Conkers and Workers in the vineyard

On Sunday there was much scurrying around under the big horse chestnut tree outside the abbey church. My sons were searching for the spoil of the winds that we have been weathering just recently.  They were looking for conkers and were very pleased as they filled their pockets.  Strangely, they do not use them as my friends and I used them when I was their age.  We played conkers by suspending them on the end of boot laces and took in turns trying to smash our adversary's prize conker.  Instead they find all sorts of other ways of playing with them.  On Sunday they lined them up along the path to the front door and weaved in and out of them.  They also used them to make designs and patterns in the garden.  Anyway I haven't taught them the game I played yet - perhaps I lived a more violent childhood? But who know's - if I come to church with sores around my knuckles you know what I have been doing!

Sermon for the 25th Sunday per annum

“The early bird catches the worm” - so says the English proverb. In the parable, the early workers had arrived at the marketplace early and had been hired for the day to earn the normal wage for a labourer: one denarius. As they worked in the vineyard so more workers arrived throughout the day as the owner went searching for more – presumably because it was harvest time and there was only limited time to bring it in. At the end of the day the first workers were paid what was agreed. But the early bird workers were grumpy and they complained. Shouldn't they have gotten more than those who had arrived at the eleventh hour? The parable of the workers in the vineyard offends our sense of fairness.

“It is not fair” is the oft repeated phrase of most children, and parents understandably find it infuriating at times. My stock reply now is “Life is not fair – get used to it.”

Sometimes my reaction might be wrong – I am just being grumpy. However, I think we need to be very careful when we feel something is unfair. We can all too easily jump to conclusions – to think it is an offence against justice. We need to take a moment to reflect and examine our true intentions; we might realise that what has been offended is not justice but something in us – like the first workers in the vineyard, selfish motives can loom large. “Fairness” can hide self-centredness.

The Holy Father welcomed a new British Ambassador to the Vatican, and took the opportunity to speak out about the danger of relativism in our society. The Pope echoed what he had said in his speech in Parliament during his visit to this country last year. Relativism does not tend to lead to freedom, justice and compassion, but rather tends to lead to frustration, despair, selfishness and disregard for the life and liberty of others. Frustration because people are not getting what they want ; despair because they are not achieving their goals ; selfishness because their perspective is centred on themselves ; and disregard for others which flows from selfishness. The Holy Father rightly identifies the malady of our Western society, and challenges the post-modern embrace of relativism.

For the relativist everything is based on one's own perspective. It purports to lead to respect, but in fact leads to self-centredness.

As believers in God, who is both good and just, indeed is the source of justice and goodness, and so we believe that the perspective we need in order to know whether something is right or wrong, is the divine perspective rather than dwelling on our subjective feelings. Yes God can speak the truth in our hearts but that does not mean our feelings mirror God's thoughts. The prophecy of Isaiah we heard today makes that very clear:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. Is 55

So if our thoughts are indeed not God's thoughts how are we to decide if something is right or wrong? The answer is that God has revealed Himself to us, supremely through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit who leads the Church into all truth. So we receive guidance about what is right or wrong (ie morals) from God through the revelation of the divine truth in Jesus Christ, through the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

This we know is what we are taught by the church, but over and over again we are tempted to think differently. The world we live in, the contemporaries we interact with, the society we live in – thinks very differently. The divine perspective is rejected or abandoned.

The very opposite was true for St Paul who said in today's epistle, “For to me to live is Christ.” Let us just think about that for a moment. For St Paul, instead of his perspective being wrapped up in himself, it was entirely centred on Christ. He was not conformed to the world, but God's Word had renewed and transformed His mind.

The very great danger with relativism is not only the immoral life of selfishness, frustration and disregard for others, but the idolatry that results from it. For in the place of God we elevate ourselves. We worship not God but our own selfish desires and personal feelings.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard is not just warning us to avoid becoming self-centred, but it is warning us about shipwrecking our salvation. The image of the vineyard at harvest time might well also remind us about our own day of reckoning. And like the first workers in today's parable who grumble over their employer's generosity, so we can lose our perspective if we think we have done anything to earn the Father's gift of salvation. None of us have earned salvation, or can earn salvation. Salvation is a gift – all we can do is so dispose ourselves to receive it – to worship God who alone can give us salvation, and seek to remove anything that gets in the way between ourselves and God.

If we truly understand that deep in our hearts, then instead of grumbling about others who receive the generous mercy of God, we instead should rejoice in wonder and marvel with the Angels, that God has shown His mercy like He has upon us unworthy servants. Amen.

 

The Solemnity of Our Lady of Walsingham  24th September 

Sung Mass at 11am
Holy Angels, Chelston


Followed by drinks

Statue of Our Lady of Walsingham

Feast of The Triumph of the Cross at St Austell

It was a great pleasure to celebrate mass for the St Austell Ordinariate Group last night.  Here is the sermon:

Moses fashioned a bronze serpent which he put on a standard, and if anyone was bitten by a serpent, he looked at the bronze serpent and lived. Num 21

God raised Him high and gave Him the name which is above all names. Phil 2

… the Son of Man must be lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness... Jn 3

In our lessons this evening, there is a lot of coming down and going up – how does that have any bearing on our celebration of the Triumph of the Holy Cross?

During the Exodus, as the divine appointed leader of the Israelites, Moses bore the brunt of all their complaints against God. Whenever I read the Exodus story I always feel sorry for Moses. He didn't ask to lead the people into the desert, He was just obedient to God. Yet it seems he has to hear all their complaining.

Moses isn't the only leader to experience this. It is probably a universal experience of leaders, that the people they lead complain from time to time.

This time it was because they were bored with their food. All they were getting was this boring bread from heaven; every day! They are so busy about complaining, it seems, that they do not notice the serpents.

Not only is this part of the account of the Exodus, but it is a lesson for us all. The story of the Exodus is full of lessons in this way. I suspect we all complain from time to time. I suspect we all feel bored from time to time. And in the church, like the Israelites, we forget the wonder and the gift of our deliverance from slavery. And those of us who have made an Exodus from the Church of England into full communion with the See of Peter, the Catholic Church, I expect we all have been tempted to complain along the lines of the Israelites. Why did we leave our lovely, comfortable churches, where we could do our own thing, when we liked? Now we have to worship in unfamiliar places and we have to do as we are told! As we are tempted with those sorts of thoughts, we need to remember that the serpents are close to our heels – or should we say the serpent!

The people of Israel have fallen into sin, and need to be lifted up and healed. And we do too. We fall into sin, and we need lifting up. Moses made a bronze serpent, put it on a pole as the Lord commanded, and when they looked on it they were healed of the serpent's venom. We too need to be healed of the venom of our fall, by facing it with faith in God. We cannot be healed without facing up to our sin and naming it as such before God.

And this movement of falling and being lifted up for our healing, is the movement of the biggest story of all – the story of the human race. In the origins of the human race we fell from grace and innocence. And we all inherit from our ancestors this propensity towards sin, which means death. And we need lifting up from this original sin and all our sins. And the story of our salvation, is another movement of descending and ascending, as St Paul puts so beautifully in his Philippian hymn. God descends and becomes Man, that we might ascend from our fallen state, and enjoy everlasting life in bliss.

That sounds good until we realise the price of the descending. For the healing to happen Christ must enter obediently into the heart of our problem. The only perfect, good man must submit Himself to become the victim of injustice, hatred, untruth, disobedience and evil – the whole gamut of our fallen nature – that He might enter even into death itself. By facing death in obedience, in truth, in righteousness, in total goodness and in perfect love, He is able to conquer death; to conquer evil; to conquer our falleness; to conquer sin. And so we rejoice this day in the Triumph of the Cross of our Saviour Jesus Christ. We glory in His victory, yes bought at such an awful price, yet a wondrous and glorious and entirely complete triumph over sin, death and evil. Our Enemy is defeated and we rejoice! Amen. Alleluia!

IH 14^th September 2011 St Austell, St Augustine

Learning the chant

This is the music chant for the Sanctus we shall be using tomorrow.  If you wish to hear it sung then there is a very helpful website where you can scroll down and choose the part of the mass you want to hear sung.  Very helpful if, like me, you can't sight read, and you need someone to help you along for a while.

http://www.npm.org/Chants/order.html

If you scroll down and click the black triangle next to the one you want to hear, you'll hear a cantor and/or choir sing it very simply for you.  Look for this:

So you can practice in the privacy of your own home before airing your voice in church.
May St Cecelia pray for us.

Lecture on Blessed John Henry Newman

The Plymouth Circle of the Catenians (a Catholic society) has invited members of the Ordinariate to a lecture at Plymouth Cathedral on Thursday 29th September at  7.30pm. It is entitled:

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and the Second Vatican Council

The lecturer is Fr Ian Ker, a priest in Oxford and in the Theology Faculty of Oxford University.  He is a renowned scholar of Newman.

It is a very great shame that the Ordinariate Clergy all have to be in London that day meeting Cardinal Levada but that is the way it is.  However it would be wonderful if lay members of the Ordinariate gave it their support. The Lecture will be for 40 mins followed by questions. There will be a retiring collection to defray costs.

23rd Sunday of the Year

Yesterday's Plainsong workshop
Members of the Buckfast Ordinariate Group were invited along to the plainsong workshop yesterday. It had been arranged principally for the voluntary choir, so it was a privilege to have been invited along to it. Perhaps it was unfortunate that three out of the four members of the ordinariate who turned up were perhaps the least musically gifted. However the day was a mixture of teaching and explanation together with much singing. It was incredible how infectious the singing in this ancient tradition became and how quickly we picked up the different notation. At one point the three of us were horrified when it became clear that we should have to sing a phrase of marian hymn (in latin) after teaching it to ourselves using only the notation! The Lord is merciful because our phrase was perhaps the easiest and one of the brethren of the community joined us and very gently built up our confidence. And we did it! It was an enjoyable day, and even provided an opportunity to educate members of the choir about the ordinariate. Thank you to the choir and the Abbey's director of music, Michael Vian Clark.

Sermon
Fr Colin was principal celebrant and preacher today. In his homily he reminded us that although we have a tendency to regard sin as a private matter, in fact sin was very much a matter for the whole community. Like an infectious illness can spread around families and communities if left untreated, so sin can cause similar effects. He reminded us very helpfully of how in the confiteor we confess sin in the mass not just to God but also to our brothers and sisters. Our thoughts were also drawn to the Lord's prayer when after asking for forgiveness we add the clause "as we forgive those who trespass against us".  In sacramental confession the priest is there also symbolising that sin is a matter for the community, as well as a matter for God.
  As I listened I recognised my own tendency to privatise my sin as if I could thereby deal with it better by hiding it.  The trouble is that we can all too easily think we can hide it away for ever.  However it is indeed a disease and unless we have it treated it will not just have negative effects on ourselves, but also those around us. How we should treasure the gift of the confessional in our churches to visibly remind us that we cannot hide away our sins and we do need to sort them out.

The Holy Father also drew on this theme in his address at the Sunday Angelus today:


 

New Translation of the Mass
Today we used the new English translation of the mass. At the moment we are not singing any setting of the mass and are gradually going to introduce the new simple chant of the mass. With the helpful cards we were able to make all the responses correctly.  It will take time for these to become our own.  For those of us who are familiar with the Anglican Book of Common Prayer or the English Missal, it was very tempting for us to respond "And with thy spirit" instead of "And with your spirit". I think the most difficult part was the gloria that we "clunked" through, but it didn't flow. However this early days and when begin singing it I am sure it will flow.. I received no adverse comments from the group or any of the visitors.

"Get Clean" Video

This video is called “Get clean,” it's the winning video from a contest held by different Catholic dioceses in New York. The contest asked for 1 minute videos to encourage youth to accept the sacrament of confession. The filmmakers were awarded a prize of $25,000.