St. Philip Parish and St. Clare Mission

As you heard in our announcements at the beginning of Mass, we are about to hold our Advent parish mission, entitled “Does God still heal today?”. Appropriately, then, for such a theme, our readings today celebrate the coming “Day of the Lord”, that time in history, when God will intervene decisively in the affairs of humanity to overthrow the powers of evil and usher in his  kingdom, a kingdom  marked by peace, justice, righteousness and healing. 

So the prophet Baruch, writing when the vast majority of the inhabitants of Israel were in exile from their homeland, predicts a time to come when those who were devastated to see their capital city, Jerusalem, destroyed, its Temple burned down, and vast numbers of its citizens deported to Babylon, will be able, as he says, to “take off  their garment of sorrow and affliction and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God”. Baruch foresaw a time when God would act to throw down their enemies and bring them back home to their beloved city and homeland. I should imagine that those who are living today as refugees, having had to flee their homes because of wars, would take great comfort and consolation in hearing the words of Baruch’s message of hope and promise, which they would easily be able to apply to their own situation.

Indeed, brothers and sisters, the whole point of us listening to the word of God at Mass, is for us to understand that the message this word conveys can, and does, apply to us and our situation. It is not a dead word of history; it is the living word of God. St Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, declares that what we call the word of God, that is, the Bible, is not “a human word, but … GOD’S WORD … which is always at work amongst those who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2: 13). … Read more...

There is a tendency for us to play down the second of the two comings of Jesus that I mentioned at the beginning of Mass, so as to give emphasis to his first coming, over 2000 years ago. While it gives us a warm feeling, and gives our children a lot of excitement, to prepare for the Christmas event, we must never forget that due emphasis must also be given to Christ’s return at the end of time, when he will bring world history to a close and usher in the fullness of the kingdom of heaven. We live in between those key moments in history. Note that the word “history” can be spelt as “his story”, in other words, Christ’s history. Pope St John Paul II once wrote that Jesus Christ is the fulfilment and center of all history, the world’s history and our own personal history. If our lives are centered simply on what happens to us, and what we can achieve in this world, we have missed the essential point of our life and our history.  Put simply, our life and our story are determined by Christ’s life and his story. The beginning of our real life and our personal story happens not at our natural birth, but at our new birth, our supernatural birth, in other words, at our baptism. That primary sacrament, coupled with confirmation, consecrates us to God, adopts us into His family as his sons and daughters, brings forgiveness of the original sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and our own personal sins, restores the life of the Holy Spirit, the life of grace within us and qualifies us for everlasting life in heaven. 

The consequence of our baptismal anointing,  if we build on it, means that, when Christ does come at the end of time to usher in the kingdom of God, it should not be a time of mortal fear for us, as it will be for many, as Jesus says in the gospel today: “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world”. … Read more...

We have had, in the course of world history, many kings and queens, especially in my home country of England. Some of them have been good rulers, saintly even (e.g. St Stephen of Hungary, St Edward the Confessor, Queen Margaret of Scotland). But many have not been quite so saintly. True is the saying of Lord Acton over a century and a half ago: “Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. There is something about earthly power and authority that can go to a person’s head, and when that power belongs to an absolute monarch, with life and death in their hands, it can lead to some terrible atrocities. It is why countries with traditional monarchies have long understood the need to establish various restrictions against abuse of power in their leaders. 

Pilate understood the danger of allowing a king to arise in Israel, which would be a threat to him and to the Roman emperor. In our gospel today, Pilate questions Jesus to see if he represented a danger to Roman rule. In answer to such an accusation, Jesus states that the kingship which he wields is of a different order to earthly rule. It looks to an allegiance of the heart and a spiritual sovereignty which in no way is competitive with earthly power. But there is a self-awareness and an acknowledgement from Jesus that he is a king, that he does come to bring in the reign, the kingdom, or rather kingship of God. To deny that would be to deny the supreme truth of who he is, and since Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, (John 14:6), he cannot lie, he has to speak the truth. Pilate realizes that he is in the presence of greatness and a true majesty, although he declares to the Jewish leaders that he sees no political threat in Jesus.… Read more...

Our first reading, describing the final judgement before the throne of God, talks about those being saved, who were found “written in the book”.  God, it seems, has a book of names of those who are going to heaven.  This book, called the “book of life” or “the book of the living” is mentioned in several places in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New. In the final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, for instance, we are shown a vision of “a great white throne and the one who sat on it; …with the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books” (Revelation 20: 11,12).

That image, of the whole human race, myself included, standing before the throne of God at the end of time for judgement, haunted me throughout my young years. I could so easily picture myself, sweating and trembling, as the recording angel skimmed through the pages of the book, searching for my name in it. It didn’t help at all that I was an altar server as a boy, and used to serve at funerals. In those days, before the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council, funerals were dreadful, gloomy occasions. Everyone wore black vestments, there was a black pall on the coffin, the readings all spoke of punishment and hell, the music was dirty, and there was, above all, the intoning of the “Dies Irae” (Latin for “The Wrath of God”), from the prophet Zephaniah: “The great day of the Lord is near … that day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry” (Zephaniah 1:14-16). … Read more...