the Church lays down, and do it from the heart.

Now over the centuries the Popes have broadened the terms and conditions for getting such an indulgence. Whereas originally to get it you had to go to Rome, - which was no small task, but considered worth the effort for the sake of what you got, - much more recently the local bishop, successor of the Apostles, can name certain places in his own diocese where the faithful can now gain the same indulgence. There is a list in the foyer of seven places in this diocese where the Jubilee indulgence can be gained, but note immediately that one of them is right here, a few hundred yards away in St Michael’s church! It is the shrine of Bd Carlo Acutis, who is to be canonised during this holy year.

Now I want you to think after all that I have said; if our ancient forefathers had to undergo fierce and long penances to be reconciled and have their sins taken away, and if our mediaeval forefathers thought it worth going all the way to Rome to get an indulgence to lighten their burden of penance – and did so in an age before quick travel and comfortable accommodation was available – then surely it has to be not only worth the effort but a magnificent gift to us, that in order to gain what our forefathers thought worth enduring harsh penances to achieve, we need only go a few hundred yards away, and in order to have our punishment for past sins wiped out, simply to pray and do deeds of mercy and charity and then leave it to God’s mercy and goodness to bring about the effect in us if we are truly determined to receive what He offers us. As I say, there is a very simple but well laid out list in the foyer explaining what to do and where to do it. This opportunity only lasts for this year. Don’t miss it!

Dear Sisters, dear brethren, We are now nearly two months into this year of our Lord 2025, which means that in only one month from now the Holy Year will be a quarter of a year old. Therefore it’s high time for me to say something about the meaning and purpose of the Holy Year. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Holy Year originates with an ancient custom of the Israelites who celebrated a special year ‘of the Lord’s favour’ once in every fifty years. First of all, why fifty? The number fifty to us means five times ten or half of one hundred; but the Jews considered it in an entirely different way – as forty-nine plus one. But what, I hear you thinking, what on earth can be the significance of forty-nine plus one? Well, you may know that the Jews were the original people to count in sevens. Our seven-day week comes from the Jewish way of counting days. This period of a week corresponds to one phase in the cycle of the moon as seen in the sky at night. The phases of the moon are from new to the first half, when the moon is waxing, then the full moon, then the half-moon when it is waning, before returning to the new moon once more, a cycle of four phases making a month in the Jewish calendar.

In the account of creation at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, we are told that God created the whole world in six days and then rested on the seventh in order to take His delight in His work, thus giving us our seven-day week. The number seven therefore represented the fullness of time, because it contained within itself the complete days of one week. This meant that seven plus one, which is eight, came to mean something quite mystical to the Jews. It represented to them ‘fullness plus’ – superabundant fullness. So the most important religious ceremonies were celebrated over a period of eight days, or an ‘octave’, a custom which we also observe in celebration of the greatest feasts of the religious calendar, Easter and Christmas, which consist of eight days of continuous celebration continuing from the first day. This is ‘completeness plus’.

Now think of Eastertide, the greatest season of the year, (into the preparatory period of which we are soon to enter in just over a week from now). Eastertide lasts for seven weeks, each week being seven days long. Seven times seven gives us forty-nine, which you can think of as completion multiplied by itself. That is almost the length of Eastertide, but not quite! Because there is yet another day beyond the forty-nine days of those seven weeks. What is one day beyond forty-nine? Fifty! The Greek word for ‘fiftieth’ is ‘Pentecost’! So Pentecost represents completion multiplied by itself and then some more! It is the super-superabundance of time! It is time flowing into eternity!

Well, the Jews didn’t only observe days and weeks in sevens, but also years. At the end of six years the seven was called the sabbatical year. And even in secular circles this idea is still found, when people take time away from their duties, like the ‘sabbath day’ in a week. However, a sabbatical is not usually given every seven years; that would be a lot of free time! Still, if you take seven years and multiply them by seven you get, yes you’ve got it, forty-nine years, the fullness of the fullness of time. Hence, the forty-ninth year plus one is the super-abundance of the fullness of time, the fiftieth year, and this is what the Jews came to call the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’. I spoke briefly about this a few weeks ago when our Lord quoted the passage in Isaiah where ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ is mentioned. But the year of the Lord’s favour didn’t simply happen by rote, so to speak, it had to be ‘proclaimed’. This is what our Lord said He had come to do, and His whole public ministry was just such a proclamation. But I am running on too quickly. How was this ‘proclamation’ of the fiftieth year made? The Jewish religious festivals began with the appearance of the moon according to its phases, usually either the new moon or the full moon. The signal that the moon could now be seen, and therefore the festival could begin, was the sounding of the trumpet. Psalm 80 tells of this custom: ‘Blow the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed on the solemn feast day.’

This was also the manner in which the fiftieth year, the year of the Lord’s favour, was proclaimed: by the sounding of the trumpet. Now the Hebrew name for this trumpet was ‘yobel’, and from it comes the word ‘jubilee’. So the original ‘jubilee’ was the fiftieth year from a beginning. In the case of the year of the Lord’s favour this was fifty years since the last such year. So the custom was that a jubilee year was celebrated solemnly every fiftieth year. We still observe the same custom in celebrating fiftieth years as jubilees of marriage, of religious profession and of ordination.

But now I must say a few words about what kind of year the Old Testament jubilee year was. The custom, solemnly laid down, was that during this year all injustices were to be righted. All slaves and prisoners were to be freed. All land or property which had been stolen or alienated was to be returned to its rightful owners. Debts were cancelled. Buying and selling was strictly controlled so that no one charged too much. It was a time of grace and forgiveness of all debts, including those of sin by which charity had been wounded. Quarrels were mended, enemies reconciled. The people and the land rested, work was kept to a minimum, much as happened on the Sabbath Day in each week. So this was the ‘Year of the Lord’s favour’, proclaimed every fiftieth year. The instructions are found in the Book of Leviticus chapter 25, in a passage which ends with these words: ‘You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord your God.’ Thus, it brought about the restoration of God’s order, which man’s malice and sinfulness had disturbed and disordered. Now God was decreeing the return of good order and justice.

So we come to the Jubilee years of the Christian era. It may interest you to learn that this practise is not all that ancient in the Church. It was not until the year 1300 that a Pope was persuaded by the prayers of the faithful to celebrate a year of Grace, a year during which extra-ordinary means of grace were to be offered to those who sought them with prayerful humility, especially by undertaking a pilgrimage to Rome. This was no easy task in the Middle Ages, as a pilgrim had to endure many hardships in order to qualify for the kind of graces that were offered by the Pope. These typically involved the granting of a special indulgence in order to take away such punishment as was due to anyone for their past sins, including sins forgiven in the sacrament of Penance. For everyone has to make satisfaction, to make retribution to God whose justice is offended by sin and who, though always abounding in mercy, will only grant such cancellation of the debt of sin to those who show themselves willing to receive it by acts of self-discipline and restoration of what has been done amiss. In this way the new Christian ‘jubilee’, also called a ‘Holy Year’ on account of the special graces imparted during it, was similar to the old Testament jubilee. But whereas the old jubilee was concerned primarily with human restoration of justice, the Christian jubilee was principally concerned with the outpouring of extra graces and imparting gifts of holiness.

So the practice of the Holy Year began to take its present shape: a pilgrimage to Rome to gain the indulgences and graces which were offered to the penitent Christian in greater abundance than in usual times. Gradually the conditions for gaining the indulgences of the Holy Year were broadened to enable more people to enjoy them. The jubilee was held not just every fifty years, but every twenty-five years so that fewer people missed them. Moreover, the indulgence came to be gained not only by going on pilgrimage to Rome, but could be gained by pilgrimage to other places nearer home which were designated by the Pope and bishops. In this way the Church wished that more and more people should have the opportunity to gain this indulgence in more and more ways.

Next week, the last Sunday before Lent, I will continue with an explanation of the character, purpose and method of the Holy Year and how we can benefit more fully from it during this Holy Year of 2025.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren, how glad I am to know that at last you are able to read today’s Gospel in a way that makes sense! We have just heard St Luke’s version of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, which is admittedly more familiar in St Matthew’s version. Both evangelists begin in the same way, with the Beatitudes, so called because each phrase begins with the same word ‘beati’.

I want to say something about this important word: ‘beati’. For many years now most of us have either heard or read the first word of each of these statements translated as ‘happy’. Those of you who come frequently to Mass here will know that I always read a version which uses instead the word ‘blessed’. Now at last, we are all on the same page! When I was a seminarian in Rome, we were given a spiritual conference at our college by a famous Benedictine monk and liturgical scholar who spoke to us about the Beatitudes. He was opposed to translating the word ‘beati’ as ‘blessed’ because, he said, the word our Lord used is not ‘benedicti’, which is what would be faithfully rendered ‘blessed’ in English. For instance, ‘benedictus qui venit’ is ‘blessed is He who comes’. Indeed, the root word of ‘benedictus’ is ‘benedicere’, which is ‘to bless’. He therefore defended the translation of the beatitudes with the word ‘happy’, as in the Jerusalem Bible version, as most of us used to hear until the new English Standard Version of the scriptures replaced it in this country on the First Sunday of Advent last December.

So why does the new translation say ‘blessed’ where formerly the Jerusalem said ‘happy’? Well, the first thing to note is that the Gospels were not written in English, nor even in Latin. They were written in Greek. And both Matthew and Luke use the same word which is rendered in Latin as ‘beati’: it is ‘makarios’. Now I want to explain that ‘makarios’ does not mean ‘happy’ for the Greek word for what we call ‘happy’ is not ‘makarios’ but ‘eudaimon’. ‘Happy’ in general English use tends to mean ‘cheerful’, although it can also mean ‘fortunate’, or even ‘lucky’, but this is not what our Lord is saying. When he says that his hearers are ‘makarioi’ he doesn’t mean that they are, or ought to be, cheerful; He is saying nothing to do with their present mood. He is speaking of a spiritual good estate, of being ‘fortunate’, though not in any sense accidentally, as we might call someone ‘fortunate’ who wins the lottery. That is not our Lord’s meaning at all. ‘Makarios’, as it is used here, represents the word our Lord must have used in Aramaic meaning ‘looked upon favourably by God, and so blessed’. One thing is clear from each of the beatitudes, namely that the present state of those who are makarioi or blessed is contrasted with their future state. Those who are poor, or who are hungry or who are in mourning are certainly not ‘happy’ now, but they may well be ‘blessed’ if they are going to share God’s bliss in the eternal future.

Now for the actual phrases themselves. Matthew’s familiar nine phrases beginning ‘blessed are they’, are replaced in Luke by only four such phrases beginning ‘blessed are you’. In Matthew only the final beatitude begins ‘blessed are you when men revile and persecute you…’ In Luke all four are addressed to the audience directly: ‘blessed are you…’

We begin then with ‘you who are poor’. These are the ones whom St Matthew more explicitly calls the ‘poor in spirit’, since that is what is principally meant. These are not simply destitute, but rather those who rely totally on the goodness and justice of God either to defend them, or to give them justice against their oppressors. The next thing to note, though a small detail, is nonetheless helpful. Both Matthew and Luke construct these phrases in the form of: Blessed are you (or those) who are poor or hungry or sorrowing, because or for you (or they) are destined to receive some future satisfaction or fulfilment. In other words, there is a causal connection between the two halves of each phrase: your future state will be what it is to be because your present is what it is.

In the case of the first beatitude, ‘blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of heaven is yours’, this is a blessing which is already given in promise, not in present possession. The second beatitude concerns those who hunger now, who will be satisfied in the future. Luke emphasises the word ‘now’, as though to draw an even greater contrast between the present state of misery and the future state of satisfaction which God in His justice will render to the starving. So, too, with the third beatitude: ‘Blessed are you who are mourning and weeping now’, to which the corresponding future blessing is ‘for you shall laugh’, which is more dramatic than Matthew’s ‘for you shall be comforted.’ It sounds like just the sort of thing our Lord would say.

The final beatitude is mostly similar to that in Matthew, though, if anything, even more dramatic, saying: ‘Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.’ Note how Luke sharpens Matthew’s version, not only by filling out the pain of rejection by one’s contemporaries, but telling us to rejoice on that day and, most extravagantly, to leap for joy! I hope that we are all able to do just that when all this happens to us! ‘Leap for joy’, Our Lord tells us, because the fathers of those who illtreat us, illtreated the prophets in the same way.

Then St Luke does something St Matthew does not do. He puts in our Lord’s mouth a series of ‘woes’ that proclaims the exact opposite to the beatitudes we have just heard. Yet again, too, these ‘woes’ are all addressed to the audience as a warning to those to whom it may apply: ‘Woe to you who are rich, for you are having your comfort now’, clearly implying that a time will come when all that shall be taken away, presumably at the very time when the same comforts will be lavished on those who are presently poor.

So, too, ‘woe to you who are filled now, for you will go hungry’, and ‘woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.’ In both cases the comfortable present will be transformed into endless misery. And finally, ‘woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.’

St Luke loves juxtaposing groups of sayings with each other in a clear structure. But I think it is likely that our Lord used these powerful contrasting groups of teachings on many occasions, certainly far more than just once, since He preached in so many different places before many different audiences. We know that in His audience there were sometimes a mixture of those who were His supporters and those who opposed Him. The form of the teaching we have just heard in St Luke’s account presupposes that there was just such a mixed audience on at least this occasion.

It is a reminder that, just as our Lord teaches, the good and the wicked are mixed together and not to be separated easily here and now. His aim is to convert those who are wicked by warning them. Our Lord allows good and wicked to flourish here and now in the same Church. He hopes for the conversion of the wicked before it is too late. But remember this: He also sees in us things that are partly good and partly wicked; our good deeds and our sins. He addresses the beatitudes to us regarding what is good in us, but He also addresses the woes to us regarding what is sinful. May He grant us all the grace to uproot all that is evil in us and become only good. As Lent draws nearer, may our Lord purify us of all that is evil and strengthen all that is good. On the last day, may we therefore hear Him say to us: ‘Come you whom my Father has blessed..’ and not hear that dreadful curse: ‘depart from me all you wicked…’ May our lot be for ever with the ‘makarioi’, the ‘beati’, the blessed.

Dear Sisters, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, what we have heard about in all the readings today is life-changing experiences. Isaiah, Paul, Simon Peter, James and John – all of these men were totally transformed by experiences which we have just heard told to us. We begin with Isaiah. Isaiah was an Israelite nobleman in Jerusalem about 700 years before the time of our Lord. His book is one of the greatest of the Old Testament, which is why his name is familiar even nowadays. The book of Isaiah is one of the longest books in the whole Bible, containing some sixty six chapters. We hear it read in instalments at Mass during Advent and Passiontide especially. Today’s reading comes from the sixth chapter and describes the wonderful vision of God and His angels in the Temple of Jerusalem in which Isaiah was given his mission as a prophet by God Himself.

Isaiah was in the Temple, the holy place of God’s dwelling among His chosen people, the place in which sacrifices were offered daily to God. Here he was suddenly taken into an ecstasy. He saw the Lord God enthroned on high above him. Then he saw mighty spirits surrounding God’s throne. He names them as ‘Seraphim’, which is the Hebrew word for ‘burning spirits’. These are the greatest of all the angelic spirits, greater even than angels, whose name means ‘messengers’. The seraphim are more than messengers. They are the mighty spirits whom God made at the beginning of creation to stand around His throne perpetually worshipping their creator. Their bright beauty and burning majesty reflects the even greater beauty and majesty of their maker. This is a most extraordinary vision given to Isaiah, because the Seraphim are far greater than any of the angels whom we meet in the Scriptures and it is the only time in all Scripture that they are seen or even mentioned. Isaiah describes their strangely wonderful appearance. They each have six wings, again reflecting their greater status than the angelic messengers normally pictured with two wings. Of course, what Isaiah saw was a vision. The Seraphim are spirits and so they are invisible by nature. Therefore this vision was designed by God Himself to represent His power and majesty in a way that Isaiah could experience as something vastly greater than any human language or concept could explain.

Then Isaiah was granted another level of experience. He not only saw the Seraphim, but he was allowed to hear them singing to God. This, we should remember, is the very meaning of their existence, the fulfilment of their purpose in God’s plan: eternally to sing His praises. Isaiah is given an insight into their great hymn of praise: they sing in turn, one first, then another, these words: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.’ Isaiah hears them singing this great refrain, back and forth, endlessly praising God. The sound is so tremendous and deep that the entire foundations shake as though in a great earthquake. This is what Isaiah heard. Then he saw something else: the Temple was filled with smoke. This was so dense that he could not see through it. God was hidden from his sight. What was this smoke? There are several places in Scripture where a dense cloud is described as hiding God’s infinite majesty from human sight. It is called the ‘shekinah’, a word meaning ‘glory’. We hear of it, for instance in the cloud which leads the people of Israel through the wilderness after the Exodus and appears to Moses on Mount Sinai. We hear of it in the account of the Transfiguration, where Christ in glory is hidden by a cloud out of which God speaks to Peter, James and John, ‘This is my beloved Son; hear Him!’. And we are told that the disciples fell on their faces out of fear and awe. So too, Isaiah suddenly comes to himself in the midst of this awe-inspiring cloud of glory and the mighty chant of God’s seraphim, and says: ‘woe is me! For I am lost!’.

It is the same cloud of smoke that fills the Temple when Solomon solemnly consecrates it to the worship of God. We see it symbolized in the fragrant cloud of incense rising around the altar at Mass on high feast days, or before the Blessed Sacrament at Adoration and Benediction. It is a sign of God’s presence and of His majesty, and it should inspire awe in us and a holy fear.

But what is holy fear? It is not a phobia, i.e. an irrational fear such as fear of the dark or of spiders, but rather a fear which inspires both a strong sense of unworthiness coupled with a deep desire to worship and adore the object toward which holy fear is directed. In Isaiah’s case holy fear is expressed in his dramatic exclamation: ‘woe is me! For I am lost!’ This holy fear is also found in today’s Gospel, when Simon Peter was suddenly aware that this man who has led him to a miraculous catch of fish is indeed truly awe-inspiring and something else too: holy. It is holiness that inspires this fear; the holiness of God. It is this sense in Isaiah and Simon Peter that makes Isaiah say ‘I am a man of unclean lips’ and Peter say ‘depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’.

But for both men this is not the end. God does not leave Isaiah lost in uncleanness, nor Peter in a sense of his total sinfulness in this awe-inspiring presence. Instead, God uses the experience of both men to commission them. Isaiah sees a seraph fly towards him, who takes a burning coal from the altar, a coal on which incense is burned, and the seraph touches Isaiah’s lips to burn away his sinfulness. This vision is the basis of the prayer that the priest or deacon says silently before he reads the Gospel at Mass: ‘Clean my heart and my lips O Almighty God, who cleansed the lips of Isaiah with a burning coal, so that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.’ After this, Isaiah, now cleansed from his unworthiness, hears God asking, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ to which Isaiah now replies, filled with new confidence and zeal for God: ‘Here I am; send me!’ and so it is that Isaiah received his commission as a prophet, and we can read his wonderful book to this day which enlightens us about the Messiah and the terrible sufferings He freely endured for our sake.

Then there is Peter. He tries to distance himself from Christ, whose holiness has struck him with terrible force; ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord!’ Our Lord does no such thing. He does not touch him with a burning coal, but says to him, ‘fear not!’ and then He gives Peter his commission: ‘from now on you wll be catching men’. These words Jesus also addresses to James and John, and so, hearing these words, the three men leave their boats, and they follow Him.’

So, too, Paul recounts how he, too, received a commission as Apostle from Christ in person, saying to the Corinthians in today’s second reading that Jesus had appeared to the Apostles after His resurrection to renew their mission to preach throughout the world. He adds that ‘Last of all, as to one untimely born, [Jesus] appeared to me.’ We know what he is talking about here: his vision at the gates of Damascus…. This was Paul’s great commission as an Apostle too.

In all these cases, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, James and John – their commission as God’s special ministers and servants is given them as a result of a tremendous experience of God’s holiness. That experience is not given to everyone, but instead we have the liturgy in which at every Mass we join the Seraphim in their great hymn of praise, singing ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth’. In that wonderful hymn we are given communion with the great spirits around God’s throne in order to prepare us for the moment that awaits us all when we will stand face to face with the all-holy God, our Creator, Redeemer and Lord. May our lot be with the angels and the saints in eternity.

We have just heard St. Luke’s account of Our Lord’s baptism in the River Jordan. Whereas St. Matthew and St. Mark tell us that as Our Lord came up from the water, the heavens opened, the Father’s voice was heard, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him, St. Luke tells us that it was after the Baptism, while Our Lord was praying, presumably privately, that all this happened to Him. St. Matthew’s account of the Father’s words suggests that the announcement “This is my beloved Son, my favour rests on Him”, was meant for others to hear. St. Luke, and for that matter St. Mark, both tell us that the Father’s words were addressed to Our Lord himself: “Thou art my beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased.”

We do not have to speculate which of these accounts is the most historically accurate, which of them tells us what actually took place – for in a sense all of them tell us different aspects of the same wonderful event. What today’s Gospel shows us is that the Baptism of our Lord was a moment for Him of endowment with the person and power of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord is true God from true God. Yet the Father chose to intensify this special moment when He anointed His only Son with the presence and gifts of the Holy Spirit by proclaiming: “Thou art my beloved Son!” For in His sacred humanity Our Lord needed to grow. Just as He grew in stature from a little child to an adult man, so too St. Luke tells us that throughout the hidden years of Nazareth He grew in wisdom and understanding, and in favour with God and men.

St. Luke in a special way is the Evangelist of Our Lord’s sacred humanity. This doesn’t mean that, the more human our Lord seems to be, the less fully can He be God. Rather, Our Lord’s humanity belongs to the beloved Son on whom the Father’s favour rests. God the Son has been with the Father since the beginning, before all time, before anything was created, but now that the Son has become a man, by being born of our Blessed Lady, the Father also recognises and acknowledges the same Son as now truly human.

St. Luke has a special insight into the humanity of the Son of God for a particular reason: it is because he listened with great care to the words of one who had the greatest understanding of any human being of what it meant for God to become man: Our Lord’s own mother. It is St. Luke who tells us on several occasions that Mary “kept all these things in her heart and pondered on them”. For it can only have been from Mary that Luke was able to gather and pass on the account of Our Lord’s conception, of His birth and of His infancy and childhood. It is for this reason that many ancient icons of Our Lady are attributed to St. Luke, and he is portrayed in later centuries painting Our Lady’s portrait.

Our Lord had none but God for His Father. He knew that even as a twelve year-old boy, when He said to Mary and Joseph, “did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” But His blessed Mother gave Him His humanity. God became a child in His mother’s womb; He was her special charge and care; He was her love above all things.

This is what St. Luke passes on in his turn to us. His understanding of what it meant for the Son of God to be man was drawn from carefully hearing what His Mother had to say.

What we learn from St. Luke, and through him from Our Lady, is that God profoundly respects the integrity of the human nature He has created. Our Lord chose to appear in the world not in the appearance of man, but as a true man, like us in all things but sin. In this way He pays us the highest compliment. He does not think it beneath His dignity as God to take to Himself every aspect of our state, including the necessity of our growing in understanding as well as in body. The incarnation of the Son of God, which we celebrate during this Christmas season, is the culmination, the crowning point of God’s originally having chosen to “make man in His own image and likeness”. As God’s Son and Mary’s Son, Our Lord hears the words “Thou art my beloved Son”. He receives the Holy Spirit, descending on Him in bodily form because He is Himself present in the human world in bodily form. He receives the Holy Spirit to sanctify and empower His humanity for the work on which He is about to embark in His public ministry and His forthcoming Passion and Death. Moreover, by becoming man, Our Lord makes us no longer just creatures, for although human nature was already endowed with the dignity of being made in “his own image and likeness”, in His incarnation our Lord has made us His own brothers and sisters. He receives the Holy Spirit as one of us, for us. He hears the words “Thou art my beloved Son”, as one of us, and on behalf of us.

It is for this reason that we Catholics have such a high regard for human life, since God Himself has shown us His own infinite regard for it. This is why we believe passionately that it is our right and our duty to defend it from all mean-spirited reductivism, that would see it as only good when it serves some other end. For there is a spirit abroad now that is not Holy; a spirit which proclaims that no individual human life has value of its own, but only for what it is judged to be able to contribute to society. So, if a particular individual human life is inconvenient, because conceived when not expected or wanted, or because it is deemed to be burdened with a handicap which will place demands on its family and on society, or if a particular human life seems to be no longer productive through illness or old age, or seems no more to be conscious, or is in some way judged to be burdensome to itself or to others, then that life is expendable. Indeed, that spirit goes further than saying such lives are expendable, to saying that it is a duty to do away with them. We are now in a state which is actively preparing to legalise assisted suicide. But we should look at countries where euthanasia has already been legalised, as in the Netherlands, where infirm or elderly people are now frightened to go to hospitals which were built to save lives, not do away with them, for fear of being pressurised into accepting death as a duty to society. In the Low Countries, even children who are depressed are put to death. It is this lack of respect for the individual dignity of every human life which must be opposed, because God Himself has shown us the infinite value of each and every human life made in the image of His beloved Son. As the brothers and sisters of Jesus, we must defend all human life, because He has shown us infinite respect by becoming human like each one of us, and in sharing our nature He has given us the hope of reaching heaven.

Dear Sisters, dear brethren, today we celebrate a great mystery: the manifestation in glory of the King. What kind of celebration is this, then, what sort of mystery? Well, in the first place, it is not a single event which we celebrate. True, we have just heard of a single event in the Gospel, namely the visit of the eastern Magi to Bethlehem and their giving of gifts to Christ there, and their adoration of Him before returning to their own country. But this is only the first of three events which are all connected by the theme of glory and manifestation. It is Christ who is manifested, who is shown forth in majesty and glory, and we are going to hear of the other two such events over the next two Sundays in the Gospel readings.

So first of all, today. Most of what we celebrate concerning the birth and early days of Christ is found in St Luke’s Gospel, but the coming of the Magi and all connected with their arrival, including the slaughter of the Holy Innocents by Herod and the flight into Egypt, all this comes to us from St Matthew’s Gospel. The word ‘mystery’ is important. What does it mean? We are used to think of it, if you like, in terms of Agatha Christie’s novels, of Inspector Poirot and suchlike detectives who have to ‘solve’ a mystery. In this sense, I suppose, a mystery can be said to be a truth which is hidden. This is the essence of what a ‘whodunnit’ is like. At the heart of it is a ‘mystery’: the identity and perhaps the method of the killer. Now, when we use that word in the Mass it is in some ways similar but in the most important ways it is quite different. A ‘mystery’ such as the Epiphany is indeed something hidden, but not like a puzzle, not something requiring a brilliant detective to uncover and reveal; it is rather something which is truly present in a hidden way, but which can be revealed to the right persons in the right kind of way. It is more like a treasure hidden in a field or in a trunk in the loft of an old house – something that awaits discovery, and in the discovery will come a great joy – like finding hidden treasure.

When God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, of whom we say in the Nicene Creed whose 1700th anniversary we celebrate this year, that He is ‘born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father’, it is clear that we are talking about someone not just very important, but literally infinitely great: Almighty God Himself no less. This divine person in the words of the same Creed, ‘by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.’ It is this which we have been celebrating at Christmas: that God who is all powerful, pure Spirit and Lord of all creation, became man in the womb of His Mother Mary, and was born at Bethlehem, not in a palace nor even a house, but in a stable. At Christmas we recalled how Jesus was born in great humility, yet His birth was announced by angels singing ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will’. The shepherds who heard this astonishing heavenly singing went in haste and found the child and His Mother, just as had been foretold by the angel. What a contrast! Born in a stable, laid in straw, yet heralded by the angelic powers!

Today we have another and different kind of event: the Magi come to adore the new-born King. There is so much that can be said about this admittedly strange event. Who were the Magi? How many of them were there? Why did they come from the East? What drew them to Jerusalem? What is the significance of their coming and of their gifts?

Well, to focus on one or two points only today, and choosing those which in a special way reveal the mystery – that is, the hidden treasure – let us begin with their name. Magi were Persian wise men, learned in the movements of the stars and planets in the night sky. They understood that behind such remarkable order as the heavens showed, there was a great intelligence, a magnificent architect, whom they adored as a mighty God without knowing any more about Him except the works of His hands, the sun, moon and stars. The arrival of a new kind of star in the midst of the ordered regularity of the night sky struck them as being a sign from the God they saw behind the movements of the heavenly lights. This is why they set off to find out more. As Shakespeare puts it in Julius Caesar, ‘the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes,’ meaning that in the ancient world sudden changes in the stars had a dramatic significance, and could be seen as in a way coinciding with the births or deaths of great persons. The Magi shared this view but wanted to go further. They wanted actually to find who this new King was, whose coming was signified by this strange star in the sky, and where He could be found.

It was not just that the star seemed to point towards Jerusalem, but that the knowledge that at that time a Messiah was eagerly expected in Palestine was widespread throughout the Middle East as we know it. The teachings of the prophets, especially Isaiah, were known outside Israel and were deemed to be inspired. So they set off with gifts to offer in recognition of the new King’s status. How many of them were there? St Matthew doesn’t tell us. But the gifts he describes were three in number, so that seems a good reason to guess that there are three Magi to bring them, one gift each. Now here is an interesting point. Look at the Christmas crib and see: how are the Magi dressed? As kings. Why? Matthew says nothing about that. But this is to do with the prophet Isaiah where in today’s first reading he looks towards the future coming of foreign kings to Jerusalem to do homage. Then look also at the Responsorial psalm, ps. 71, in which the psalmist says that ‘the kings of Tarshish and of the Islands shall offer gifts; the kings of the Arabians and Saba shall bring presents’. Thus, the Magi are seen as fulfilling these prophecies. Why is this significant? Because of two reasons: first, kings generally acknowledge no-one superior to themselves; so the recognition that they want to offer gifts to this new king and to adore Him, as they do, shows that they recognize that the new King is greater than they are. Secondly, these kings come from distant places, not from the Holy Land. So the meaning is that this new King, though they call Him the ‘newborn King of the Jews’ has an authority far greater than merely among the Jewish people. The kings in psalm 71 are from gentile, non-Jewish races, and so the Magi represent the first acknowledgement in the Life of Christ that He is the King of all nations, not just of the Jews.

Look again at the crib. You will always find that one of the three Magi is black. Is this just an early case of ‘Diversity Equity and Inclusion’? Well, yes and no. It signifies that all races are under the authority of Christ. The gifts the kings offer also show this. But there is another reason for a specifically black king among the three Magi. In the Book of Genesis we recall how God saved Noah from the Great Flood. It was from Noah’s children that the entire human race was regenerated after the Flood was past. And Noah had three sons who were the ancestors of the different branches of the human race thereafter. Three sons, three magi – is there a connection?

The entire human race was subsequently seen to be descended from each of these three sons and the three great branches of humanity were named after each of these sons: Japheth, Ham and Shem. So the biblical names for the three great divisions of humanity after the Flood were Japhetic, Hamitic and Semitic. Japhetic for the northern white-skinned peoples, Hamitic for the dark skinned peoples from Africa to the South, and Semitic for the Jews, Arabs and other related peoples of the Middle East. Who knew that the word Semitic doesn’t mean simply Jewish, but includes all the Arabs, Lebanese and Syrians as well? So each of the three Magi represents one of the three great branches of humanity beyond Israel.

This is enough for today. The Magi represent all of us gentiles for whom Christ is just as much our King and Saviour as He is for the Jews, His own people. We will hear how the unfolding of this wonderful mystery of God made man will continue next Sunday in the Epiphany, Part Two.