Confirmata est Cor Virginis

In festo Immaculati Cordis Beatae Mariae Virginis
Saturday 13 June, 2015
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Confirmata est Cor Virginis

THE HEART OF THE VIRGIN, immaculate, as she too was conceived, full of the grace of God; a grace which is pure love. What do we celebrate today, if not the love to which we shall all aspire? Not the love of the human state, which waxes and wanes with the phases of our emotional attachments to this mortal world, but the divine love, which is given for those who would receive it with an assent to love that yields it totally to its source; which is so totally penetrating that nothing can assail it; which is inexhaustible in its profusion, such that it may be given without ever counting the cost.

For how shall we doubt that the gift of love, which she was conceived to receive as the purest vessel of grace, was not surrendered completely to her Lord and God in her Fiat; in that perfect acquiescence with the divine love that desired to be united with man in her womb? And what may we do but witness in awe of that love, as it endured even the cruelest torment without malice, but oblating itself on the altar of the Victim who reconciles all in His sacrificial love? And how may we honour her whom, from the Cross, the Saviour gave as our own Mother, that we might behold the love that knows no bounds and is given daily, without being consumed, in prayerful intercession, before the throne of her love, for us whom she loves with the devoted tenderness with which she nurtured the Christ child?

For the love of God we shall honour her, and today gaze upon her Immaculate Heart as our model for our own love of God, for our fiat to His love that dwells in our own hearts, for the love of those he sends to us in this world that we might walk with them in love to the next.

Deus Caritas Est

Deus Caritas Est

In Festo Sanctissimi Trinitatis

31 May, 2015

God is Love.

Perfect love cannot be contained. It cannot be manifested in isolation. It must be given. And where it is given, there is the Son; the perfection of perfect love; distinct only in its giving but perfect in its essence. And being the reception of perfect love, he too, necessitated by his perfection, gives love for love just as in his essence he is love from love. This perfect impulse to give and receive, which is itself the essence of perfect love, and proceeds in infinity between the giving of the Father and the perfect reception and returning of love in its totality by the Son, is the Holy Spirit. Yes, God is indeed love, though not as we know it.

This eternal reality of God, without beginning or end, perfect in its impulse to give and be given, in time is revealed through the action of love in creation. Love begets love and rejoices in its proceeding. However what is created of love, although it is made of the perfection of that love, is nonetheless, by virtue of it being made, not of one essence with its maker. It needs to choose freely to give back of the love it has received in its generation. And at the fall, the creation of love chose to direct love inwardly on itself rather than to return it wholly to the love from which it was made. Unable to participate in the infinity of the divine love, creation itself became finite and subject to the decay of finite love that always gives less until there is nothing more.

Every error of the human condition is a defect of love. We desire love for ourselves and thus direct this spirit of love inwardly. We may love ourselves as completely as human, selfish love allows, but love is shared imperfectly, giving only ever of what we hope to receive. The unquantifiable love of God is quantified in man and apportioned in our relationships with others. Thus we may ask, whom do we love more, our spouses or our parents or our offspring? The answer creates worldly divisions in the eternally indivisible love that is God because its eternality and inexhaustibility is not perceived in fallen man.

Hence the Incarnation of the Word; the love that is God joined perfectly with creation to correct the defect of love in mankind and to choose freely for the created the Creator as the source and object of love through the perfect giving of self. Hence the sending of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the faithful, that the impulse of love be no longer directed within ourselves but without, in eternity to God from whom all love is given, and in our daily lives to our neighbour with the infinite-abundance of love received from God in Christ.

Thus Christ’s commands to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind; and to love your neighbour as you love yourself. For it is in this total abandonment of all our reason in love of God with our whole spiritual being, that we once again participate in the divine being of love and receive from that relationship the totality of God who created us in his love. Our souls caught up in the infinity of eternally perfect love, in our own time and mortal world we must then bring this spirit of love that dwells in our hearts to all mankind. And in that complete and perfect giving of self, which is to love our neighbour as perfectly as the love that is within ourselves, we complete the eternal image of God in which we were created in our own times, and when our time ends we then return to that perfect love from which we were made.

“Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And every one that loves, is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not, knows not God: for God is love. By this has the love of God appeared towards us, because God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him. In this is love: not as though we had loved God, but because he has first loved us, and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins. My dearest, if God has so loved us; we also ought to love one another. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

1 John 4:7-12

Veni Creator Spiritus

VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS
In Vigilia Pentecostes
23 May, 2015


I penned a new translation of this ancient hymn as a gift for a dear friend who is on retreat over Pentecost. Replete with errors, taking many liberties with the original Latin, and with many other better translations about, she nonetheless encouraged me to share it with you all, which I do now, with the same heartfelt wishes for a blessed Pentecost.

Hinc quo egrediemur?

In Ascenscione Domini
14 May, 2015

HINC QUO EGREDIEMUR?

Where shall we go from here? The Lord has ascended from our midst and no living man shall ever see His face until He comes again on the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead.

Where shall we go from here but to the ends of the earth in His name? For the Lord has charged us, as he did the eleven, to go forth from this place and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven to which He has gone to prepare a place for His faithful.

Where shall we go from here but back to His Word? For His are the words of eternal life – a secret now told, once whispers now bold, which proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour. As the eleven recall His words spoken along the way, His Truth and His Life become The Way they must lead us in following Christ to the place where is He gone.

Where shall we go from here but to the consoling embrace of Mother Church; there to await the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as He came upon the apostles in the upper room? For there, in their communion as members of the Body of Christ, He anointed them with His Spirit to send them forth as apostles to all nations. And He sends us forth too, from the same Body of Christ of which we are a part, endowed with the gifts of His Spirit, to live lives of faith, hope and love.

We shall indeed go from here, from this mountain where our gazes first met with our heavenly inheritance, never to lose sight of it but to seek in this life only the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, so that in the fullness of time we may gather here again, His Body, to ascend with Him to the courts of the house of our God, where He lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen.

Sit angeli tui invenietur me

Holy Saturday

May your angel find me by your tomb, O Lord.

I come here to mourn 

what my hands have done

to the one whose love 

I repaid with the scourge and the lance.

I come here to see

the magnitude of my sins

that tore your flesh

and pierced your heart.

I come here to weep;

for I have lost my Lord,

and among the crowds of the condemned

I fear you will no longer see me.

I come here to die

to my sins and to let

my soul descend among the dead;

for there you are, my Lord and my God.

And should you see my soul
next to my father Adam’s,

despise me not

for what I have done to you.

And as your light leaves Sheol

do not forever deprive me

of your presence, but

may your angel find me by your tomb, O Lord

when you rise,

and lift my broken body

to your light.

QUID VULTIS MIHI DARE

Wednesday of Holy Week

01 April, 2015

QUID VULTIS MIHI DARE

"WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO GIVE ME?" This is the question that Judas asked of the chief priests. We live somewhat calculated lives. There is little that we do, which we do not perceive to be to our advantage. In our zero-sum world we train ourselves to be on the side of gain, and even in our relationship with God, we are prone to ‘keep faith’ because we have more to gain than we have to lose. That is, until changes in lifestyle make it too much of a sacrifice for people to commit to God. This is the reason why many estrange themselves from the Church.

Fear of eternal damnation becomes a gamble worth taking for such people, when they see the immediate ‘gain’ of their sinfulness. This is why we need the ‘New Evangelisation’ to renew the faith of the ‘lost’ and in the process reinforce our own. This is the call of Pope Francis, to infuse our faith with love; not our corrupted, mortal concept of love, but the Divine Love of God that is limitless in its outpouring.

In the love of God there is no counting of cost. It is pure selflessness in its giving, leaving the giver no less complete having given. It is love for the sake of love – not the unrequited love that we fear, not even the requited love that we so often seek, but the eternally prerequited love perfect in its proceeding from the complete perfection of the infinite God, and made known in our time by the perfect love of Jesus Christ. Participation in this love is Evangelii gaudium – the joy of the Gospel that drives out fear and makes us whole, so we will never have to ask, “What are you prepared to give me?”

O Magnum Pietatis Opus

Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2014

"O GREAT WORK OF LOVE: that death then died when Life was dead upon the Cross." 

What could possibly be more grotesque, more heinous a symbol than this instrument of torture and laborious execution, used wantonly by the Romans to shame, maim and drain the last breath of life out of all manner of criminal and traitor? And yet how victorious it stands in its glory; the profoundest of all symbols of love; the most potent symbol of life; and the eternal symbol of salvation. It is the wood of the Cross on which hung the Saviour of the world.

It is the greatest mystery of our faith that God so loved the world that he condescended to the frailty of human life in the person of Jesus Christ; and being at once true God and true man he gave what only man may give to gain for mankind what only God may give: his death, for the destruction of death and the restoration of life everlasting. For from time immemorial, God has willed that his chosen people, our fathers in the faith, should regain that which they had lost in Adam, through faithfulness to the covenant, that time and again He had offered them for their salvation. But despite the wonders, the prophets, the conquests, the Promised Land, the kings given by God as signs of his faithfulness, yet still Israel would not believe. In an abundant outpouring of love, therefore, God offered himself through the Incarnation of Christ, as the perfect fulfilment of the Law and the perfect sacrifice Whose death would reconcile mankind with God for ever more. It is with this in mind that St. Augustine asks, “What may not the hearts of believers promise themselves as the gift of God’s grace, when for their sake God’s only Son, co-eternal with the Father, was not content only to be born as man from human stock but even died at the hands of the men he had created?” 

St. Augustine elsewhere exhorts, “In order to be healed from sin, gaze upon Christ crucified!”  And that is precisely what we are called upon to do today, as the Church invites us to exalt the glorious Cross of the Saviour and adore Him who took upon Himself the burden of our sin in order that we should have eternal life. Wherever you are reading this article now, take a moment and find a Cross and spend some time looking upon the Crucified One. See, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, how “the instrument of torture which, on Good Friday manifested God’s judgement on the world, has become a source of life, pardon, mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace.”  Understand what Christ has done for you on the Cross. Understand and rejoice.

Rejoice for Christ has turned this symbol of death into a source of life; the tears of defeat into shouts of victory; the weakness of human flesh into the strength of Almighty God. And what an icon of strength the Cross is, and what faith it inspires that the Apostles Peter, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon and Jude are believed to have embraced the same death as their saviour rather than deny their faith in Him. And today, the Holy Cross still stands as a courageous witness to lives lived in the spirit of the Gospel; a symbol of hope, of safety, of peace in a world that is increasingly full of despair, war, and hatred. And we too, like the Apostles, are called to live the way of the Cross with the strength and conviction that it inspires; to obey the command of Christ to take up our cross daily and follow him. But what does this mean for us? It means a willingness to accept, with faith in the providence of God, the means of healing that the Cross of Christ offers. It means accepting that we need Him, and grasping the foot of the Cross, as the tempests of the modern world try to tear us apart. It means, when catastrophes fall, that we keep the faith, as did Noah. It means that, when sacrifice is demanded of us, we offer ourselves with faith, whole-heartedly into the hands of God, as did Abraham. It means suffering whatever the world throws at us with patience and a stubborn trust in the love of God, as did Job. It means knowing that no trial, no pain, no hardship or misery can ever be more arduous than that already suffered by the innocent Lamb of God, Whose Cross is your triumph, your life and your glory in Him Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Cum Iucunditate [With Joy]

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
08 September, 2014

"WITH JOY let us celebrate the nativity of blessed Mary, so that she may intercede for us with the Lord Jesus Christ” rings out one of the antiphons for First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) on the eve of this great feast; and it is under the pervading theme of joy that we commemorate the great intercessory role of the Blessed Virgin in the history of our salvation.

Mary’s birth intercedes between the old and the new covenants, like that moment of first light before the sun rises above the horizon, with a glow that brings the promise of a new dawn. The nativity of Mary creates the bond that will unite God to his people; for through her birth, by God’s grace untouched by original sin, she becomes the pure vessel through which the Word will be made flesh; and by means of her heredity her son will be the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham that in his seed will be sent the Messiah, the deliverer of His people, Israel.

So it is with great joy that we can appreciate the great saving plan of God to fulfil His covenant with His chosen people in the incarnation of "Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” [Mt.1:1]; the Son of God sent in fulfilment of the law and the prophets and to institute in His blood a new covenant for the salvation of not just of Israel but all mankind. 

We find that as with every Marian feast, the celebration today of the Nativity of Mary points us towards her son, and in particular the Christological significance of the Saviour’s earthly lineage, from which the immense joy of the day is derived. And the theme of joy is propagated across every part of the Church’s public worship today, from the Divine Office to the Word of God in the Mass of the day. 

The prophet Micah proclaims the joyful future of God’s people with the coming of a ruler who “shall stand firm and shepherd his flock” in to an era of justice and peace. In his prophecy, Mary stands at the threshold of this time of deliverance as the instrument through which God will forever change the fate of his children, from a people forsaken, to a family united in covenant with God.

The Psalm echoes Mary’s own song of joy at the gift of the incarnation that she was chosen to bring forth. Her joy becomes our own with the refrain from Isaiah 61:10, “With delight I rejoice in the Lord” as the Psalmist recalls the goodness of God who has been our salvation.

The apostle Paul in his epistle to the Romans, whilst not speaking directly of the Virgin, recalls the joyful destiny of all who are chosen and called by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son” and so justified and glorified in Him. The same is true for Mary, the first of all believers in Christ Jesus, who was foreknown by God even from her conception and birth as intimately united with Him in the Divine plan for which she had been predestined by the grace of God to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the Mother of God’s Son.

The Gospel sets before us the whole history of salvation into which the Christ child will be born, descended from Abraham and born of a virgin that he may be Emmanuel, God with us. And as a precursor to the joy of Christmas, we celebrate today one of only two other births that the Church has elevated to a solemn feast: the Nativity of Mary – the other being the Nativity of John the Baptist. And just as many “will rejoice” at the birth of John, the precursor of Christ (Luke 1:14), how much greater is the joy that is roused by the birth of the Mother of the Saviour?

Praesumite Paulisper [Assume for a moment]

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
15 August, 2014

ASSUME FOR A MOMENT that Mary was not significant to the development of the Church in its earliest days; that, unlike every other person intimately connected with Jesus, she was not considered important enough to be cared about either during her remaining life or after her passing. Venture the thought that the only blood relative of Jesus, who followed him throughout his earthly ministry, was ignored by his followers after his death and given no place of honour amongst the apostles and other disciples of Christ, who claimed to be the extended, spiritual family of her son. See if you will, how the bones of the earliest apostles and martyrs have been the subject of preservation and veneration throughout the centuries; how great basilicas have been erected to house and celebrate them – but not Mary’s, because being chosen by God to give birth to the Saviour of the world is somehow less deserving of dignity and honour. Assume all of this is true – Would not Christ himself seek to give honour to his mother? Would it be so abhorrent for the God who loves all men to love the woman who bore, raised and stood by him to his death, enough to grant her the first taste of the reward that is promised to all who follow him faithfully on that day when “the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible”?

As in every event of her earthly life, Mary calls out through her glorious Assumption, ‘It is not about me!’ and urges us to ever deeper love for her Son. She always took praise – be it from the Angel Gabriel or her cousin Elizabeth – and magnified it to the glory of God, wanting to keep nothing for herself, a mere handmaid of the Lord for whom he had done great things. The Assumption is the final act of the almighty God in honouring that most precious of his creations whom he had chosen to be the vessel of his love for all mankind. It was not by her own power that she was assumed body and soul into heaven. She did not ascend into heaven like Christ, as we are sometimes accused of believing by our detractors. The Assumption was the action of God, her Son, out of the most profound love for the one who had truly loved God just as perfectly as he had loved her.

And it was not for her glory alone that Christ called his Blessed Mother to his side when her earthly sojourn had come to an end. The glory of the Virgin Mother of God is no less than the glory we are destined to receive in Christ when he will raise our mortal bodies and make them like his own in glory. So it is that our Holy Mother becomes a living testament to our own redemption through her Son and to the great power of our God, whose promise of our own participation in his eternal glory is made real through her bodily assumption to the Father’s house. For as the Virgin Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin, so too have we been washed clean through the waters of baptism. And although her sinless flesh rendered her immune to the physical corruption that death inflicts on our own mortal bodies, yet do we who cling to the grace of God through faith in Christ need but to slumber a while until the appointed time when our own frail flesh, raised by the Spirit, will rejoin our souls in his Kingdom.

To those who would say that, today, we place Mary on a pedestal too close to the divine to be acceptable, I say, if it were Christ himself who placed her there, is it not acceptable? To those who would say that we assume too much beyond the Word of God by believing in the Assumption of Mary, I say, if you are to believe the apostle when he says, “for the wages of sin is death” [Rom.6:23], and that, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin” [Rom.5:12], then what would you have happen to the handmaid of the Lord; the one hailed “full of grace” by the angel Gabriel? Scripture prohibits that one free from sin should suffer the punishment of Adam and his progeny, to be consigned to the dust from which he was made.

To those who would say that Mary’s Assumption into heaven makes her equal to God and that we blaspheme to acknowledge it, I say, it is impossible for God to blaspheme against himself, and whatever wonders he decides to perform or dignities to bestow upon his servants – as he did as well upon Elijah and Enoch – are done that all may come to know and love him. God’s glory is not diminished by the glory of his saints, for they glory in the Lord and are but reflectors of the source, as the moon shines but only for the power of the sun. So the brightness with which Mary shines is not her own or for her glory. She, the star of the sea and the star of the east, shines for all men, that we may be led to God – “For with thee is the fountain of life: and in your light we shall see light” [Ps.36:9].

To those who would say that the Assumption is the invention of the Church in modern times and was not a belief recognised by the early Fathers, I say, that the New Testament they hold in their hands was only acknowledged as canonical at the end of the fourth century, most probably at the Synod of Hippo (393AD), in the very same decade as St. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote these words of the Mother of God: “she through whom the divine light shone upon the world is in the place of bliss with her sacred body." [Haer. lxxix, 11] While he freely admits that he cannot be certain how or even whether Mary died, he leaves in no doubt that her body is with Christ her Son. Writing later but recalling the tradition of bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem, who attended the Council of Chalcedon in 451AD, St. John of Damascus tells us: "Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem at the Council of Chalcedon made known to the Emperor Marcian and [his Empress] Pulcharia, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles and that her tomb, when opened upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to Heaven." [Homily on the Dormition, II,96]

And for all of us, who celebrate this great feast of God’s glory in the raising of the Blessed Virgin, body and soul, to his side in heaven, I pray that we may always be strong in our faith and not resort to the distortions of human logic to reason that which is of divine providence; that we may rejoice with the angels that God so loved the Theotokos, that he chose to share with her, first, that to which we are all destined through Christ: the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Hic Nos Esse [We are here]

The Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

06 August, 2014

WE ARE HERE, as was Peter, in the presence of the Lord. Peter clearly didn’t want to leave. And why would he? This was the most marvellous sight he had ever beheld and, indeed, would behold until his Lord stood in his resurrected body and ascended into heaven. For Peter, this witness “of his sovereign majesty” [2Pet.1:16] coming only a short while after his confession “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” [Mt.16:16] was a confirmation of his faith of momentous proportions. His master, the carpenter’s son, stood, not bathed in divine light but exuding it from every fibre of his being; talking with Moses and Elijah whose law and prophecy he had come to fulfil; and confirmed by the voice of God himself as his son, the Word, to whom all men are charged to listen. No, Peter didn’t want to leave that mountaintop or see the resplendent glory of his master fade. But fade it must, and, this, Peter could not understand, even now, that “the Son of man must suffer many things … and be killed, and on the third day be raised” [Lk.9:22]; that suffering must necessarily precede the illumination of his glory that he had with the Father since the beginning; and that Peter too would have to “deny himself and take up his cross” before he could climb again the mountain of the Lord and see once more the face of the God of Jacob.

It is easy for us to forget, just as Peter misunderstood, that the victory of Christ lies not on this mountaintop but on the hill of Golgotha. Just as Peter, seeing Christ’s glory there made manifest, thought it better that they remain there rather than proceed to Jerusalem, where his master would undoubtedly fall foul of the Jewish authorities, so too do we sometimes seek the refuge of Christ’s glory without first taking our share of his suffering. 

The Transfiguration was Christ’s revelation to his closest followers that although he has been granted all authority in heaven and on earth [Mt.28:18] all that was about to unfold is indeed his will, even though of his nature he should never be subjected to such scorn and debasement, torture and death. And for our part, as witnesses through the Gospels to the glory of Christ that night on the mountain, we must understand that the nature of our glory in Christ was wrought at a price; and that while each celebration of Mass is a celebration of his glory, it is also the living sacrifice of the cross – for neither can be separated one from the other. In the words of Pope St. Leo the Great:

"Thus, the Lord’s example calls on the faith of believers to understand that, no doubt against the promise of happiness, we must nevertheless, in the trials of this life, ask for patience before glory; the happiness of the kingdom can not, in fact, precede the time of suffering.” [Leo the Great, Sermon 38,4]

The Lord precedes us, his glory a lamp for our steps and a light for our path that in all things we should emulate his humility and service, his love and sacrifice, and so be led – as were Peter, James and John – up the mountain of his Transfiguration. The Psalmist asks, as should we of ourselves, “Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?”. In his answer we find the lives we should lead, “The man with clean hands and pure heart, who desires not worthless things, who has not sworn so as to deceive his neighbour.” We must endeavour to be unpolluted by the world of sin, both outwardly (in the action of our hands) and inwardly (in the desires of our hearts). We must seek not glory in worldly attachments but follow Christ in his path to glory through the cross. And we must keep our covenant with Christ, to love God and our neighbour, both, as we ourselves have been loved by God in Christ; for, “such are the men that seek him, seek the face of the God of Jacob."

And how are we to achieve any of these things but through prayer? It is St. Luke who recounts that Jesus and the disciples went first up the mountain to pray [Lk.9:28].  And it is through prayer that the soul connects to the divine in praise of his name, to understand his will, and to offer ourselves in his service in the words of Jesus on another mount, “not my will, but thine, be done.” [Lk.23:42]. Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the “primacy of prayer” in the mystery of the Transfiguration in his final Angelus address:

"Meditating on this Gospel passage, we can draw a very important teaching from it. First of all, the primacy of prayer, without which the entire commitment of ministry and charity is reduced to activism. During Lent we learn to give the proper time to the prayer, both personal and communal, which gives breath to our spiritual life. In addition, prayer is not an isolation from the world and its contradictions, as Peter would have wanted on Mount Tabor. Instead, prayer leads to a path of action. The Christian life consists in continuously scaling the mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength drawn from Him, so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God’s own love.” [Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, 24 February 2013].

It is indeed good for us to be here; for us to possess the gift of faith that makes our souls cry out that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; for us to be able to pray with him to our Father in heaven, for the divine will to be done and for the coming of his kingdom; for us to be able to walk in his footprints of humility, service and suffering with the strength he constantly provides through the Holy Spirit; and for us, one day, to be able to see the radiance of his face, the glory of God, in his kingdom for ever.

Ex Milite Sancto [From soldier to saint]

Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola

July 31, 2014

FROM SOLDIER TO SAINT – the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola marks the most impactful conversion in the history of the Church after that of St. Paul the Apostle and the Emperor Constantine. The Jesuit order that he founded went on to bring the Word of God to every corner of the world, fulfilling with evangelical zeal the commission of Christ to, “go therefore and make disciples of all nations”.

But whom God chooses to carry his message may sometimes be surprising. For the apostles, the choice of St. Paul was a consternation, as he had spent his life fervently persecuting Christians. Ignatius’s conversion may not have been such an 180-degree turn as St. Paul’s but it was significant that a man of such worldly ambition and deftness of sword should seek to dedicate his life so completely to God and the Church.

In his early life, Íñigo López de Loyola might be described as a typical youngest son in a big family: always desiring attention and more recognition. He luxuriated in the aristocratic life of the court of Castile, taking pleasure in fine clothing, enjoying the attention of the ladies, a little gambling, and participating in occasional thuggery against enemies of his family. All-in-all, not someone his peers would expect to take to the cloth.

But as they saying goes, “God moves in mysterious ways; His wonders to perform”. And a wonder was indeed performed when the 30-year-old Ignatius, now an officer in the Spanish army was spared death when he was hit by a cannon ball, which broke one of his legs and severely injured the other. Near-death experiences are often the catalyst for conversions, but not in the case of Ignatius. While undoubtedly brave in facing numerous operations on his broken leg, including the sawing-off of a protruding knob of bone without anaesthetic, he was far from grateful to God for still being possession of his life. He remarked that to have one leg longer than the other was a fate worse than death because he would no longer be able to wear his tight-fitting pants and because walking with a limp would make him unattractive to his many lady fans. His vanity nearly killed him as he sought to have his shorter leg stretched to its previous length.

It was only by chance that, while he recuperated, his request for some racy romance novels was met, instead, with a copy of De Vita Christi (The Life of Christ) by monk-cum-theologian Ludolph of Saxony. Bored out of his wits, Ignatius began reading the book and so began his page-by-page conversion. One of the most notable points about this conversion is how he felt a sense of calm and fulfilment when reading about the life of Christ and the saints. This sense of peace and satisfaction was in direct contrast to the restlessness and anxiety he felt when pondering his own convoluted life. Eventually he began to be more and more drawn to the peace that only Christ can give and began a journey of spiritual discernment that would lead to his great work, the Spiritual Exercises.

It should be encouraging for us all to see how the conversion of St. Ignatius unfolded, because it happened in stages rather than in a moment of great divine intervention. We can see how he struggled and overcame obstacles through a process that he would call “discretio” or the ability to discern, through contemplation, between spirits that are good and bad and would act on our soul for either the glory of God or for capitulation to Satan. Ignatius came to understand himself and all mankind to be essentially torn between two real and opposing forces, capable of both acts of great goodness and of profound evil; the direction in which man is drawn to action being dependent on his ability to examine his conscience in the grace of God, in order to avert the expression of evil desires. It should, perhaps, not come as a surprise that such a master of battle strategies should come to express his faith in terms of spiritual warfare, and that he would become as sought after in the art of spiritual direction as he had been in the direction of war.

If there was a moment of decisive turning to the Lord for Ignatius, it would have been when he raised his sword for the last time, to lay it down upon the altar of Our Lady of Montserrat, at the Benedictine shrine bearing the same name. He had just witnessed how his own soul had teetered on the brink of damnation when he was tempted to strike down a Moor he met on his journey and who had denied the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Fortunately he was pulled back from the brink by an act of pure chance: he decided to dismount his mule at a fork in the road and kill the Moor if his mule followed him, or spare him if the mule took the alternative route. The mule followed the other path and the Moor’s life was spared, but Ignatius had been a hairsbreadth from committing murder. Whether he had been saved by chance or the intervention of God in directing his mule was irrelevant to Ignatius. The fact he had come so close to the point of no return in his conversion was enough to move him to kneel in vigil before Our Lady’s altar and leave there his weapons and fine clothing – trappings of a lifestyle that he had once loved above all else.

Thankfully, we live in times when the real opportunity and impetus to commit such horrendous crimes as murder do not present themselves for the vast majority of us. Still, the temptation of evils equally malicious, though arguably less deadly, are very real. Just as the human mind is a powerful tool in the hands of Satan, so too is the human conscience a powerful tool for good if accessed prayerfully and in a spirit of humility before our Creator. There are actions, great and small, for which our consciences weep and send out that familiar twinge of regret. Accessing that twinge before thought of sin becomes action is the spirit of discernment that we must try to master in the occasion of all manner of sin, so that our lives may be lived here on earth as we desire them to be lived one day in heaven: for and with God alone.

The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, like his own conversion, is a process of experiencing God, at each stage deeper than the last, until the trajectory of human life itself intersects with the joy of the resurrection and the eternal glory of God. The result is a highly structured and divinely guided journey of a soul towards the true knowledge of redemption, lasting 30 days and arranged as a programme of contemplation and prayer grounded in Holy Scripture, taking each soul on its unique conversion to Christ through acknowledgement of our failed human state; of the gift of God in Christ; of the need for and nature of Christ’s passion and our own acceptance of suffering; to the sharing of the Blessed Virgin’s joy in the glory of her Son’s resurrection. It is a journey through the story of our salvation, undertaken precisely for the salvation of our souls.

No article can do justice to the great gift that the conversion of St. Ignatius of Loyola has given to the world in the four-and-three-quarter centuries since the foundation of the Society of Jesus. No single day of celebration can adequately memorialise the ministry rooted in the charisms of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which have seen the evangelisation of the Gospel of Christ by the Jesuit Fathers to over one hundred countries in every continent bar the frozen one, through the foundation of schools, colleges, universities and seminaries, and through the conversions of millions of souls, all ad maiorem Dei gloriam – for the greater glory of God. 

Though our reading stop here may our living begin in earnest, in St. Ignatius’ spirit of conversion "to conquer oneself and to regulate one's life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment."

Etenim Caritas Dei [For the love of God]

In remembrance of
Malaysia Airlines
Flight MH17

Friday, 18 July, 2014.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD must prevail in our lives even amidst the profoundest of trials.

There are times of personal sorrow; there are times of national grief; there are times of international horror and mourning. We are living in all of these times today. In the face of evil of such magnitude, it can be difficult to discern the presence of God in our world. But despite the atrocities that man inflicts on mankind, we must hold fast to the love of God – in the words of the Apostle Paul, “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Romans 8:38-39].

For we have witnessed what the rejection of the love of God can inflict. For in its neglect is the source of depraved ambition, lust for power and domination, vengeance, wrath – evil. Without the love of God we are hollow men waiting to be preyed upon by the Evil One who seeks to twist men’s souls from the path of the living God to journey in darkness and death. With the love of God every blessing is possible, but likewise when that love is abandoned, there are no limits to the depths of depravity to which the human soul may sink.

Today we have witnessed the repudiation of God’s love in the actions of a few men and the tragedy that has ensued. Let us pray that the whole world may, in these troubled times, hold strong in the love of God so that further manifestations of Satan’s power in the world may be halted. Wars have been ignited for less than we have witnessed on our TV screens this night passed. May we instead pray for the peace and love of Christ to prevail; to transform and convert; and to comfort and heal.

Anger is natural, but it is not of God. A desire for revenge is natural, but not of God. A need to apportion blame is natural, but to judge is for God alone. And He will judge. Just as sure as night follows day, so too may we be assured that our God, who sees and knows all things, will receive the blameless into his bosom and turn his face from those who embrace the rule of sin and death in their lives.

For those responsible, directly and indirectly, for the tragic loss of life on MH17, let us pray:

That God may strike in their very souls a profound understanding of the evil of their actions and that His Spirit may fill them with such deep remorse that for their whole lives they may weep unceasingly at the feet of Our Blessed Lord begging for forgiveness and desiring nothing but to be freed from Satan and his evil grasp.

For the friends and especially the families of those who lost their lives on MH17, let us pray:

That God may give them consolation in their mourning, hope that will lift their souls from the depths of anguish into the certainty of the love of God, and His strength to be steadfast in faith and love and to rise anew from the broken pieces of their lives.

And for all of the victims of this tragedy, who perished in such unspeakable circumstances, let us pray:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

Simon James Phillips

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Beati Oculi Vestri [Blessed are your eyes]

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 13, 2014

BLESSED ARE YOUR EYES, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. We, who gather at the table of the Lord today are but twenty percent of the one in six people in the world who have been baptised into the Catholic faith. Faith is indeed a gift from God but what we do with the seed of faith once it is planted in our hearts is entirely up to us. Whilst the Holy Spirit continues to work through the Church and her people, there is no let up and in fact a marked increase in secular rhetoric that seeks to undermine any and all belief systems, preferring to exalt the god of self with the litany of sins that such an existence brings.

Today, in the Parable of the Sower, the Lord gives us an opportunity to reflect upon the state of our own faith. Just what is the state of the faith even among the twenty percent of us who faithfully go to church every week? We can perhaps be grateful that our seed of faith has not fallen upon the path but that does not necessarily mean that our faith is in a healthy state.

If our hearts are of stone then for sure the seed of faith will not have a chance to put down solid roots. The Lord gives us a clear description of the results of faith that lacks the soil to grow roots: "As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away” [Mt.13:20-21]. Sometimes life events might trigger a need for hope, which faith is apt to provide but when the situation subsides the first fervour is forgotten and the flame of faith slowly dies. There are many things that can attract people to Catholicism; external things like the compassion of our priests, the authenticity and history of our teaching, and the outer beauty of our liturgy and churches. These externals are a great pull factor but if faith is not internalised and propagated, then, when the novelty wears off (as it does with new phones, new cars, and practically new anything), faith withers. Then there are those who come to church out of habit or obligation but do not live the faith outside the walls of the church. They might meet the bare minimum requirement of arriving at Mass before the Gospel and then leaving immediately after communion, but they have abandoned all other expressions of faith. They are most in need of the fellowship of the parish community, to help foster growth in faith, but they keep themselves on the fringes of parish life, where their faith languishes in the shadows. Obligation may not seem like an altogether bad reason to attend Mass, but with the passing of time, these people too will drift away from the faith.

And what of those whose faith is stronger but choked by thorns? There are many temptations and distractions that would shift our focus from God, both within our church communities and in the world beyond. Secular self-indulgence and even other religions that seemingly offer a more comfortable fit for our lifestyles and preferences may spring-up and lure us away from our faith. When the Lord speaks of “the delight in riches” [Mt.13:22] it is not just the temptation of material gain that he warns against. The desire for praise and the riches of acclaim are an unwelcome distraction from the focal point of church life, which should be God. Cliques and elite groups abound within the lay ministries, where seemingly strong faith finds pleasure in the seeking of fame or notoriety. Like the seed planted among thorns, faith stands little chance to grow before it gets caught-up in worldly concerns and suffocated.

It might appear that faith is fickle and hard to cultivate but it is always our action or inaction that stunts the seed’s growth. Faith cannot be lost in the way we might lose a wallet or our keys. It’s not about being forgetful or careless. To ‘lose faith’ there has to be a conscious action to discard it; to discard the very explicit teaching of Christ himself on how to propagate it. The “good soil” of which Jesus speaks in the Parable of the Sower is the Word of God and “he who hears the word and understands it; he indeed bears fruit” [Mt.13:23]. Whatever first called us to the faith, and however the seed of faith was first planted in our hearts, we must constantly seek to root it firmly in the good soil of the Scriptures. Prayer, of course is vital, but like many externalised expressions of faith, even prayer can become rote and devoid of the true understanding of the faith that we are called to embrace. The conscious act of reading or listening to the Word of God, however, is a practice that can only ever lead to spiritual growth and a blossoming of faith. Whether through more frequent attendance at Mass, to participate in the Liturgy of the Word and to internalise the Word through Holy Communion; or by developing a practice of following the daily scripture readings in the Missal; or even by setting aside time each day to read and contemplate a random verse of scripture; regular turning to the Word of God will nourish your faith because it is the means by which God speaks to us in every situation (be it good or bad) that we find ourselves in.

And there will be bad times. Our faith is no cure-all or talisman against misfortune. Our faith is more powerful than that. Some might tell you that their gods can protect and bring luck. People might pray and when the luck they seek does not come, or when obstacles in life are not removed, they move on to the next, more powerful deity. But as Christians living the faith, we are “strong in the Lord and the power of his might” [Ephesians 6:10]. We know that life is more than a numbers game and the next cutthroat step up the corporate ladder. We know that our God does not send us trials to hold us to ransom for prayers and offerings. Trials are of this world; how we deal with these trials is witness to the world to come “[f]or our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” [2 Corinthians 4:17].

Strong in faith and armed with the Gospel of Christ and the counsel of his Spirit we must aspire to face adversity with the charity, love and hope we have been given through our faith – A charity that that finds expression in tolerance and kindness, even of those who seek to harm us. A love of neighbour (even the not so nice ones) that emulates “the kind of mercy and grace that our Saviour showed those who were crucifying him” [James 1:17]. A love of God that is unfailing, even through personal tragedy, and endures even as God’s love endures for us despite our failings. And a hope that transcends mortal desires (“for who hopes for what he sees? [Romans 8:24]) and keeps our souls’ gaze always on the Kingdom of God.

This is faith. Faith tempered by the endurance of suffering, in the name of Christ and with the strength of Christ, which lifts the human spirit to share in the divine. A faith that shines as an unshakable testament to our God for the world to see.

When we immerse ourselves in the Word of God and allow our faith to bear fruit, that is when we become evangelists in deed and word. It is this strength of faith through both the joys and pains of life, which finds expression in our demeanour and the way we live, that will be the rallying call of the communion of the saints militant – a call to live, day-by-day, in the joy of the Gospel. For as the Holy Father says, “[i]t is not by proselytising that the Church grows, but ‘by attraction’” [Evangelii Gaudium,  §15]. We shall each be known by the fruits that our seed of faith bears. Let us, then, constantly seek to nourish our faith “on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” [Mt.4:4], that our faith may grow stronger, like the seed planted in good soil, and bear the fruit of the true joy that only Christ can give and, indeed, has already given in the Good News of salvation. And may our joy be a magnetic witness to our faith, which calls back to us our brothers and sisters who have drifted from the faith and all those who seek and desire the joy of being loved by God.

Vae Vobis Pharisaeis [Woe to you Pharisees]

14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

06 July, 2014

WOE TO YOU PHARISEES, who have taken the simple and pure love of God and made of it hoops through which you pleasure in watching God’s children jump. There is nothing tortuous about embracing the love of God, for God even gives us the love which we return to him in faith. Nothing could be simpler than the invitation Christ makes today. And yet there are those who would adjudge themselves more worthy and others less so, of the divine gift of life that is so freely given by the Lord.

“Come to me,” says the Lord. How more unambiguous can he get? The relationship we are invited to participate in is personal; a direct response to his call in the Gospels. It is the call of the Lord your God to a personal conversion of life, a re-orientation of your being towards his light. And nothing can block the light of Christ’s love but you alone. There may be those who seek to intercept this light, to withhold it, to tell you that you are not worth of it, to insist that you follow their way towards it, but they are not of God. Respond from the depth of your heart to the call of Christ, “arise, shine: for your light has come.” The Church of Christ’s faithful is lit not by the light of Christ upon an elite, select few but by the glory of the Lord magnified in the hearts of each one of those he has called by name. And what a light for a world in darkness this produces, if only we would let it shine.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” says the Lord. Struggles that burden us and make our faith laborious are not sent from God but created by us. Whenever we struggle in our faith or wrestle with following God’s plan for us, the distress comes not from God but ourselves. Our place, like that of the disciple Jesus loved, is resting on the Lord’s chest. We can pull ourselves away from him, for sure. But when we lament that God seems far away and unconcerned about our struggles, we need to see that it is we who have removed ourselves from the repose of his embrace. He remains, as does always his invitation to rest assured in him through faith. The Lord does not test us. Life just happens, the good and the bad. It is up to us whether we use all that life throws at us to get closer to the Lord and accept the peace he extends to us, or otherwise.

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart,” says the Lord. Accepting the invitation of Christ is to learn his ways; as I have said before, to live how he lived and to love those whom he loved. Just as He has said, let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone, therefore should we refrain always from judgment, for there is a time destined for judgment and one destined to judge and we do not know the former and dare not presume to know the heart of the latter. We all stand before him unworthy of his gift of eternal life, each of us in need of his mercy and compassion. And for each time that we condemn in word or deed, we forgo the chance of manifesting the divine mercy that has brought us into communion with God’s love and could too have softened the heart of a sinner.

There is no ‘in-crowd’ in the house of God. God has no favourites. The moment we build the barriers of judgment between people “[t]he mark of Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen, is not present; closed and elite groups are formed, and no effort is made to go forth and seek out those who are distant or the immense multitudes who thirst for Christ. Evangelical fervour is replaced by the empty pleasure of complacency and self-indulgence.” [Evangelii Gaudium, §95]

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” says the Lord. So it is that the hallmark of our faith must necessarily be the free expression of the joy of God’s love and the magnification of that love in the community of the Church and beyond. The hallmark of our faith needs to be the expression of Christ’s own mercy and compassion through service of our neighbour that is, like Christ, “gentle and lowly of heart”. That is how we are to make ourselves known as disciples of Christ. Our faith is spread through the Word of God but the actions of His people. Never has the old adage “practise what you preach” been more appropriate than today, in the context of the New Evangelisation.