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

Do you want to know the mind and heart of God? Jesus thanks the Father in heaven for revealing to his followers the wisdom and knowledge of God. What does Jesus' prayer tell us about God and about our relationship with him? First, it tells us that God is both Father and Lord of the earth as well as heaven. He is both the Creator and Author of all that he has made, the first origin of everything. His authority, wisdom, and gracious care extends to every living thing, and his boundless love and goodness is directed to the welfare of each person made in his image and likeness. He is the source of all human life. That is why all fatherhood and motherhood are ultimately derived from him (Ephesians 3:14-15).

Jesus' prayer contrasts the "wisdom of the world" with the wisdom which comes from above - from the Father of heaven who is all wise and good. Jesus' prayer contains an implicit warning that pride can keep us from the love and knowledge of God. What makes us ignorant and blind to the wisdom of God? Certainly intellectual pride, coldness of heart, and stubbornness of will shut out God and his wise rule and fatherly care for our personal lives. Pride is the root of all vice and evil and the strongest influence propelling us to sin against God and to do wrong to our neighbour. Sinful pride first vanquishes the heart, making it cold and indifferent towards God. It also closes the mind to God's truth and wisdom for our lives. What is pride's flaw? It is the inordinate love of oneself at the expense of others and the exaggerated estimation of one's own knowledge, power, importance and position over others.

Jesus contrasts pride with child-like simplicity and humility. The simple of heart are like "little children" in the sense that they see purely and simply without any pretence or falsehood. They instinctively recognize their utter dependence and reliance on others - especially those who can teach and form them to live strong, healthy, mature lives. No one can grow in wisdom and maturity unless they are willing to be taught and formed in how to live wisely and to distinguish between good and evil, truth and falsehood.

Simplicity of heart is closely linked with humility - the queen of virtues that forgets oneself in order to love and serve others for their sake. The humble of heart are the freest of all - emptied of vanity and self-concern they can single-mindedly focus on the welfare of others. The Lord Jesus is our model. He proclaimed to his disciples, "I am gentle and lowly of heart" (Matthew 11:29). Jesus came "not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for the many" (Matthew 20:28). Jesus' "gentleness" is not weakness or powerlessness. It is "strength under control" which is at the service of good rather than evil.

Jesus humbled himself to lift us out of our misery and slavery to sin in order to raise us up to glory with him and the Father. Jesus came not to bruise the weak but to heal, to pardon and not to condemn, to restore us to abundant life by defeating sin, Satan, and death. It was love for his eternal Father and for each one of us that motivated Jesus to humble himself to death on the cross in order to rescue us from slavery to sin and death. The Lord Jesus shows us the true path of love and victory, freedom and joy, through the cross that defeated pride and hatred, greed and selfishness, guilt and condemnation.

True humility - which is the opposite of false modesty or feeling bad about oneself - frees us to pursue what is good, right, holy, and true. Scripture tells us that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6). Only the humble in heart can receive the wisdom which comes from God and the understanding of God's perfect goodness and plan for our lives. The greatest reward for those who seek the "summum bonum" or "greatest good" is to be united with God - the one and only true source of peace, joy, and happiness that will last forever.

Jesus makes a claim which no one would have dared to make - he is the perfect revelation of God because he has been with the Father before all creation and time existed. He and the Father are united in an inseparable bond of love and unity. That is why Jesus alone can truly reveal the fullness of God's mind and heart and purpose for our lives.

One of the greatest truths of God's revelation and our Christian faith is that we can know the one true and living God. Our knowledge of God is not simply limited to knowing some things about God and his true nature - we can know God our Father and Creator personally because God our Father desires to be closely united with each one of us in a bond of love through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus makes it possible for each one of us to have a personal direct relationship and experiential knowledge of God as our loving and gracious Father.

To see the Lord Jesus is to recognize and know the true nature of God and his personal love for us. In Jesus we see the perfect love of God - a God who cares intensely and who yearns over every man and woman whom he has created in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27). God the Father loved us even while we were lost in ignorance and blinded by sin and pride. He sent us his Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who freely gave up his life for us on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for our sins (John 3:16, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 1:7). Paul the Apostle tells us that Jesus is the image of God (Colossians 1:15). He is the perfect revelation of God - a God who loves us totally, unconditionally, and without reservation. What can separate us from the love of God? Only our own stubborn pride, wilfulness, and rebellious attitude towards God and his will for our lives.

Jesus makes an incredible promise to those who acknowledge him as their Lord and Saviour. If we pray in his name - the name Jesus means God saves - then the Father in heaven will hear us as if his only begotten Son was speaking to him directly. That is the unity, blessing, and promise he wishes for each one of us. And that is why we have the confidence and boldness to pray as Jesus taught his disciples, Our Father who art in heaven... give us this day our daily bread, and deliver us from temptation. Do you pray to your Father in heaven with joy and confidence in his perfect love and care for you?

What does the yoke of Jesus refer to in the Gospel (Matthew 11:29)? The Jews used the image of a yoke to express submission to God. They spoke of the yoke of the law, the yoke of the commandments, the yoke of the kingdom, the yoke of God. Jesus says his yoke is "easy". The Greek word for "easy" can also mean "well-fitting". Yokes were tailor-made to fit the oxen well. We are commanded to put on the "sweet yoke of Jesus" and to live the "heavenly way of life and happiness".

The yoke of Christ's kingdom, his kingly rule and way of life, liberates us from the burden of guilt and from the oppression of sinful habits and hurtful desires. Only Jesus can lift the burden of sin and the weight of hopelessness from us - and give us a weight of love and glory in exchange. Jesus used the analogy of a yoke to explain how we can exchange the burden of sin and despair for a burden of glory and yoke of freedom from sin. The yoke which Jesus invites us to embrace is his way of grace and freedom from the power of sin. Do you trust in God's love and submit to his will and plan for your life?

We remember today Saints Peter and Paul who guided the early church just after the time of Jesus. Both died as martyrs for the faith in Rome, in the early AD60’s, just thirty years after the death of Jesus. Peter was crucified upside down in the courtyard to the left of St. Peter’s Basilica (in the courtyard behind the arch where the Swiss Guards stand on duty) and Paul was beheaded between Rome and the sea, in a place now called Tre Fontane (Italian for three fountains after the legend that the three springs in the spot mark the three places where Paul’s head bounced after being beheaded). Peter was buried in the nearest cemetery which was on top of Vatican Hill and St. Peter’s Basilica was later built on top of Peter’s tomb, the main altar being directly on top of his tomb. Paul was also buried in the nearest cemetery and the Basilica of St. Paul’s outside the Walls was later built on top of his tomb, the main altar being directly on top of his tomb.

Each of these two saints is important for different reasons. Peter is important because he was the first Pope and kept the church united which was growing very rapidly in the years following Pentecost. In the first years after Pentecost it was the Jews who accepted Jesus as the Saviour and so the early church was a very Jewish church. But as time went on Paul began to preach also to non-Jews, the Gentiles as they were called. All of us are Gentiles. His preaching was very successful and he brought huge numbers of non-Jews into the church, so much so that the number of Jews in the church was greatly outnumbered by non-Jews. It is because of Paul that we are now in the Church.

So both Peter and Paul had very important tasks in the early church, Peter maintaining the unity in the church which during his lifetime had already spread throughout the Middle East and Europe, and Paul who taught the Jews that Jesus is the fulfilment of their Old Testament hopes and taught the non-Jews that Jesus is the Saviour. Whenever you see statues of Peter and Paul, usually Peter is holding a key, symbolizing his duty as head of the church, and Paul is holding the Bible, symbolizing his preaching.

In his second letter to the Corinthians Paul tells us something of the difficulties in his preaching journeys (2 Cor 11:24-25,27):

“Five times I have been given the thirty-nine lashes by the Jews; three times I have been beaten with sticks; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked, and once I have been in the open sea for a day and a night; I have worked with unsparing energy, for many nights without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty, and often altogether without food or drink; I have been cold and lacked clothing.”

Three times Paul set out from Syria where he was based and preached all over what we now call Turkey, and in his second and third journeys he preached all over Greece also.

It is interesting to note the personalities of both Peter and Paul. Peter was impetuous, telling Jesus that he would die with him on Holy Thursday night if necessary (John 13:37) but later that night he three times denied he knew him. We also remember Peter’s objection to Jesus’ prediction that he would suffer and die in Jerusalem and Jesus said ‘Get behind me Satan because the way you think is man’s way and not God’s way’ (Matt 16:23). Yet what made Peter a suitable candidate for Jesus’ call was his love, so as Peter had denied knowing Jesus three times on Holy Thursday night, Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him and asked him to look after the flock.

Paul was a controversial character in his own way. He had a fiery personality. In his early life he channelled that fire towards persecuting the Christians in Jerusalem, even witnessing the death of Stephen, the first martyr for Jesus (Acts 8:1). After his conversion Paul’s preaching was fiery and upset the churches. In Acts we read that Paul then returned to Tarsus, and the next sentence says it all, “the churches throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria were left in peace” (9:31). Paul spent 10 years back in Tarsus before he began his preaching. It was a time for him to cool down and learn what the death and resurrection of Jesus meant for us all. Why did God call Paul? Paul was a highly educated Pharisee and it would be only someone like him who could see that faith in Jesus demanded a totally new relationship with God for Jews, and also he had a very strong personality which he needed to help the Jews to accept that Jesus was the Saviour of all peoples, and that because of Jesus there is no difference between Jew and non-Jew. Paul had the strong personality needed for that daring challenge and the insight to see that faith in Jesus the fulfilment of their Old Testament hopes was now required for salvation.

As we look at the personalities of Peter and Paul, we see that God called them to use their personalities to spread the Gospel, Peter to use his impetuous love to look after the flock, and Paul to use his training as a Pharisee and his strength of character to ensure that the non-Jews would be welcomed into the church. It is a reminder to us that our talents and our weaknesses too can become God’s means of helping others, if we allow. We don’t have to be perfect for God to work through us, God can work through us, faults and all, as he did with Peter and Paul.

“Do not be afraid.” How good it is for someone who is worried to hear those words from Jesus today (Matt 10:26-33). Jesus knew we needed to hear those words: “Do not be afraid.” Jesus, who was human as well as divine, knew that some of us need to be reminded again and again and again not to worry. So many times in the Gospels we hear Jesus asking us not to worry. Three times in today’s Gospel we hear Jesus saying, “Do not be afraid.”- or words to that affect!

• Do not worry about the future of the kingdom of God because even if the kingdom is hidden and difficult to see now, it will be revealed. (Matt 10:26-27)
• Do not worry about those who would make you martyrs by killing you because even if they kill your body, they cannot kill your soul. (Matt 10:28)
• Therefore, do not worry about suffering for acknowledging Jesus before others and he will acknowledge you before the heavenly Father. (Matt 10:32)

And on many other occasions we hear Jesus asking us not to worry:

Do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. (Matt 6:31-34)

Jesus is a model for us in coping with anxiety and distress. There is a great lesson for us in how Jesus dealt with worry and distress in Gethsemane:

1. He felt great inner pain: “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” (Matt 26:38)
2. He acknowledged this pain before his Father: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me…”
3. In prayer he found the strength to face his passion and was able to say, “not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt 6:39)

What was Jesus’ remedy to overcome worry and distress? Having faith in his heavenly Father and sharing the cause of his worry in prayer with the Father. We see a transformation in Jesus during his prayer; he began praying, “My soul is sorrowful even to death” (Matt 26:38) but when he concluded he prayed, “your will be done!” (Matt 26:42) That is what happens to us when we have faith in God and bring our anxieties to God in prayer. We are transformed during prayer and receive strength from God to face what lies ahead. So, when there are problems, have faith and pray! It is no surprise therefore that we hear Jesus rebuking the disciples when they were afraid during the storm because their faith was weak:

Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. (Matt 8:24-26)

In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah also copes with a difficult life situation through faith in God and prayer when the people to whom he ministered rejected his preaching:

I hear the whisperings of many: “Terror on every side! Denounce! let us denounce him!” All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. (Jer 20:10)

But he had faith in God and trusted in God despite being in a very difficult situation:

But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph. (Jer 20:11)

Surely that strong faith and fervent prayer continued to support him in all his difficulties, especially at the end of his life as he was martyred like prophets before him.

At this time, it doesn’t seem likely that we may be called to be martyrs by shedding our blood for our faith, but in these times with so many distractions and temptations away from God and the Gospel we are called to be “dry martyrs.” By “dry martyr” I mean witnessing to Jesus without being asked to shed our blood.

Witnessing to Jesus can help others. Whether it be the dry martyrdom of witnessing to Jesus publicly by the way we live our lives, or coping with any of the problems life can throw at us, Jesus would say, as he does three times in today’s Gospel: “Do not be afraid.” Jesus in Gethsemane is our model in coping with the difficulties of life:

• “do not be afraid of them…What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light” (Matt 10:26-27)
• “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matt 10:28)
• “do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.” (Matt 10:31-32)

“I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” That is part of our profession of faith in the creed that we pray every Sunday. They are four characteristics or distinguishing marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The last one—apostolic—is highlighted in the Gospel today. In today’s Gospel (Matt 9:36-10:8), Jesus sends the apostles out on a temporary mission.

The Church is apostolic, founded by Jesus on the apostles. “Apostolic” means we go all the way back to the apostles. The bishop who ordained me a priest, (now sadly departed this life) can trace his “succession” back to those first Apostles chosen by Jesus. We are apostolic because through the sacrament of Holy Orders in which bishops and priests are ordained, we go back to the apostles in an unbroken line. Bishops are ordained bishops in the sacrament of holy orders, and they ordain priests in the sacrament of holy orders and from priests we receive all the other sacraments. So, everything is channeled to us from the time of the apostles through one sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.

“Apostolic” also means we share the same faith going back to the apostles. We are in communion with one another and with all Catholics of past times because we share the same faith. I like to think of our communion in the Catholic Church as one big family. When we were baptized, we became members of an enormous family, the Church, in communion with one another and with all Catholics of past times because we share the same faith.

When we were baptized, the promise of the first reading today was fulfilled (Exod 19:2-6). Just before giving the Hebrews the covenant, God promised them if they would obey his covenant, they would be his special possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (Exod 19:5-6). Unfortunately, while Moses was up Mount Sinai, they already abandoned God by making and worshipping a golden calf so the promise of the first reading that they would be a priestly people was not fulfilled and only Aaron’s descendants became priests (Exod 28:1). But that promise to be a priestly people was fulfilled in the New Covenant as Peter makes clear in his first letter. Through baptism, the promise of the first reading to be priestly was fulfilled in your life.

In what way are those who are not ordained priests priestly? The New Testament gives us five answers: all the baptized are priestly by making spiritual sacrifices living their daily lives for the kingdom of God (1 Pet 2:5), by singing the praises of God (1 Pet 2:9), by participating at Mass answering the prayers (Rev 1:4-6 a dialogue between priest and people during liturgy), by bringing God’s kingdom to earth in whatever way is appropriate to each person in their role in life (Rev 5:10 ruling the world), and if necessary by undergoing martyrdom for one’s faith in Jesus (Rev 20:6). In all these ways, the New Testament tells us, we accomplish the priestly role we received at baptism fulfilling the promise of our first reading.

All of us, a priestly people since baptism, are with one another all part of God’s family. Just as we would do what we could to help a family member, Jesus our brother in God’s family, has done everything to help us as our second reading reminded us:

But God proves his love for us

in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us . . .

we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,

how much more, once reconciled,

will we be saved by his life.

(Rom 5:8, 10)

In the creed every Sunday, we profess our faith in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We are apostolic because through the sacrament of Holy Orders in which bishops and priests are ordained, we go back to the apostles in an unbroken line. “Apostolic” also means we share the same faith going back to the apostles in communion with one another and with all Catholics of past times. We entered the enormous family of the Church when we were baptized and the promise of being a priestly people was fulfilled in us. Jesus, our brother in this largest of families, has proved his love for us:

But God proves his love for us

in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us

. (Rom 5:8)

What is it that we want from Jesus? Well, I am sure that we would all like to meet him and in turn to have a closer relationship with him. We want to have more of Jesus in our lives. The right place for all of this to take place is the Eucharist. The best place to meet Jesus is in the Eucharist. If you want to be intimate with Jesus, he tells us how,

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)

Our most intimate moment with Jesus is when we receive Jesus in Holy Communion. We receive Jesus into our very bodies. We could not be closer with Jesus. We become one.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)

It reminds me of what we read in Genesis about man and woman becoming one in marriage; when we receive Jesus in Holy Communion we are no longer two but one and we and Jesus are intimately united.

Jesus gave himself for you on Calvary and gives himself for you again in Holy Communion. In today’s Gospel we heard Jesus say,

“The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”. (John 6:51)

This is really the same as what Jesus will say later during the Last Supper,

“This is my body, which will be given for you”. (Luke 22:19).

Jesus gave up his body for you on Calvary and gives up his body for you in every Mass so that you may receive him in Holy Communion. It is the one sacrifice on Calvary extended through time to us at Mass. Some misunderstand and think Catholics say Jesus is sacrificed again during every Mass. No, it is the one sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary which is extended through time to us in every Mass and so truly Jesus can say to you,

“the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:51)

“This is my body, which will be given for you”. (Luke 22:19).

so you and Jesus can enjoy intimacy together as we also hear in our Gospel passage

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)

In the Gospel passage today Jesus is really explaining what takes place during the Last Supper and every Mass.  It is another take on the Last Supper, looking at the Last Supper from another angle so that we get a fuller understanding.

But are we going too far in saying that bread really becomes the Body of Jesus? Did Jesus intend us to understand that he was speaking only in symbols and metaphors and that we should not take him literally? Or did Jesus really intend us to understand that bread becomes the Body of Jesus and wine becomes the Blood of Jesus, that transubstantiation takes place during the consecration at Mass?

Those who were listening to Jesus knew he was not talking in symbols; they started arguing afterwards about what he had just said,

“The Jews quarrelled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?” (John 6:52)

It was clear to them that Jesus was talking about his flesh as bread and it would become clear for his listeners later that he really did mean that the bread of the Eucharist becomes his flesh. Why was there no room for confusion?

We have no idea how horrifying it would have been for Jesus’ Jewish listeners to hear him talking of consuming blood. Many times the Old Testament forbade consuming blood (Lev 3:17; 7:26; 19:26) because life was in the blood (Lev 17:14). In fact if someone consumed blood he was to be excommunicated from the Jewish people (Lev 17:10,14). For Jesus’ listeners to hear him talking of consuming blood it would have been so horrifying that they could not make the mistake of thinking that he was talking only in symbols. Jesus is leading his listeners from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.

In the Old Covenant the supreme dwelling place of God on earth was in the temple in Jerusalem, but in the New Covenant God is with us in Jesus. Every time in the Eucharist Jesus gives himself to us in the bread and wine changed into his Body and Blood during Mass. In the Old Covenant God fed his people with manna when they were wandering in the desert as we heard in our first reading (Deut 8) but in the New Covenant Jesus feeds us with his own Body and Blood through his Real Presence in the Eucharist.

Because our faith is weak from time to time God sends us miracles to remind us that the Eucharist really is food and drink for our souls. In the history of the Church a small number of people were given the grace to survive only on the Eucharist, eating no food except the Eucharist. Blessed Alexandrina of Portugal lived only on the Eucharist during the last thirteen years of her life. Marthe Robin in south eastern France did not consume anything except the Eucharist from 1928 until her death in 1981. (Marthe Robin: The Cross and the Joy) There are some others who also received this grace.

We all want to meet Jesus. We want to have a closer friendship with Jesus. We want to have more of Jesus in our lives. The best place to meet Jesus is in the Eucharist. Each time before we receive Jesus in the Eucharist we want to be as pure as possible. If you want to be intimate with Jesus he tells us how,

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him”. (John 6:56)

Every time we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion at the Mass we increase our friendship and oneness with Jesus.

What does Scripture tell us about God and how he relates to us? When God met with Moses on Mount Sinai and made a covenant with the people of Israel, he revealed the nature of his character and his personal love for them.

"The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy and faithfulness'" (Exodus 34:6).

God is all-loving, faithful, merciful, and forgiving by nature. God's love is supreme because it directs, orders, and shapes everything he does.

Scripture tells us that God is all just and all loving. How does his love and justice go together? God opposes sin and evil with his just wrath (his righteous anger) and right judgment - and he approaches sinful people and evil doers with mercy ("slow to anger" and "ready to forgive") and discipline ("fatherly correction" and "training in righteousness"). John the Evangelist tells us that the Father sent his Son into the world - not to condemn but to redeem - not to destroy but to heal and restore. St Paul the Apostle tells us that "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). God does not desire the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:23,32, Ezekiel 33:11, Wisdom of Solomon 1:13). Instead he gives us the freedom to choose between life and death - good and evil.

When we choose to sin and to go our own way apart from God, we bring condemnation upon ourselves. Sin draws us away from God and leads to a spiritual death - a death that is worse than physical loss of life because it results in a hopeless life of misery and separation from God's peace and joy. Jesus was sent on a rescue mission to free us from slavery to sin and death and to bring us the abundant life which will never end. His death brought us true freedom and abundant new life in his Spirit - as well as pardon, reconciliation and adoption as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus took upon himself all of our sins and nailed them to the cross (Colossians 2:14). His death was an atoning sacrifice for our sins and a perfect offering to the Father on our behalf. We can find no greater proof of God's love for fallen sinful humanity than the cross of Jesus Christ. "To ransom a slave God gave away his Son" (from an early Christian hymn for the Easter vigil liturgy). Jesus' mission was motivated by love and obedience. That is why he willingly laid down his life for us. Jesus told his disciples that there is no greater love than for a person to willingly lay down his or her life for a friend (John 15:13). Jesus loved us first - even while we were captives to sin and Satan - in order to set us free and make us friends and beloved children of God.

Do you believe that Jesus personally died for you - for you alone - simply because he loved you? Scripture tells us that God knew each one of us even before we were knit in our mother's womb (Psalm 139:13, Jeremiah 1:5). We were created for a purpose - to be united with God and to share in his love and glory now and forever. St Augustine of Hippo wrote: "God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love." God's love is complete and perfect because it is wholly directed towards our greatest good - to make us whole and to unite us in a perfect bond of love and peace. That is why God was willing to go to any length necessary to save us from slavery to sin and death.

How does God's love bring healing, pardon, and wholeness to our lives? God's love has power to set each one of us free from every form of bondage to sin - whether it be bondage to fear and guilt, pride and greed, envy and hatred. We can only know the love of God and experience his healing power to the degree that we put our faith in him and surrender our lives to his will. Faith is the key that opens the door to Christ and to his healing power in our lives. But for faith to be effective we must act and do our part. That is why faith requires repentance and obedience - turning away from unbelief and disobedience - and turning to the Lord with a believing heart and listening ear. That is why Jesus said, "whoever believes in me is not condemned" (John 3:18).

To believe that Jesus is the only Son of God who died for our sins is the key that opens the door to his presence and work in our lives. Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20). The Lord Jesus knocks at the door of your heart - will you listen today and open at once?

The Lord Jesus has revealed to his disciples the great mystery of our faith - the triune nature of God and the inseparable union of the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus' mission is to reveal the glory of God to us - a Trinity of persons - God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and to unite us with God in a community of love. The ultimate end, the purpose for which God created us, is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of the blessed Trinity.

The Jews understood God as Creator and Father of all that he made (Deuteronomy 32:6) and they understood the nation of Israel as God's firstborn son (Exodus 4:22). Jesus reveals the Father in an unheard of sense. He is eternally Father by his relationship to his only Son, who, reciprocally, is Son only in relation to his Father (see Matthew 11:27). The Spirit, likewise, is inseparably one with the Father and the Son.

The mission of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit are the same. That is why Jesus tells his disciples that the Spirit will reveal the glory of the Father and the Son and will speak what is true. Before his Passover, Jesus revealed the Holy Spirit as the "Paraclete" and Helper who will be with Jesus' disciples to teach and guide them "into all the truth" (John 14:17,26; 16:13). In baptism we are called to share in the life of the Holy Trinity here on earth in faith and after death in eternal light.

How can we grow in our understanding and experience of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? It is the Holy Spirit who reveals the Father and the Son to us and who gives us the gift of faith to know and understand the truth of God's word. Through baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord renews the gift of the Spirit in each one of us as we open our hearts with expectant faith and yield to his work in our lives. Jesus promised his disciples that he would send them the Spirit of truth who would be their Teacher and Guide. Ask the Lord Jesus to renew in you the gift of the Holy Spirit who strengthens us in the seven-fold gifts of wisdom and understanding, right judgment and courage, knowledge and reverence, and holy fear in God's presence (Isaiah 11:2-3).

Do you know and experience in your own life the gift and power of the Holy Spirit? After his death and resurrection Jesus promised to give his disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit. He said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit! (John 20:22) Jesus knew that his disciples would need the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out the mission entrusted to them. The gift of the Holy Spirit was conditional upon the ascension of Jesus to the right hand of the Father. That is why Jesus instructed the apostles to wait in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:49). Why did they need power from on high? The Gospels tell us that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit when he was baptized at the Jordan River:

"And John bore witness, 'I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him... this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit'" (John 1:32,33; Mark 1:8; Matthew 3:11).

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness... and Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee" (Luke 4:1,14).

Just as Jesus was anointed with the Spirit at the beginning of his ministry, so the disciples needed the anointing of the Holy Spirit to carry out the mission entrusted to them by Jesus. The Holy Spirit is given to all who are baptized into Jesus Christ to enable us to live a new way of life - a life of love, peace, joy, and righteousness (Romans 14:17). The Holy Spirit fills our hearts with the love of God (Romans 5:7), and he gives us the strength and courage we need in order to live as faith-filled disciples of the Lord Jesus. The Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26), and enables us to grow in spiritual freedom - freedom from doubt, fear, and from slavery to our unruly desires (2 Corinthians 3:17; Romans 8:21). The Spirit instructs us in the ways of God, and guides us in living according to God's will. The Spirit is the source and giver of all holiness. Isaiah foretold the seven-fold gifts that the Spirit would give: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2).

The gift of Pentecost - the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual gifts and blessings of God - are made possible through the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus. After his resurrection Jesus "breathed" on his disciples and gave them the Holy Spirit. Just as God breathed life into Adam, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is an impartation of "new life" for his people. With the gift of the Holy Spirit a new creation begins. God recreates us for his glory. Jesus' gift of peace to his disciples was more than an absence of trouble. His peace included the forgiveness of sins and the fullness of everything good. Do you want power to live a faith-filled life as a disciple of Jesus? Ask the Father to fill you with the power of his Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13).

St Basil the Great (329-379 AD), an early church father, explains the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives:

"The Spirit restores paradise to us and the way to heaven and adoption as children of God; he instils confidence that we may call God truly Father and grants us the grace of Christ to be children of the light and to enjoy eternal glory. In a word, he bestows the fullness of blessings in this world and the next; for we may contemplate now in the mirror of faith the promised things we shall someday enjoy. If this is the foretaste, what must the reality be? If these are the first fruits, what must be the harvest?" (From the treatise by Basil on The Holy Spirit)

The Lord Jesus offers each one of us the gift and power of his Holy Spirit. He wants to make our faith strong, give us hope that endures, and a love that never grows cold. He never refuses to give his Spirit to those who ask with expectant faith. Jesus instructed his disciples to ask confidently for the gift of the Spirit: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13). Do you thirst for God and for the abundant life he offers through the gift of his Spirit?

Dear Sisters, dear Brethren in Christ, the Gospel we have just listened to is a remarkable passage by any reckoning. Each year, on the Sunday following the Ascension, we are given a portion of the 17^th chapter of St John’s Gospel to hear. Let me briefly introduce this chapter to you in the context of the whole of St John’s Gospel. This Gospel passage marks the climax of our Lord’s Last Supper discourse. The first part of this, beginning in chapter 13, tells of the washing of the feet and continues from there with three more chapters of teaching by our Lord concerning His relations with them, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Altogether there are no fewer than five entire chapters devoted to one event out of a Gospel consisting of some twenty two chapters in all. From this fact alone we should realise how centrally important the Last Supper was. It was far more than a farewell meal with His friends, it was our Lord’s last Will and Testament or to use another word meaning the same thing as Testament, it was His New Covenant, it contained His final instructions to His apostles before His passion, and of course it was the occasion of the institution of the Mass, of the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion and of the sacred priesthood.

Chapter 17 is the final part of all this, and it is well chosen for this Sunday. Let me explain. In this chapter our Lord is no longer speaking to His apostles, but only to His heavenly Father. This is why St John begins so pointedly with the words, ‘When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven…’ These words, when St John uses them of our Lord, often describe a special moment of prayer, when God the Son turns to His Father in heaven in intimate prayer and spiritual communion. We are told that before the feeding of the Five Thousand Jesus did the same, raising His eyes to heaven before praying to the Father. In the Canon of the Mass, just before the Consecration, the narrative of the institution of the Blessed Eucharist opens with these words: ‘On the day before He was to suffer, He took bread in His holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven to you, O God, His almighty Father, giving you thanks He said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.”’

So the raising up of His eyes to heaven is a sign of raising His heart and soul to the Father in prayer. After the long discourse given to the disciples at the Supper, Jesus now finally turns in prayer to His Father. All is now complete, all His instructions have been finished, and all that remains before He hands Himself over to His Passion is to make this most special prayer to His Father, a prayer which will encapsulate all that His forthcoming Passion and Death will mean and achieve for us. Throughout the Gospels we are told that Jesus would often take Himself off in private to pray, and no one knows what passed between the Father and the Son in those moments of intimacy. But on this occasion we are allowed to listen in as Jesus prays to His Father, both for His own forthcoming passion and for all His followers and indeed for all mankind. It is a wonderful prayer which we are given the enormous privilege to hear. But it is also very long, and we only hear one third of it today. The other two parts will be heard on this Sunday after the Ascension next year and the year after.

So what do we learn from this, the opening part of this great prayer of our Lord? It is, in the first instance, a prayer for glorification. Jesus prays that He may be glorified by His Father, so that He may in turn glorify the Father Himself. Now at last has arrived the hour, the hour for which He has been preparing all His life. At Cana, some three years before, He had said to His blessed Mother: ‘My hour has not yet come’. Well, now it is here. The hour of our Lord is, of course, the hour of His suffering; but not only His suffering, for it is also the hour of His glorification. What is this ‘glorification’? It is to show, even in and through those terrible sufferings he is about to endure, that all this, the agony in the Garden, the arrest and trial, the scourging and the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the stripping and the nailing and horrible death, are in fact nothing less than the finishing of the work which He has been sent by the Father to do.

In return for enduring all that, the Father will reward the Son with the glory of the resurrection, which is not only in the return to heaven of the Son of God as He always has been for all eternity, but the new entry into heaven of the Son of Man, the Son of Adam, the Son of Mary. In all His years on earth He has already made God known in His teaching, His miracles, His mercy, his parables; now He asks for the glory which He had before the world was made to be given to Him in His sacred human nature too, and to be given Him by means of willingly enduring His Passion for love of the Father and of us.

So He now prays to the Father having manifested or revealed the Father to His disciples. He has shown them that all He is and has done has come from the Father. He has been sent by the Father to complete a vital work – the work of showing who God really is, and of bringing fallen mankind back to unity with God who made man in His own image, who made Him for the purpose of knowing Him, loving Him and serving Him, in order to be happy and glorified in His presence for all eternity in heaven after this life. So it is that our Lord’s prayer to be glorified is also a prayer for us to be glorified. He prays to the Father in these words: ‘I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world... Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you; … and they have believed that you did send me. I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours; all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.’

This prayer means that we can come to know God insofar as we come to know His Son, Jesus. And we know Jesus by accepting His teaching and putting it into practice. ‘And this is eternal life’, He says, ‘to know you, Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’

He is now about to depart from the world which He entered as man through His Mother’s womb. This prayer is the prelude to that departure and the key to understanding what that departure means. It is about His glory, and ours; His knowledge and love of God, and ours; His going to the Father, and ours. This is why we hear this passage of the Gospel on the Sunday after the Ascension. For Jesus’s entry into heaven which we celebrated last Thursday on Ascension Day, is the opening up of the way to glory for all who belong to our Lord. In the meantime, before He returns to call us to Himself, He prays for us because He will no more be in the world while we ourselves are still in the world.

But if He is not ‘in the world’, does that not mean that He is no longer with us? Has His going to the Father left us like orphans? He has told us that is not the case, because of something of mighty importance and grandeur: it is the pouring out on us of the torrent of life and love that is the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son. Our Lord has returned in glory to the Father not to separate Himself from us, but to send us the Spirit who will make Him present in a new way.  That new presence will give us a joy which no one will take from us, and that outpouring, that new presence, that foretaste of heavenly glory we will once more celebrate anew next Sunday in the magnificent solemnity of Pentecost, the crowning glory of Eastertide and the pledge of future glory for us who belong to Him.

Dear Sisters, dear Brethren in Christ, in the Collect prayer of today’s Mass we prayed that ‘we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy which we keep in honour of the risen Lord.’ Since Easter Day itself, just five Sundays ago, we have indeed principally been celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord, His appearances to the Apostles after His rising from the dead, and His teaching given to the Apostles, mainly at the Last Supper, but recollected after Easter in the light of the Risen Lord. Well, these precious days of Eastertide are about to take a different turn of direction. On this coming Thursday, which was as St Luke tells us the fortieth day after His resurrection, we will celebrate the day on which our Lord was taken up into heavenly glory. Thereafter He would no longer be seen by His Apostles as He had been seen by, say, Mary Magdalene in the Garden, Cleopas and his companion at Emmaus, Thomas and the other Apostles in the Upper Room, John and Peter and the others by the shore of Lake Galilee. All that is about to come to an end with His Ascension. Having made Himself visible to the Apostles after His rising from the dead, He will henceforth become invisible to them and, of course, to all of us in all later ages.

But there are two important reasons for us not to think that in leaving the Apostles visibly, He was abandoning them. We have just heard Him say to them in the Gospel: ‘I will not leave you orphans; I will come back to you.’ Although He is about to leave them, He says, He will be with them still. But how? How will it be the case that the last three years, and the recent forty days since Easter, will be more than a memory?

The first reason for us to recognize that our Lord has abandoned neither His Apostles, nor us, lies in what He says a few moments before promising not leave them orphans: ‘I shall ask the Father, and He will send you another Advocate to be with you for ever, that Spirit of truth…’ This is the first mention we have heard of the coming of the Holy Spirit as a distinct event, an event at a particular moment but also an event without an end. Last Sunday we heard a very important pronouncement  about the relations between two persons sharing the divine nature: Father and the Son. Now our Lord introduces a thrid Person into His discourse: The Holy Spirit. This Spirit, also called the Spirit of Truth, our Lord describes as the ‘Advocate’, which is a translation of the Greek word ‘Paraklitos’. That word, which we also have borrowed into English as ‘Paraclete’, means many things; defender, counsellor, friend, supporter, assistant and consoler. Consoler, by the way, does not mean merely someone who says comforting words when you are sorrowful, but rather more. It means one whom you call to your aid, who comes to strengthen you, who gives you the courage and confidence to carry on in otherwise impossible circumstances. Think, for instance, of the martyrs of the Church over the two thousand years since Pentecost; none of those could possibly have endured all that they were made to suffer were it not for the strengthening and joyous comforting of the Holy Spirit. We should take comfort from that ourselves, too, should it at some time be our lot to be treated by the world in the same way. Who knows? At least we have the assurance of our Lord that the Advocate will not abandon us. That is the first reason why we should not think that the Ascension of our Lord is His complete departure from our world, the world of our faith and its practise.

Here comes the second reason: that our Lord will also come to us in the Holy Spirit in a new way. No longer visible to our eyes as before in His own body, He will become visible in a totally new way, and if I may say so, a better way than even when He was with the Twelve in the days of His public ministry. Such a claim may sound like false boldness or just hoping against hope, trusting to the power of imagination as a substitute for reality, but in truth it is not. For the Holy Spirit ensures that our Lord is present to us in the wonderful manner that we call the Sacraments and the Mass.

Admittedly this will seem pretty unreal to those who do not believe in His words, but to those who do believe, this is revelatory. As Pope St Leo the Great, one of the greatest fathers of the Church, said of the Ascension, in the Ascension of our Lord, all that He was in His incarnation passes over into the sacraments. What was visible before in the flesh now becomes visible in the sacraments. This is a different kind of ‘seeing’ from normal. Often in the Gospel our Lord has spoken about ‘seeing’ and ‘not seeing’ as more than just what our eyes can do. It is a matter of inward sight and understanding. So did the man born blind come to see Jesus as the Messiah, by the eyes of faith. So did St John see the truth of the resurrection at the empty tomb, and he also saw by faith the Lord present on the seashore by the Lake of Galilee after the miraculous draught of fish.

And then we remember how three Sundays ago we heard how Cleopas and another disciple came to see our Lord, not because they recognised Him as He walked with them on the road to Emmaus, but rather because they recognised Him in the ‘breaking of the bread’. But at that very moment, paradoxically, although they recognised Him, now they saw Him by faith as it were, and they no longer saw Him with their bodily eyes. This is why the Emmaus event is so important for us now. It is not about an event in the past, but about an even that had begun with the resurrection and was being made known in a new way.

This new way of seeing cannot be learned other than by obeying the commandment of love as God loves. Then we will ‘see’ our Lord in the sacraments, and most of all in the Eucharist. For us, every Mass is Emmaus, and the more we love as our Lord loves, the more powerfully will we see Him present. This is the Holy Spirit’s work and furthermore it is He, the Holy Spirit, who makes known to us the presence of the Father and the Son.

This is the ‘showing’ or revelation of God in His very innermost self and nature. This is the doing of the Holy Spirit. The event of the Resurrection and the event of the Ascension are not lost in the remote past, but continue ever present in the life of the Church, in the life of the Mass and of the Sacraments. Easter is about now and about the future, a future beyond this world and this life. Two Sundays from now we will celebrate the great solemnity of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit who enlightens the eyes of our faith to recognise the hidden yet real presence of God in the Mass and the sacraments, and the following Sunday after that we will pause to reflect on the wonderful revelation that has been steadily going on throughout these Sundays of Eastertide: the revelation that God is three co-equal persons: Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and the three share exactly the same divine nature. God has in this way revealed Himself to us as the Blessed Trinity, one eternal God, to whom be all glory and praise for ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Dear Sisters, dear Brethren in Christ, we have just listened to virtually the same Gospel as that which we heard yesterday, in which St Philip the Apostle makes one of his rare appearances in the Gospel. By coincidence, if today were not the 5^th Sunday of Eastertide, we would be celebrating on this date, the 3^rd of May, the feast of St Philip and St James, Apostles.

We have, in this Gospel, a reason to be greatly thankful to St Philip, just as on the Second Sunday of Easter, three weeks ago, we had similar reason to thank St Thomas, who also has an important appearance today as well. It was St Thomas’s challenge that he would not believe in the risen Christ unless he first not only saw, but plunged his finger and hand into the Lord’s side, and when he did so at the Lord’s command, his wonderful reply was, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Thomas comes over on that occasion and again today as a rather hardheaded and sceptical type, not easily persuaded of something as incredible as the resurrection of a cruelly killed man from the dead. So today he has a similarly hardheaded reply to our Lord’s statement: ‘I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.’ We can almost see him challenging our Lord with these almost cynical words: ‘We don’t even know where you are going, so how can we know the way there?’ Our Lord’s reply is one of His most familiar and profound statements: ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’ Yet again, it is because we have heard this so many times that we may not necessarily stop to ponder, what does our Lord mean by adding this utterance about coming to the Father? Why should that follow after ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.’?

We should begin by recalling that we do not know God as ‘our Father’, much less actually dare to call Him by that name, without our Lord teaching this to us. Our Lord is the way that God has chosen to show us the Truth about Himself and His Son, and about the Life that God alone has of Himself. We, for instance, do not have life of ourselves. We were brought into life without a word from us. Our identity, our parentage, was something we had no power whatever to choose. Our Lord, however, is Life itself. The difference between Our Lord’s life and ours is that we do not own ours. It has been lent to us for a time on earth and will come to an end with death. Our Lord’s life is not like that. Although He did become a man like us, and lived and died as we too live and one day will die, in His case this was all by His choice and at His Father’s will, all for us men and for our salvation, as we say in the Creed. His life is not restricted to what happened to Him on the earth; it far exceeds earthly life. And that life He now lives in heaven where He has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for us to live with Him when this world comes to an end. But I don’t want to jump ahead too quickly.

Let me say this too: there is something quite mysterious and wonderful about His being, too, about what kind of existence He has. It is one with God the Father’s being. In the Creed in a short time we will proclaim our faith in the only-begotten Son of God, consubstantial with the Father – that is, the same being as the Father, the same God, though not, of course, the same person. It is hard for us to grasp how significant this is. For us, to be a different person from another is to be a different being. We are not only different persons from our fathers and mothers, we are separate beings. We share the same nature but in different entities. That is why we can continue to exist even when our parents no longer do. But with God it is unimaginably different. The Father cannot exist without the Son and the Son cannot exist without the Father. But we should not make the mistake of thinking that this means that somehow God is limited by this. On the contrary, the co-existence of Father and Son is totally liberating. It is what makes God truly God.