As many of you will know, one of my favourite TV programmes was, and still is, the 1990s sitcom, Father Ted. For me, one of the things that makes Father Ted so funny is that, like all good comedy it simply takes real life and exaggerates it’s silliness, the eccentricities of people and so on for comedic effect. And, as I’ve mentioned a number of times in the past, I have met people in and through the Church who are just like some of the characters in Father Ted.

One of the jokes that appears in Father Ted from time to time is that, when there’s some kind of crisis that demands action to resolve it, the clergy appear to be completely stumped about what to do and then suddenly, a flash of inspiration with show on someone’s face and they say,

“I know what to do! Let’s say Mass!”

Which everyone thinks is a brilliant idea and so that’s what they do – repeatedly.

What lies behind this storyline is the idea of Mass intentions, the practice of saying Mass for a particular need, whether that be a person or some kind of trouble. There’s nothing funny about that, in fact it’s something that we should be doing because the idea of a Mass or Eucharistic intention, is that the graces we receive through the Mass, through the Eucharist, are applied to resolving the particular problem stated in the intention. So, for example, if the intention was for someone who’s ill, the graces we receive through the Mass or Eucharist, might be applied in aiding their recovery. But in that case, the case of illness, I’m sure we’d also take some common-sense physical steps to aid their recovery too, like getting them to the doctor or the hospital. The joke in Father Ted is that the clergy in the programme have no common-sense, that they’re so impractical  and so stupid actually, that, even collectively, they can’t think of anything to do about a problem except say Mass about it, and say Mass about it again, and again and again.

But if the real-life practice of saying Mass for a particular need is what lies immediately behind this storyline, what it also shows is the real-life importance the Mass, the Eucharist, in the Church and to Christians. But, of all the things we do in Church and do as Christians, why should this be so important? As I’ve spoken about Mass intentions, perhaps the first thing we should talk about is grace.

We know that at the Mass, the Eucharist, we receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, and the definition of a sacrament is that it’s an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. We also know that although the Church recognises seven sacraments, there are only two dominical sacraments, two that were instituted specifically by Jesus;  Baptism and Holy Communion. So we know that these things are very powerful sources of grace. And the Mass, the Eucharist, in particular is such a powerful source of grace because through this liturgy we receive the forgiveness of sins, we meet the Lord in the words of scripture, and through our remembrance of the Lord’s Supper we share in that sacred meal that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his death. And through sharing in that, we receive the grace of the sacrament of Holy Communion. And if we think about these things in the context of this morning’s Gospel, we realise just what it is that we are receiving in the sacrament of Holy Communion and just how important this is to us.

In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that what we should be looking for and working for is the bread that endures to eternal life. He tells us that this is the bread he offers us and that, in fact, he himself is this bread, the bread of life. Later in this chapter of St John’s Gospel, Jesus goes on to say that this bread is nothing other than his flesh given for the life of the world. He tells us that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we will have no life in us but if we do eat his flesh and drink his blood we will be raised to eternal life. More than that, he tells us that, if we eat his flesh and drink his blood he will live in us, and we will live in him. And where is that that we eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood but in the sacrament of Holy Communion given to us at the Mass, at the Eucharist. So when we come here to this service we unite ourselves and our lives with Jesus in the deepest way possible to us in this life because we come here to receive the life of Jesus. This is why the Mass, the Eucharist, is so important to the Church and to us as Christians. Having said that, I think some people don’t give this service, or the sacrament we receive in it either the honour, nor the attention they should, and that it’s due.

Early on in this morning’s Gospel Jesus tells the people that they’re looking for him for the wrong reason. Only the day before he said these words, Jesus had fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, and they’re looking for him now, not because they recognise who he really is, in fact they don’t even understand what he’s done because they’re still asking him for a sign that they should believe in him. No, they’re looking for him simply because he’d provided them with a good nosh-up. And I think we could say something similar of some people in the Church.

How many people come to the Mass, the Eucharist, and really don’t treat it with the honour and respect it deserves? How many people, throughout the service, chatter to the people sat next to them rather than paying attention to what’s happening and being said in the service? And how many of those people then complain that they didn’t hear something? And have you also noticed that the people who talk throughout the service are the same people who are the first to complain about other people talking during the service? And these days, how many people sit through the service with their mobile phones in their hands. I know some say they’re using their phones to follow the readings, or even the sermon, but how many are playing games on them or reading and sending messages or browsing the internet during the service? I’ve seen people get up and start watering the flowers during the service. I’ve seen people start putting books out and sort the hymn boards out for later services during the service. I’ve seen people reading papers and magazines during the service. I’ve even seen people get up, go to the back of church and make themselves a brew during the service. Is this any way to treat this most holy of services? Is this showing proper respect for the most holy sacrament of Holy Communion? I can only assume that the people who do these kinds of things are like those who followed Jesus because he’d filled their bellies, they’re more concerned with physical things than spiritual things. Too concerned with everyday trivia to look for things of eternal value. So concerned with what’s going on in this world that they can’t put those things aside even for an hour so that they direct their minds to the life of the world to come and concentrate on uniting themselves to Jesus.

At the Roman Catholic Shrine in Walsingham there’s a small tea room and a shop selling religious items. At 12 noon each day there’s a Mass and shortly before Mass is due to start, people are asked, politely, to leave the tea room and the shop so that they can close for Mass, which they do. The tea room and shop don’t reopen until the Mass has ended. The point being made is that, when Mass is being celebrated, that’s where people’s attention should be. Not on guzzling tea or coffee or filling their bellies with food, no matter how nice that food might be. And not on buying things in a shop either, even if those things are of a religious nature. Their minds should be on the Mass and on coming into the presence of the Lord and uniting themselves with him in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

And that’s just as it should be. For faithful Christians, the Mass, the Eucharist, should be something that warrants our full attention. This is where we meet the Lord in word and sacrament. This is where we receive forgiveness of sins. And this is where we receive the life giving, living bread that is Jesus himself. It’s where we unite our lives to his and he unites his life to ours. Whatever is going on around us can wait; it’ll still be there when the service is over, and we can turn our thoughts to those things then. Even if we have a Mass or Eucharistic intention, our full focus should still be on what is going on here, in church during the service. We can apply more worldly remedies to a problem when we leave church but while we’re here, our full attention should be on what’s taking place here, on the graces we’re receiving through what’s taking place here, and on praying that those graces will be applied to that problem.

So let’s not be like those who followed Jesus because they’d filled their bellies with bread but follow him because he is the living bread that will bring us eternal life. Let’s come here believing in his assurance that in receiving his body and blood, we unite our lives to his and he unites his life to ours. And let’s give this service, the Mass, the Eucharist, and the sacrament of Holy Communion we receive during the service the honour it deserves by giving it our full attention.

Amen.

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Propers for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 10), 4th August 2024

Entrance Antiphon
God, come to my help.
Lord, quickly give me assistance.
You are the one who helps me and sets me free:
Lord, do not be long in coming.

The Collect
Let your merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions
make them to ask such things as shall please you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15        
Psalm 78:3-4, 23-25, 54
Ephesians 4:17, 20-24
John 6:24-35

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

Anyone who’s ever been to Walsingham on a weekend pilgrimage will know that one of, if not the highlight of the experience, is the candlelit procession round the Shrine grounds on Saturday night. And it is quite something to experience. The church is always packed with several hundred pilgrims for the service, and all of those who are able, join the procession as it wends its

way out of church, through the Shrine gardens, and then back into church again. And if you go to Walsingham at a time of year when it’s dark on Saturday night, the sight of hundreds of people processing round the gardens by candlelight is quite spectacular.

The procession is always accompanied by the singing of The Walsingham Pilgrim Hymn which, through its 38 verses, tells the story of Walsingham from the vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary granted to the Lady Richeldis de Faverches, in the 11^th Century, the building of the first Holy House, and its growth into one of the great places of pilgrimage in Medieval England, to its destruction under Henry VIII and eventual rebuilding in the early 20^th Century. These days we don’t often get through all 38 verses of the hymn because the procession does seem to have speeded up since low level lighting was installed in the Shrine grounds a few years ago. Before that, there was very little light for the procession, except the pilgrim’s candles. That made the procession more spectacular but, as in those days it was usual for a few pilgrim manuals (the Shrine’s service book) to go up in flames as people got them a little too close to their candles, and to find a fellow pilgrim you’d been walking beside had suddenly disappeared and, as you looked round to see where they were, to find them emerging from behind a tree or trying to extricate themselves from a bush that they’d walked into in the dark, it’s quite understandable why the lighting was put in. Nevertheless, we usually manage to sing a good deal of the hymn, and so we always sing about the building of the first Holy House, and the founding of the first Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. And in doing that we come across a few verses that tie in with our Gospel reading this morning. They go like this;

But though she (Lady Richeldis) had given both timbers and lands,
the power of the work lay in Mary’s own hands.
And this was made clear when the work was complete
by the answers to prayers that poured out at her feet.
And soon mighty wonders by grace were revealed.
for the sick who made use of the waters were healed.

One thing we always have to remember is that, even in Walsingham, we don’t pray to Mary. What we do is ask her intercession, in other words, we ask Mary to help our prayers to the Lord, by asking her to pray to the Lord with us and for us. So the prayers poured out at her feet are still prayers to the Lord. And, as the hymn says, the miracles that occur in answer to prayer are works of grace, and grace comes from the Lord. So although the hymn says that the power of the work lay in Mary’s hands, ultimately, the power of the place and what happens there lies in God’s hands. But although the hymn plays down the part that the Lady Richeldis played in all this, none of it would have happened without her gifts of timber and lands.

Immediately after the verses I’ve just quoted, the Walsingham Pilgrim Hymn goes on to say,

So Walsingham then came a place of great fame
and Our Lady herself was then called by this name.

But those things wouldn’t have happened without the cooperation of Richeldis. Without her gifts of timbers and lands, the Holy House wouldn’t have been built, the Shrine would never have existed, and very few people would ever have heard of Walsingham because the miracles associated with that place wouldn’t have happened there. And this tells us something very important about what we might call the practical side of faith. The Lord can and will and does do miraculous things. But if we want the Lord to do those things for us and through us then we have to meet him part of the way; we have to give him the means, the physical resources to work with and through. 

And this is exactly what we see in this morning’s Gospel.

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle of Jesus that’s recorded in all 4 Gospels and this morning, we heard St John’s account of it. St John tells us that, when he saw the crowds coming towards them, Jesus asked Philip,

“Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

And we’re told that this is a test, no doubt of what Philip and the disciples would say and do. But in the other Gospels, the test is put more bluntly. In those accounts, the disciples ask Jesus how all these people are going to be fed and Jesus says.

“You give them something to eat.”

All they’ve got is 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish which is nowhere near enough to feed so many people. But they give it to Jesus anyway and in his hands it becomes more than enough, far more than enough, in fact.

This miracle can be seen in different ways. It shows Jesus as he Good Shepherd who cares for his flock. It also shows Jesus as a new and greater Moses who not only leads God’s people in the wilderness, but feeds them too, just as the people of Israel were fed with manna from heaven when they were in the wilderness. It can also be seen as an allegory of the Eucharist because some of the language, Jesus looking up to heaven, blessing and breaking bread, we also find in the account of the Last Supper. But we can also look at this miracle as an example of practical faith. We can put it like this; there’s a problem that needs to be addressed, there’s no doubt Jesus can deal with it, and so we quite rightly bring the problem to him. But what are we going to do to help him? Are we prepared to provide Jesus with the physical means to deal with the problem? Because that is what makes the miraculous possible.

If we think about the miracles of Jesus, always people meet him part of the way. Those who are sick come to him in faith, but they push their way through crowds or are lowered through roofs to get to him. People who are considered ‘unclean’ and unfit to come to him and speak to him, do it anyway. People bring him water and he turns it into wine. And as we heard this morning, he’s given a pitiful amount of food, and in his hands it becomes enough to feed a multitude. And it has to be like that for us too. If we want Jesus to do miraculous things for us, we have to meet him part of the way. We might not think we’re worthy to ask, but we have to do it anyway. We might not think what we can offer is enough or good enough, but we have to offer it anyway. We have to give Jesus the physical means to do his work, and that means making ourselves and what we have available to him so that he can work through these things.

But do we always do this? Isn’t it true that when we’re faced with a problem our response is to either try to deal with it ourselves, if we think we can, and only take it to the Lord if we fail? And if we think we can’t deal with it, to simply leave the whole thing in the Lord’s hands? I’m sure many people think they don’t do these because they always pray about the problems they’re faced with. But how often do pray as a last resort, when we’ve tried and failed to resolve a problem?

And how often do nothing about a problem because we don’t think that we’re capable of dealing with it, that we don’t have the skills or the knowledge or the experience to deal with it? We may very well  pray about these things, but we simply leave them in the Lord’s hands because we don’t think that we have anything to offer in terms of a solution.

But that isn’t meeting Jesus part of the way, it’s leaving the whole thing in his hands and expecting, or perhaps simply hoping, that he’ll deal with it for us. But that isn’t what we see either in the Gospels, nor in scripture generally. What we see there are people who work with the Lord by offering him what they have, whatever that might be, and allowing him to work through them and with what they can offer, no matter how little they might think that is.

It’s sad but nonetheless true, that we have problems in life and in the Church. And it’s right that we should take these things to the Lord in prayer and ask his help in dealing with them. But we have to be prepared to cooperate with the Lord in solving these things. Walsingham came a place of great fame through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the grace of the Lord, but it wouldn’t have done without the cooperation of the Lady Richeldis. So like her,  we have to meet the Lord part of the way by providing the physical means for him to work with and through. Just as people in the Gospels pushed through crowds and were lowered through roofs to be healed by Jesus, so we have to make the effort to allow him to help us in our difficulties. Just as those who thought they were unworthy came to Jesus to seek his help anyway, so we have to give Jesus the chance to help us by coming to him as we are, no matter how lacking in ability or knowledge or experience we are, or think we are. No matter how little we think we have to offer, we have to offer it anyway because in his hands what we think isn’t enough can become more than enough.

To put it very simply, and in terms of the miraculous works of Jesus we read about in the Gospels, if we want the Lord to provide us with the finest wine, we have to at least give him the water. If we want the Lord to provide us with a feast, we at least have to give him a morsel to work with.

Amen.

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Propers for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 9) 28th July 2024

Entrance Antiphon
God is in his holy dwelling;
he will give a home to the lonely, he gives power and strength to his people.

The Collect
Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct,
sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies,
in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)  
2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-11, 15-18
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:1-15

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-19
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21