September 2013 Letter from the Provost

On the morning of 26th September 1863 Fr Wilfrid Faber lay dying in Oratory House. Fr John Bowden prayed with him during the last hour of his life, and recorded what he saw: “Just after seven a sudden change came over the Father; his head turned a little to the right, his breathing seemed to stop; a few spasmodic gasps followed, and his spirit passed away. In those last moments his eyes opened, clear, bright, intelligent as ever, in spite of the look of agony on his face, but opened to the sight of nothing earthly, with a touching expression, half of sweetness, and half of surprise.”

Tributes flowed. In the words of Mgr Manning, future Archbishop of Westminster: “He was a great priest; he was the means of bringing multitudes into the one Fold, and he died as a priest should die, amid the prayers and tears of his flock … a great servant of God has been taken from us.”

A certain amount of cold tripe has been deposited on the memory of Fr Faber in more recent decades, by authors who have managed to misread the complexities of a nature that was impulsive and playful but also profoundly serious and generous. For anyone who is familiar with the life and achievements of the ‘real Faber’, however, and especially for those of us whose lives are warmed by a daily sense of his benign fatherly presence, it is impossible to imagine that he might not by now be rejoicing in the eternal vision of the Blessed Trinity in Heaven. 

He is not, however, a canonized saint. We shall therefore celebrate a Requiem for his soul, as was done on the 100th anniversary of his death in 1963. This will take place at 8am on 26th September. If, after a century and a half, Fr Faber no longer needs the graces that will flow from Calvary in St Wilfrid’s chapel that morning, then we can be sure that they will be distributed to a soul that does.

Later on the same day we shall celebrate a Mass of thanksgiving for our beloved founder’s life, and for all of the blessings that God has worked and continues to work through him. This will be a solemn votive Mass of the Most Holy Trinity, and will take place at 6.30pm. The special preacher will be Fr Anthony Symondson S.J., distinguished architectural historian and a long-standing friend of the Oratory fathers.

And so Fr Faber’s death will be marked by prayers for his soul and thanksgiving for an extraordinary life that made such a priceless contribution to the spiritual landscape of this country and far beyond. But the question remains: what else can we do at the Oratory to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of our founding father?

The Oratory itself is a monument to Fr Faber. He did not see the current church which was built twenty years after his death, but virtually every sanctuary lamp and candle pricket is imbued with the Romanitas of which he was probably the greatest champion that this realm has ever known. Every time we restore or embellish a chapel we honour the memory of the pioneer who managed to establish an outpost of Counter-Reformation Rome in Victorian South Kensington. The care and devotion that still go into celebrating liturgical functions, and the crowds that flock to Mass and Benediction, ensure that the Oratory is saved from becoming another museum in a street of museums.

For a clue as to how we can most fittingly mark this anniversary, however, we should look back to the day of Fr Faber’s funeral. Among all the memorials – literary and architectural – that have been crafted to honour the memory of Father Faber’s life and work, surely the most precious and telling tribute of all remains the great number of the poor Catholics who converged on the church from all over London on 30th September, 1863, many of whom could not enter the building because it was so full.

The original ‘brief’ given to the Birmingham and London Oratories, issued by Bl. Pope Pius IX, had been to evangelise primarily the “educated classes” of their respective cities. The establishment of the Oratory near the Strand, however, coincided with a vast influx of destitute Irish seeking refuge from the potato famine, which meant that the London Oratorians immediately found themselves immersed in corporal works of mercy among the capital’s most disadvantaged inhabitants. 

Last Good Shepherd Sunday Pope Francis preached that a good priest is one who takes on the smell of his sheep. Father Faber took on their fleas. The church and house in King William Street became infested with insects that teemed over cassocks, beds and altar linens. The itching was so unbearable that Fr Faber could not sleep, but he mustered enough energy to start the ‘Company of St Patrick’, which enlisted laity to visit the slums and to assist the Fathers in ministering to the spiritual, physical and social needs of Catholics who were found there.

With the move to Brompton, it might be imagined that Fr Faber was finally free to devote himself, undistracted by vermin, to the care of his “poor Belgravians”. But the poor followed him. An account of 1858 describes them making pilgrimages across London to be elevated and transported by the “sweet strains of heavenly music” and “all that is grand and solemn and sublime in the ceremonies” here at the Oratory. The Oratory Fathers opened ‘ragged schools’, and the work in the slums continued. They realised that what is now called ‘social outreach’ was not just an unavoidable adjunct but an essential ingredient to their apostolate as sons of St Philip Neri.

Perhaps the most appropriate tribute the London Oratory can pay to Fr Faber’s memory, then, will be for us to re-examine what we do for the needy in this city. What we do actually provide is largely untrumpeted. The Oratory has a committed St Vincent de Paul Society, which assists at some of the capital’s soup kitchens, as well as visiting the housebound and bringing immobile parishioners to Mass. Every day, significant numbers of the homeless arrive at the door to receive sandwiches produced in the kitchen of Oratory House. And a high percentage of the Fathers’ ‘on duty’ hours in the parlours is spent talking to Fr Faber’s dispossessed and destitute.

There is, however, much more that could be done. Listening to parishioners it becomes clear that there are untapped resources in our congregation – rich seams of skill and expertise, and a very serious desire to honour Christ in the poor and needy. Recently we have been in consultation with the Archdiocese of Westminster, and with local churches and charities, to find out what sort of contributions we can make that will be most beneficial to the needs of the time and the place in which God is asking us to build His Kingdom. We are currently producing a questionnaire to ascertain the numbers and profiles of parishioners who would like to participate. Watch this space, and pray that God will guide us to seek His Glory in all things.

Meanwhile, please join us at the Mass of thanksgiving on 26th September.

August 2013 Letter from the Provost

Last month the Holy Father blessed a new statue in the Vatican Gardens. It is a figure of St Michael the Archangel doing battle with the devil. His Holiness used this ceremony as an opportunity to entrust the Vatican City State and all of its inhabitants and employees to the Holy Archangel’s protection. “St Michael defends the people of God from his enemies,” explained the Pope, “above all from the enemy par excellence, the devil”. The Holy Father added: “In consecrating Vatican City State to St Michael the Archangel, I ask him to defend us from the evil one and banish him.”

We know from Genesis that when man first sinned it was in response to a temptation from the serpent. This gave Satan an entrée into human society, and if we look at the world today we see that this ancient enemy of God and man is all too active. Since his election our new Pope has reminded us on numerous occasions of the reality and the malice of the devil, and of the evil one’s activity in the world and within the Church.

For the last two millennia Catholics have taken strength and encouragement from Our Lord’s promise: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The spiritual forces of darkness – Satan and his fallen angels – are evidently no match for the Holy Ghost and the Holy Angels.

To be in a state of unrelenting conflict with the powers of evil is normal for the Church. Our Lord warns us that this will be so. Soon after His Crucifixion the Synagogue and then the Roman Empire unleashed their full fury on the early Christian community. More recently the French Revolution wrought desecration on cathedrals and churches, and torture and death on thousands of Catholic religious, clergy and laity. The last century brought persecution under totalitarian socialism in its Nationalist and Communist forms.

A glance around the world today reveals that martyrdom is by no means a thing of the past. Christians are currently being slain on a weekly if not daily basis in the Middle East and parts of Africa. They are murdered for their faith. Worshippers in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria and elsewhere risk being blown up by bombs parked outside their churches when they go to Mass on Sundays. The secular media seems reluctant to report this, but charities such as Aid to the Church in Need do their best to monitor this deplorable situation, and news of the atrocities is at least receiving some coverage in Christian news services.

It would be over-egging the pudding to talk at this stage about full-scale persecution in our supposedly freedom-loving western world. Discrimination, however, is a growing reality for Christians everywhere. Catholic employers in America have been preparing to face the consequences of having to break the law when they refuse to implement their government’s healthcare program, which insists on the provision of cover for contraception and abortion. A few years ago Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago – a mild-mannered prelate who is not given to histrionics – said the following: “I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Recently in France innocent men, women and children were bashed up by the police for joining millions of demonstrators who gathered on the streets in support of the traditional view of marriage and the family. Hundreds were arrested just for wearing T-shirts depicting the outline of a man and a woman with two children. Meanwhile, Jean-Michel Colo, the mayor of a town in the Pyrenees, was told that he faced the prospect of five years in jail and a £65,000 fine for refusing to officiate at a so-called marriage between two men. M. Colo said that he would go to the gallows rather compromise his conscience on the issue.

As the pressure increases we can thank God for that promise of Our Lord that “the gates of Hell will never prevail against His Church.” However desperate things have been in the past, and however much hardship there will be in the future, we have His promise that the Church will survive, that the Faith will be taught, and that the Sacraments will be dispensed – at least somewhere on this planet – until His return in Glory at the end of time.

Very often, however, this promise of Our Lord is misunderstood. Many people interpret the statement that “the gates of hell will not prevail” incorrectly. They take it to mean that the forces of evil will not triumph over the Church. And while that is certainly one of the implications of Our Lord’s words, it is not what He actually says. His promise is that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. There is an important difference here.

In the days of siege warfare, the gates were the most vulnerable point of a city under attack. Breach the gates, and you could take the citadel inside the walls. So rather than telling us that His Church must always be on the defensive, Our Lord is actually instructing us that His Church should actually be on the offensive, storming the gates of hell and taking the forces of evil by siege. A valid rendering of His words in English would be: “the gates of hell will not hold out against [the Church]”.

The Church’s mission is not to huddle together dodging whatever arrows and bombs that are thrown and waiting for Our Lord to come and rescue us. The Church’s mission is to evangelise the world and to Christianise the culture in which we live by preaching the Gospel in season and out of season. Our mission as baptised Christians is to brave the arrows and missiles as we build the Kingdom of Heaven in that part of creation that has been entrusted to our care and influence.

If we lose sight of this pro-active mission of the Church, the consequences can only be regrettable. When those of us who are responsible for teaching the Faith forget that we are supposed to be members of the Church Militant, then the Church as an institution becomes inward-looking and self-serving. Batten down the hatches against the storm that rages outside, and the atmosphere inside eventually becomes fetid and unwholesome. The result can only be that zeal is suffocated and scandals proliferate. 

Our Lord established His Church as an hierarchical society, with Peter at the head of the Apostles. As a global institution the Church requires canon lawyers, diplomats and curial officials to serve Her mission of rescuing souls from damnation and saving them for eternal life. However, when bureaucracy, management and diplomacy become ends in themselves and the mission to evangelise is sidelined, then something rotten sets in. And as Pope Benedict XVI once warned us: “The greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the Church.” The most appalling harm that has been inflicted on the Church within our lifetime has not been the result of terrorist bombs and communist jails. It has been the devastating assault on the Church’s credibility from the internal abuse of trust and authority by clerics who have evidently lacked all sense of the sacred, and who seem to have had so little faith in God’s promises that they have even lost the fear of divine punishment for their crimes.

During his consecration of the Vatican and all who sail in her to the patronage of St Michael, the Pope prayed that the Holy Archangel would intercede for Vatican officials to make them strong “in the good fight of faith.” In words which some respected commentators immediately linked to rumours of a forthcoming ‘reform of the Vatican’, the Pope also prayed that, through St Michael’s intercession, those within the Vatican would be made “victorious over the temptations of power, riches and sensuality.”

These days, when the reform of any human institution is the subject of conversation, we expect to hear words like ‘restructuring’ and ‘rationalisation’. The Holy Father’s actions and words in relation to the Vatican so far point to a much profounder and more effective sort of reform – the reform that can only come from interior conversion.

When Our Lord tells us that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church, He is assuring us that we need not be timid in our practice of the Faith. We are called to be bold in our proclamation of the Gospel, and courageous in its defence, so that we take the gates of hell by storm. If the Church in our age is to fulfil Her divine commission, then the spirit of the ‘Church Bureaucratic’ and the ‘Church Diplomatic’ has to be jettisoned. Our identity as the ‘Church Militant’, before which the gates of hell tremble and disintegrate, must be rediscovered.

It should come as no surprise when the devil concentrates his efforts within the Church. Of course he does. His aim, after all, is to deprive us of the life of grace and the Beatific Vision which he himself threw away forever in that disastrous act of rebellion against his Creator. If only he can keep us away from the source of everlasting life which flows from the Cross in the Sacraments and which gives nutrition in the pure milk of Catholic doctrine, then he will have achieved his purpose in our lives. And so it is only to be expected that he focuses a good deal of his destructive energies on seminaries, the priesthood, the Vatican, etc. If the faith, the integrity, and the courage of the clergy are weakened by relativism and worldliness, then the leadership of the Church Militant becomes ineffective and the gates of hell remain secure.

No amount of tampering or tinkering or ‘restructuring’ of the institution will ever defeat the devil. The weapons that he fears are prayer, piety, faithfulness and holiness. And this is where we all have a role to play in union with our Pope and our bishops in that perennially –needed reform of the Church which is based on conversion and personal sanctification. As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we each have a contribution to make. If you and I are healthy cells in that Body, if we are full of Faith and Hope and Charity, then the whole organism benefits. Through our prayers, our humility, our purity and our acts of heroic charity, we shall participate in a genuine renewal in the Church’s life, the fruits of which will include conversions and good vocations.

In the Church Militant there are no civilians, and no-one is useless. The toothless old widow who offers up the aches and pains of rheumatism makes an invaluable contribution to the war effort. Each and every Hail Mary of her Rosary is a spiritual cruise missile that sends the demons scrambling for cover.

Difficult times might be on the way. We can be bold, however, in the knowledge that if we have recourse to his protection, Holy Michael the Archangel will defend us in the day of battle.

July 2013 Letter from the Provost

On 22nd July the Church celebrates the feast day of St Mary Magdalene. From the Gospels we know that this highly-honoured woman was among those who accompanied Our Lord and ministered to Him, that she had been exorcised of seven demons, was present at His Crucifixion and burial, and that she was the first recorded witness of the Resurrection. From at least the fifth century until the early twentieth century, Western Catholic tradition considered Mary Magdalene to be the same person as Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus), and the “woman who was a sinner” who so upset a Pharisee by entering his house to pour ointment and tears on Our Lord’s feet, as recorded in the Gospel of St Luke, chapter seven. Modern sophisticates pooh-pooh this threefold identification, but the author of the Provost’s letter is a simple convert who learnt what he knows from the Penny Catechism and is happy to bow before the ancient and almost unanimous tradition of the Latin Church.

Assuming that the Provost and Pope St Gregory the Great are not mistaken, it would seem that there were at least two separate occasions on which Mary Magdalene anointed Our Lord’s feet. The first is that mentioned above in St Luke’s Gospel, when Our Lord is dining in the house of a Pharisee named Simon. We read that “a woman of the city who was a sinner” appears at the table with an alabaster flask of ointment and proceeds to wash His feet with her tears, her hair and the contents of the flask.

It transpires from the way this account develops that there are two ways of looking at Mary Magdalene. The first is the way of the Pharisee. Simon heartily disapproves of this woman’s presence in his house. How brazen of her to appear so shamelessly in such elevated company. His opinion of his guest of honour is set firmly in the negative when Our Lord allows this outcast to come into such close contact with Him. Simon is a classic puritan. He is concerned with the woman’s reputation. His vision is fixated on sin and corruption.

Our Lord shows us the other way of looking at Mary Magdalene. He is not really interested in her sins at all. His gaze sears through whatever corruption might be there. His vision is fixed on the magnificent image of God that He recognises in her soul. He sees her capacity to love and to flourish; and because she is willing to open her heart to receive His forgiveness, Divine Grace floods into her being and elevates her to a life of communion with the Blessed Trinity. Liberated from the shackles of her sins, she will become one of the greatest saints and contemplatives that human civilisation has ever known. Such is the love of God for those who are moved to embrace it – healing, restorative and creative.

Puritanism exists in every generation. We can detect its influence whenever we hear someone say: “Confession is too easy. How can anyone expect their sins to be forgiven by a priest in a few minutes?” The answer to this is that such instantaneous restoration to friendship with God is actually something that occurs on a regular and frequent basis within the walls of the Oratory church. Whole lifetimes of sin are forgiven in the time it takes to pronounce the words “I absolve you …”.

We are all created in the image of God. But in all of us that magnificent image is liable to become obscured by sin and selfishness. Sin is like grime on the surface of a looking glass that prevents the image of God from reflecting in our lives with the brilliance and the beauty it is intended to. The gaze of Our Lord, however, remains fixed on this divine image. Like Mary Magdalene, all we have to do is open our hearts to receive His forgiveness. Allow it to happen and, with divine grace and our co-operation, that image will be burnished into a perfect and glorious likeness to God. He has given us the Sacrament of Penance to make this easier for us, and Holy Communion to bring the process to perfection.

The first recorded occasion of Mary Magdalene’s appearance with ointment happens around one year into Our Lord’s public ministry. The second comes two years later, just six days before the Passover that will mark the beginning of His Passion. Our Lord is dining in Bethany with Martha and Lazarus, who has recently been raised from the dead. This time we are told more precisely that the ointment is a pound of pure nard worth a small fortune. Again Mary wipes His feet with her hair, and with the ointment which fills the whole house with fragrance.

Once again Mary’s behaviour attracts disapproval. This time it is Judas Iscariot who complains: “Why is this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” Just in case we are naive enough to think Judas really gives a fig about the poor, St John informs us that Judas had sticky fingers and would have been planning to pocket the proceeds for himself. Our Lord tells Judas to hold his tongue and to let Mary keep the nard for the day of his burial.

Recently the Oratory Fathers were taken to task at the end of a Sunday High Mass. An elegant woman marched towards the Provost through the lingering fog of incense and demanded to know what we Oratorians thought we were playing at. The causes of consternation included expensive-looking flower arrangements at the Lady Altar, vestments and golden vessels that had been spotted in the Sanctuary. Surely these extravagances were from funds that should have been given to the poor?

It was explained that the flowers were leftovers from a wedding the day before and that the silver gilt chalice and ciborium had almost certainly been picked up for a song in the 1850s when ecclesiastical Swabian rococo was not much in vogue. The vestments are thread-bear from a century and a half of use and, while still charming for their faded beauty, are too far-gone to fetch good money at auction. The dialogue ended in a slightly more serene atmosphere than it had begun and the articulate woman drove away placated in a gleaming new car which Google searches revealed to have cost £90,000.

Yes, we do make an effort to give the best we can to God. This is because we are grateful that He has given so much for us. Above all, we are grateful that Our Lord gave His Precious Blood on the Cross for our salvation. It is in the spirit of St Mary Magdalene that we lavish the most precious materials we can acquire around the Altar of Sacrifice on which Our Lord makes Himself present at Mass. At the London Oratory we are blessed to have some of the most accomplished musicians and singers in Christendom enriching the liturgical worship in which our hearts are transported regularly towards the heights of Mount Zion. All of this is only made possible by the sacrifices of those who maintain this high quality of worship by means of donations.

Of course, this experience of coming to Mass is supposed to change us. Our Lord transforms bread and wine into His Body and Blood so that we might ourselves be transformed and, in turn, go out to transform the society in which we live and work. We are supposed to leave the precincts of the church with a renewed sensitivity that motivates us to search for and recognise that image of God that is in our neighbour. We should go out from Mass aiming to serve God more faithfully by ministering to Him in the disadvantaged. Worshipping God at the Altar and honouring His image in our neighbour are complementary. 

If we are genuinely transformed by the embrace of God’s love that we encounter when receiving Holy Communion, then perhaps, like Mary Magdalene, we shall be inspired to give something that really costs. Someone might even decide to sell her new Porsche at a loss and donate the proceeds to the Catholic Children’s Society. No one here is suggesting that there is a moral obligation to do such a thing. It is a matter for the individual conscience. But such a generous offering would certainly go to an excellent cause.

In St Mary Magdalene, we see how gratitude begets generosity. Together, gratitude and generosity crush the puritan spirit that gives religion a bad name. Sin is the greatest possible evil. But to have repented of our sins and tasted the forgiveness that was won on the Cross gives us an experience of divine love that has the power to transform us into something truly beautiful. Repentance and confession also require in us a humility that is very precious to God. This humility is an essential foundation for the great blessings He wishes to build in our lives.

May the intercession of St Mary Magdalene save us from the puritan spirit. May it increase within us the gratitude and the generosity of soul that are the fruit of knowing that were are sinners who have been granted forgiveness.

June 2013 Letter from the Provost

When God intervenes to give someone a new name, we can be sure that we are witnessing something momentous. Abram’s elevation to Abraham signified that he was to be the father of a multitude, someone through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Jacob’s new name Israel meant ‘power with God’.

So when Our Lord tells the fisherman Simon that he is to be called ‘Peter’, this must mark a significant event in the history of salvation. By divine election Simon is to be Cephas, the ‘rock’ on which Our Lord will build His Church. To Peter will be granted the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, with the power to bind and loose, and the gates of hell will never prevail against this Church.

People often ask what is the main difference between Catholics and other Christians. Is it our devotion to the Blessed Virgin and to the saints? Or perhaps it is the Church’s teaching on Our Lord’s real bodily presence in the Blessed Sacrament and Her doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass?

The most precise answer is simpler than any of these. The main difference between Catholics and other Christians can actually be summed up in one word, and that word is a name: ‘Peter’.

What makes a Catholic is not just his devotion to the Blessed Virgin and his belief in Transubstantiation, essential though these are.  There are in fact plenty of Anglican parishes where the Blessed Virgin is honoured with the title ‘Our Lady’ and the saints are venerated in processions and litanies. The eastern Orthodox denominations share our belief in Our Lord’s Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Their bishops and priests are ordained in the same line of Apostolic Succession as ours, and they administer the same seven Sacraments.

What makes someone a Catholic is essentially communion, through Baptism, with the Pope. A practising Catholic believes that Our Lord appointed St Peter to be the Prince of the Apostles, and that St Peter’s successor is alive and reigning today in the person of His Holiness Pope Francis. A practising Catholic is one who submits himself in obedience to the authority of the Pope of the day in those areas and circumstances which fall under the Pope’s divinely ordained remit.

The Papacy is the visible guarantee of unity in our Church and of the constancy of the Church’s unchangeable doctrine. If we could climb into a time machine and return to the world in ten thousand or a million years’ time, what should we find? There is one thing of which we Catholics can be quite sure: if the world is still here, then we shall find exactly the same Catholic Church, essentially unchanged – the same structure of pope, bishops, priests and deacons; the same seven Sacraments; the same doctrine on Heaven and hell; the same command to keep the Lord’s Day holy; the same teaching on contraception and on the meaning and nature of marriage.

We know all of this with certainty because of Our Lord’s promise that the gates of hell will never prevail against His Church. We know it with certainty because our Faith is built not on clouds or pious ideas, but on an indestructible rock. If the Church had ever managed to get it wrong on any of these issues then it would mean that She had been binding the consciences of the Faithful to assent to something false. The gates of hell would have prevailed. Our Lord’s promise would be proven to be false, and one shudders even to make such a suggestion. He is Truth Itself.

As Catholics in the twenty-first century we can be grateful that we have this divinely guaranteed assistance to steer us through the minefields of moral dilemma with which modern life confronts us. Breakthroughs in science, medicine and technology are a testimony to the wonderful gift of reason with which God has endowed human nature. But such advances also mean that today’s world challenges us with increasingly complicated choices. The divine assurance that has been granted to St Peter and to his successors means that there is an unquenchable light to guide us through this valley of shadows.

The supernatural prerogative of infallibility that Our Lord invested in St Peter and successive bishops of Rome is really a negative, preventative, guarantee. It safeguards the Pope from falling into positive error when he teaches on faith and morals ex cathedra [i.e. in his official capacity as Successor of St Peter]. The Church has never claimed that popes are necessarily blessed with any charism of divine inspiration. They do not need to be. Everything to be known for the purpose of salvation is already contained in the Deposit of Faith that was sealed with the death of the last Apostle in around 100 A.D. With the completion of that Deposit the role of popes and bishops henceforth would be to unpack and teach that unchanging Truth, and to guard it against any dilution or novelty.

Looking at history, it becomes clear that some popes have done a better job at succeeding St Peter than others. Some have been brilliant teachers, others not. Some popes have been capable administrators, while the pontificates of others have been characterized by corruption and neglect. Even those few whose names are bywords for depravity, however, have never managed to teach heresy ex cathedra.

When a pope does a good job of succeeding St Peter it is only to be expected that he will attract flak. The Prince of the Apostles was put to death for preaching the Gospel, after all, and a number of his successors suffered the same fate. When you hear the names of Linus, Cletus and Clement in the Canon of the Mass, remember that these were popes who mingled their own blood with the Precious Blood of Our Lord in martyrdom. The shepherds appointed by Our Lord to feed His sheep are not here to appease the mob or to grovel to the press. They are here to teach the Faith in season and out, and when push comes to shove to give their lives in the service of the Gospel.

Appearing on the balcony of St Peter’s after his election, our new Pope seems immediately to have won a place in the hearts of all men of good will, both inside and outside the Church. We should give thanks for this blessing and pray that God will use Pope Francis’s disarming frankness and winning modesty to gather in rich harvests of conversions and vocations. It would be painful to see anyone of such evident goodness and integrity subjected to abuse from the rude and scoffing multitude. But it shouldn’t surprise us if and when this happens, and it certainly should not discourage us. Such a volte face is probably inevitable once the media wakes up to the fact that in addition to possessing an infectious joie de vivre and a passionate concern for the disadvantaged the Pope is also a Catholic.

We should pray for Pope Francis every day. May God bless him with a long and successful reign. May the patronage of Our Lady of Fatima protect His Holiness from all harm. And may the intercession of St Peter always gain for him the zeal and courage of those popes who, in the footsteps of the fisherman, have given their lives for our holy Catholic Faith.

May 2013 Letter from the Provost

On Pentecost Sunday the Church celebrates a birthday. She is not celebrating the birthday of the Holy Ghost. That would be heretical. As the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost is co-eternal and co-equal with God the Father and God the Son. There never was a time when He did not exist. Admittedly the Jews never identified Him as a separate Person. With the benefit of the Divine Revelation that finds its completion in the Christian Gospel, however, we can find plenty of traces of the Holy Ghost’s presence throughout the Old Testament. Scratch the surface of Genesis and there He is already in the third verse of the very first chapter, hovering over the primordial darkness at the beginning of Creation. It is His voice that speaks through the prophets and, indeed, inspires every word of the Old Testament.

The birthday that the Church celebrates on Pentecost Sunday is in fact Her own birthday. Pentecost really marks the nativity of the Catholic Church. 

Like an embryo growing in a mother’s womb, the development of the Church was a gradual process. Our Lord laid Her foundations with His public ministry. He established Her hierarchical structure when He appointed the Twelve Apostles, with Peter in charge, and commissioned them and their successors – the bishops and the Pope – to be the teachers, governors and sanctifiers in His Kingdom on earth. He made Christian Baptism the means of incorporation into His Mystical Body. In the Upper Room, where so many of the milestone scenes in the drama of our salvation took place, He instituted the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of the Eucharist, along with the priesthood of the New Covenant, so that Calvary might be perpetuated in an unbloody manner in all subsequent ages, so that He might abide with us and feed us with His own living Body, and so that sins might be forgiven in Confession.

It was on the Cross that Our Lord purchased the Church for Himself, winning for Her members the grace of Redemption. In the water and blood flowing from His wounded side, we are reminded of Eve being formed from the rib of Adam. And so the Church glories in Her beautiful title ‘Bride of Christ’.

It was at Pentecost, however, that the Church was really launched as a universal concern that would extend across continents and centuries. In was in that same Upper Room in which Our Lord had already instituted the Mass, the priesthood and the sacrament of Penance, that the Holy Ghost descended on Our Lady and the Apostles, and the Church ceased to be the concern of a local body of disciples and became forever truly international, truly Catholic.

While the Church is two thousand years old, She remains eternally young. It is the Holy Ghost who is responsible for this perennial youth. Biologists tell us that the cells of the human body are constantly dying and being replaced. And yet a human being retains a continuity of memory and identity throughout his life. Similarly in the Church: as Her members are born, baptised, anointed and buried, it is the Holy Ghost Who gives to the Church Her own continuity of memory and identity as generations come and go. In the words of Pope Leo XIII: “If Christ is the Head of the Church, the Holy Ghost is Her Soul.” He is the Divine Spirit Who ensures that She remains ever faithful to the same Truth, without caving in to the spirit of the age.

All of this has to do with what might be called the ‘public’ role of the Holy Ghost in the Church’s life. What about His action in our lives as individual members of the Church? Read the Acts of the Apostles and you will see that Pentecost tells us that as Christians we are all called to be ‘charismatics’.

This might sound alarming to most sane Englishmen. In this part of the world people have a healthy suspicion of forms of worship that involve breathlessness and perspiration. Being genuinely charismatic, however, does not necessarily mean praying the Our Father with arms outstretched like a Spitfire or a Messerschmitt. Being charismatic really means being full of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Above all, it means brimming over with divine love.

The word charism means gift. And it is important to discern whether perceived charisms are in fact gifts of the Holy Ghost, rather than manifestations of eccentricity or even the influence of some malign spirit.  Here we always have to remember that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of unity and of truth. And so if our gifts contribute to the unity and the building up of the Church, and if they are characterised by docility and faithfulness to the Church’s teaching authority, then we can probably be confident that they are genuine gifts of the Spirit.

The Oratory was founded by one of the greatest charismatic saints in the Church’s history, St Philip Neri. Later this month we shall celebrate his feast day. Before he was a priest, the young Philip Neri was praying in the Roman catacombs one night, for the gifts of the Holy Ghost. It was probably on the vigil of the feast of Pentecost in 1544. Suddenly the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a ball of fire that descended into his heart with such force that he was thrown to the ground. That mysterious Presence never left him. The fire of the Spirit burned in his breast for the rest of his long life. It expanded his heart, forcing a rupture in his ribcage, and it seemed henceforth to be the source of a physical warmth and an outpouring of love that brought many souls to conversion. It made him joyful, wise and patient. It did not make him precious and esoteric but open and attractive.

Being the greatest of gentlemen, God never forces His gifts upon us. His desire is for us to receive them with open hearts. We should pray in this month of Pentecost, and in this month of the great charismatic St Philip, that the same spirit of love and zeal that enflamed St Philip’s hearts will burn in our own, so that through our generosity and our witness, many souls will be brought into the divine unity of the Catholic Church.

In occasions of necessity, the Church encourages the faithful to pray novenas, or nine day prayers of petition. The origin of this is the nine days of prayer made by the disciples in the Upper Room after the Ascension. Our Lord commanded them to remain together in Jerusalem in preparation for the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost (Acts 1, 4). To assist us in our vocation of building God’s Kingdom on earth, we might make a novena asking for the Gifts of the Holy Ghost. These gifts are wisdom, understanding, fear of the Lord (awe and wonder), counsel, knowledge, fortitude and piety. We can begin this novena on Friday 10th May, concluding on Saturday 18th May, the Vigil of Pentecost. A suggested prayer is the Veni SancteSpiritus:

Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.

V. Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created

R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray.

O God Who by the light of the Holy Ghost didst instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the gift of the same Spirit we may be always truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation. 

Through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.

April 2013 Letter from the Provost

Shortly before his abdication, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI delivered an address to the clergy of the diocese of Rome. He reflected on his experiences as an expert at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and on that Council’s effects on the life of the Church. He spoke mysteriously of a contrast between the Council of the Fathers, meaning the proceedings that actually took place around the Pope in the Vatican, and what he called, a ‘virtual Council’, or a ‘Council of the media’. According to Pope Benedict, the real Council was firmly rooted in Catholic doctrine and aimed at renewing the Faith, while the ‘virtual Council’ as presented to the world through the media had a completely different, political, objective. Pope Benedict explained: “this Council [the ‘virtual’ one] created many calamities, so many problems, so much misery, in reality. Seminaries closed, convents closed, the liturgy was trivialised.” Pope Benedict even lamented that this ‘virtual Council’ was stronger than the official Council itself.

Whether or not we agree with this interpretation of the hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council, we must acknowledge that the media in the world today exerts a formidable power over the information that ultimately determines how we think and live. During the last month we have lived through a ‘Conclave of the media’, in which millions of words were written and spoken in speculation about what sort of man was needed as pope, and who was likely to be elected. In the event, ninety nine and a half per cent of the prophesying turned out to be wrong. Now there is the danger of a ‘virtual Papacy’, in which every utterance and gesture of a new pope is analysed and evaluated, and all sorts of weird and wonderful predictions are made about what this new pontificate will mean.

Would it be going too far to talk about a dictatorship of the media? It sometimes seems that the media insists on setting the agenda for almost every aspect of human life. It creates new messiahs and it judges who are the monsters in our society, depending on how many boxes the chosen public figures tick on the agenda that happens to be current for the moment. Those granted messiah status totter on a wobbly pedestal because nothing sells papers or pushes up ratings better than yesterday’s messiah being exposed as a mere mortal with human failings.

Soon after the election of Pope Francis, the Oratory telephone exchange was crackling with calls from the press. All of the journalists who telephoned seemed to ask the same question: “How will the new pope compare with the old one?” How could one possibly answer? To say it was refreshing to have a pope from the new world and to suggest that we could surely expect a different style of pontificate might look, in print, like a vulgar criticism of Pope Benedict, whose deep humility, selflessness and penetrating insight will be esteemed by all decent men and women for centuries to come. Most of us probably hope that a new pontificate will be marked by continuity with Pope Benedict’s project to re-establish a sense of Catholic identity among the faithful and to restore the mystery that makes us active participants at the most profound level in the Church’s liturgy. To say so much to the press, however, would sound presumptuous, as if we were telling the new Supreme Pontiff how to do his job.

In a sense, comparing popes with their immediate predecessors is fishing for red herrings. Each Pope should be seen primarily as a successor of St Peter rather than as a replacement of any previous tenant of the papal digs in the Vatican. The fact that our new pope even declined to take the name of any preceding Supreme Pontiff helps to emphasise this. A ‘Celestine VI’ or a ‘Julius IV’ would have stimulated a frenzy of fascinating interpretation. The beautiful choice of ‘Francis’, however, is a name that carries no historical baggage as far as the Petrine office is concerned. It is taken from a saint who is loved, if often misunderstood, even beyond the bounds of Christendom. If there are any clues to how the current pontificate might proceed then perhaps they should be sought in a life of the Poverello from Umbria. An excellent one is Francis of Assisi, A New Biography. Written by the Dominican scholar Augustine Thompson, it was read recently from the pulpit in the Oratory refectory during supper. It presents an altogether more robust and complex figure than the fey folk-singing Francis concocted in the psychedelic imagination of the late 1960s.

Another question the journalists have been asking is: “Father, what do you think about the election of this particular archbishop from Argentina to the papacy?” Apart from admitting that it is a novel experience (by no means a disagreeable one) for an Oratorian to find that his immediate religious superior is a Jesuit, the Provost was at a loss for words, not having heard much about Cardinal Bergoglio before his appearance on the balcony. For want of a more original response he was grateful to have at hand a phrase from the Swiss entertainer Hans Küng, who when asked earlier in the day for his view on the election result had said: “It was a very happy surprise. I’m extremely delighted.” 

Reading the newspapers since the election of our new Pope, pious Catholics will find material that fills them with hope and joy and speculations that might give anyone sane a stroke if they happened to be true. We should not allow what we see in the press or on the Internet to disturb our serenity and distract us from prayer. That would be playing into the hands of the devil, who dreads and despises the prayers of the faithful (any timidity one might have about mentioning the devil in these modern times, by the way, has been dissolved by the fact that Pope Francis mentioned that enemy of God and man at least twice, in startlingly direct terms, in sermons on the first days after the election). 

So please, do not let your attitude to the Pope be determined by the media. In this age of lightning-speed communication rumours and blatant fabrications on the Internet regularly turn up as ‘information’ in mainstream news sources. And besides, the categories used by secular journalists to judge achievement and failure in the Church are bound to be very different from the spiritual and supernatural considerations that matter to a believer. St Peter, St Paul and St Francis would all be considered blundering gaffe-merchants by the standards of what is deemed politically correct today.

Whatever personal feelings – euphoric, neutral or negative – an individual might experience towards the person of any particular pope are neither here nor there as far as being a good Catholic is concerned. There is, however, a very definite and proper Catholic response to the election of a new Pope. We receive the Successor of St Peter into our hearts with love, and we support him with our loyalty and with our prayers. Charity, or love, here does not mean a fickle sentiment that waxes and wanes depending on whether we are delighted with a pope’s thundering denunciation of gambling one day and then up-in-arms about his reluctance to be carried on the sedia gestatoria the next. Love in this context is something far more constant and practical. It means praying for the Pope every day, so that God’s grace works through his gifts and his limitations for the building up of the Church. It also means that, if ever we speak of the Supreme Pontiff, it is always with the respect that is due to the awe-inspiring dignity of his office.

As Christians, of course, we owe charity to all our fellow men in virtue of the image of God that is intrinsic to every human soul. We also owe a special charity to the Pope. He is the visible head on earth of the Mystical Body of which we are members. He bears an unimaginably heavy burden. Our sacrifices, our almsgiving and our growth in Divine Charity contribute to the strength and health of the whole Church. They help the Pope in his mission of building the Kingdom of God on earth, as well as securing better-appointed accommodation for ourselves in Heaven.

Let us pray for our Holy Father Pope Francis. May Our Blessed Lady, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Philip Neri, and all holy Popes and Martyrs intercede for His Holiness. May his pontificate become a beautiful season of expansion for the One True Catholic and Apostolic Faith in the world. May it be a season of conversion and sanctification in my life and in yours.

Finally, a word of advice from a former journalist: don’t believe too much of what you read in the press.

March 2013 Letter from the Provost

Many of us are still feeling shell-shocked from the extraordinary news of the Holy Father’s abdication. On Thursday 28th February, from 8pm Roman time (7pm here), we shall have entered that disconcerting period when the Holy See of Rome is sede vacante, or deprived of an incumbent. Without the customary lying-in-state and the funeral rites for a deceased pontiff to provide any distraction, a great section of the media will then be working itself into an unprecedented frenzy of speculation regarding the likely identity of the next Pope and the ‘qualities’ he will need to satisfy its insatiable appetite for secularism and for the dissolution of Christian civilization.

Reactions amongst decent people to the news of the Holy Father’s decision to renounce the Papacy have ranged from trust and understanding to sadness and dismay. At the Oratory, however, there is one sentiment that seems to be universal among the faithful who worship with us: a very deep love and affection for the person of Pope Benedict XVI. 

One Oratory parishioner, Anna Arco, made the following observation in the Catholic Herald:

He was a brave strong man who faced horrible attacks and media storms. He didn’t grovel like most politicians, but would wait to speak, and usually say something different – something worth listening to that would diffuse the situation. He was not a slick media operator or a cold manager or icy prince of the Church, but a genuine priest, a great theologian, a pastor who loved his flock. Everything he said or did comes out of an understanding of reality and human frailty, but with a belief also in the framework of the religion, and is coloured by love. 

Meanwhile Thomas Pascoe wrote in the Daily Telegraph:

When a great man departs from public life, we are all diminished. The Church has lost a brave, wise and good leader, and the faithful have lost an able shepherd. Under Pope Benedict XVI, the Church stood firm as a rock while battered more fiercely than at any time in its history by the swirling seas of secular fashion and its bilious hatred for a hard truth. Atheists will focus on Benedict’s employment of double effect when it came to condoms for sex workers or to his intransigence on traditional mores. They miss the point. Benedict’s contribution to intellectual life was to point out that secular liberal life owes its most precious dogmas of individual value to its heritage in Christian theology. It owes its nastiness (just look at Twitter today) to the absence of Christian love. This is a desperately sad day.

Between them these two statements must contain some of the truest and most poignant words written about a Pontiff who will be greatly missed by those of us who have rejoiced with him during the triumphs of his reign, and also suffered with him when he was under siege.

At the beginning of Lent we were all encouraged to ‘give something up’, as well as praying and giving alms. If we have not yet done so, then we could all profit from giving up reading the endless commentaries by the self-appointed pundits who will have made themselves ‘experts’ on the proceedings of the coming Conclave. We should also avoid making experts of ourselves. It is enough that the next successor of St Peter should be Catholic, holy, wise and strong. We should put all of our energies into praying for a candidate who has been endowed with these qualities and leave the rest to God.

Only slightly less annoying than the predictable speculation on ‘Vatican power struggles’ are the pious platitudes that tend to emerge around the time of a Conclave: “Oh Father, we can relax. It’s the Holy Spirit who will choose the new Pope.” No. It is actually the cardinals who will elect the Pope, and the College of Cardinals is a fallible group of fallible men.

Our Holy Father St Philip Neri lived through fifteen papacies, and the incumbents of the See of Peter during this period made up a mixed bag, to put it politely. While one of them was a canonised saint and some were great reformers, others have provided historians with a less edifying material for their narrative. It is hard to imagine that the Holy Ghost can have had much positive input into the election of Pope Julius III, for example. 

So no, ‘relaxing’ in the sense of indifferent passivity is not really a sensible option in the current circumstances. Instead we should, in the words of St Paul, “Pray without ceasing.” During this season of Lent, we have the opportunity to fortify our intercessions with fasting and almsgiving. Conversion of heart, penance and, above all good works, will infuse our prayers with the sweet incense of charity that makes them acceptable and even invincible at the Throne of Grace. In this way, we all have a role of active participation to play in the Conclave. We can assume that God would love to bless His Church with another holy Pope; but He desires for us to co-operate with His design by praying and offering our own sacrifices with that intention.

The morning after the news of the Pope’s abdication, the newspapers carried unsettling pictures of lightning tearing through the sky and hitting the cross and the orb above the dome of St Peter’s Basilica.  The two lightning strikes occurred just a few hours after the Pope’s announcement, and this is apparently an event so rare that no photographs of it happening previously seem to exist in the public domain. What can it possibly have meant?

The Provost of this Oratory has not been invested with extraordinary prophetic powers, and his knowledge of geophysics is slight; so anything that he might have to say on the subject of thunderbolts might safely be taken with a scruple-spoonful of blessed and exorcised salt. But please allow him to offer a thought: another occasion on which thunder and lightning hammered and crashed around St Peter’s Basilica, to the extent that some of those inside feared for their safety, was 18th July 1870. 

The storm on that occasion seems to have signified something very positive, as it occurred during that tumultuous session of the First Vatican Council when the fathers finally voted in favour of the solemn definition of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility. This beautiful Article of the Faith has shed its illumination like a blazing light in the firmament of Catholic doctrine ever since. At the same time, however, we should perhaps note that its proclamation was a major contributory factor in provoking Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, in which many of Germany’s Catholics had to endure an ugly period of government-sponsored persecution.

One interpretation that can safely be put on this month’s lightning strike is that it is a reminder, in a world that is always looking for signs, of God’s Presence and of His power in the world and especially in His Church. During his beautiful sermon at the Mass of his Installation on 24th April 2005, our gentle Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI touched all of our hearts when he asked us: “Please pray for me that I shall not flee for fear of the wolves.” If there are any of those wolves still lurking in the shadows, then perhaps they should take that lightning as a warning to clear off. And if that lightning raises our attention away from the newspapers and towards Heaven – if it encourages us to lift our hearts and minds to God, and to offer Rosaries, litanies and novenas for the election of a new Pope during the coming days – then it will have served a good purpose.

May God bless His Holiness, our beloved Pope Benedict XVI. May God save and protect His Holy Church.

February 2013 Letter from the Provos

And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But thou, when thou fastest anoint thy head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not to men to fast, but to thy Father who is in secret. (Mtt 6:16-18)

Every Ash Wednesday this instruction of Our Lord is read from the Gospel of St Matthew. At the same Mass the whole congregation kneels at the altar rail to receive the ashen crosses on the forehead that will show to the world outside that the Church’s season of fasting and penance has begun in earnest.

This is the sort of apparent contradiction that can cause a fundamentalist Protestant to choke on his muesli with indignation. Even Catholics sometimes ask whether it would not be more in keeping with evangelical stricture to wipe the ashes away from their brows before going out from the church.

So why does the Church impose this striking external sign of penance, in spite of what might seem to be Our Lord’s admonition to the contrary?

If we look at the Old Testament, we see that exterior signs of penitence can in fact be beneficial and pleasing to God. In the Book of Jonas, God has passed a sentence of destruction on Nineveh in retribution for the sins of its inhabitants. In response to Jonas’ hellfire preaching, a severe fast is proclaimed. Every man and beast in the realm is clothed in sackcloth, including the King who sits on a pile of ashes. The result: “God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not.” On this occasion, sackcloth and ashes seem to have done the trick.

The problem with the hypocrites whom Our Lord upbraids is that their extravagant religiosity is just an act. They wear miserable dirty faces as a badge of moral superiority, while behind the façade their souls are blackened with jealousy and pride. What counts with God is a humble and contrite heart. He sees that the repentance of the Ninevites is genuine. They are sorry for their sins and want to do better. The sackcloth and ashes correspond to an interior disposition. 

“Remember man that thou are dust and unto dust thou shalt return”. These are the words that traditionally accompany the liturgical imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. They signify that Lent is a period of mortification or putting to death.

In Baptism we were united to the death of Our Lord on the Cross. No sooner had we descended with Him into the grave, however, than we emerged from the waters of regeneration overflowing with the Life of His Resurrection. In a sense the baptismal font is a tomb in which we are buried with Christ. But it is also the womb in which we are reborn into the life of grace.

For the Baptised Christian, our earthly existence becomes a constant process of dying so that we may enjoy our new life in Christ in its fullness. We must keep dying to sin and self-centredness, so that the supernatural Risen Life might take greater possession of our hearts and souls. In the Sacrifice of the Mass we unite ourselves with Our Lord’s Passion and Death, and then we receive His Risen Living Body in Holy Communion.

The ashes that we receive on our foreheads are a sign that we intend to die to ourselves with greater intensity in Lent. Whatever penances we impose on ourselves must be a symbol of our intention to put to death all pride, jealousy and greed. This is so that the life of grace, which manifests itself in charity, humility and purity may flourish. Without charity, our acts of penance are grotesque. In Lent, therefore, the Church enjoins us not only to fasting, but also to almsgiving and/or good works, as well as to prayer.

As a sacramental, the ashes on our foreheads also confer grace when received with devotion. We should pray that through them we will be given the supernatural assistance we all need to keep Lent well, dying to ourselves each day so that when Easter comes we are well-prepared to share joy of the Resurrection.

Fasting and penance have an essential part to play in our sanctification. When Easter arrives, however, it is unlikely that we shall have gained many spiritual brownie points for inches shed around the waist. What will really matter is that we are more loving, more generous of soul, more detached from the vanities of this world.

Saint Philip Neri, the Father of the Oratory and the Apostle of Joy, led a life of marked personal austerity. He slept very little, and his preferred diet consisted of a few olives and bits of bread. Amongst the saint’s effects kept in his rooms at the Chiesa Nuova are a spiked metal vest and severe-looking discipline for mortifying the flesh in accordance with the ascetic customs of his time.

In St Philip’s mind, however, mortification of the intellect was far more effective than any physical penances. Holding his hand to his forehead, he would say “sanctity lies within the space of three fingers.” This counsellor of popes, who could hold his own with the humanist philosophers of the day, was never happier than we he was taken for a simpleton. If his own penitents asked his permission to wear a hair shirt, he was likely to tell them to wear it on the outside of their clothes, so that they too might be taken for fools.

Last year the Bishops of England and Wales restored the time-honoured precept of abstinence from meat on Fridays. For most of us, foregoing meat for a day is probably not much of a sacrifice in the physical sense. It can however mortify our vanity when it causes us embarrassment on social occasions. Uniting as Catholics in a visible token of penance in obedience to the successors of the Apostles also has real value as a witness to the Faith in our secularist society.

If, on Ash Wednesday, we find ourselves wondering whether to keep the ashen crosses on our heads or to wipe them off, we can apply a simple rule. If we are eccentric enough to imagine that a dirty smudge on the forehead gives us an air of spiritual excellence, perhaps we should remove it. If this sign of Our Lord’s Passion and Death makes us feel awkward, then we should leave the ashes in place for all to see, and be glad to be taken for simpletons for the love of God.

January 2013 Letter from the Provost

On the Feast of the Epiphany the scene at the Crib is completed. The shepherds have already been there since Christmas Eve. The fact that they were privileged to be the first to worship the Christ Child is surely a sign of God’s special love for the poor and weather-beaten. Now they are joined at the manger by the kings of the Orient who kneel down to present their precious gifts to the King of Kings.

Epiphany means manifestation or showing forth. This Epiphany marks the manifestation of the Word Made Flesh to the gentiles. The unique role of the Chosen People in salvation history has now reached its fulfilment. No longer will Divine Revelation be the preserve of a particular race. The Christ Child is the Universal Saviour for the whole of mankind. From now on we are all called to belong to God’s “elect”.

In the treasury of Catholic devotions, the Crib is surely one of the most loved. It was created by one of the Church’s best-loved saints, St Francis of Assisi. It was he who set up the first Crib in the hill town of Greccio in 1223. This original Praesepio was a living crib, with a real ox and an ass lent by a farmer.

The first Crib provided an alternative to the popular pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Travelling in the Holy Land during this period had become perilous for Christians, who were likely to be enslaved or murdered.

St Francis gained papal approval for his Crib and the devotion quickly spread across Italy and beyond. It also served an invaluable theological function. We think of the age of St Francis as the “Age of Faith”; but it was also a period when the poison of heresy threatened to pollute the pure milk of Catholic doctrine.

In the modern age there has been a tendency to play down Christ’s divinity. Some Christians who were youthful in the 1960s still seem to think of Our Lord in terms of a super-human social activist – a happy-clappy Che Guevara, brandishing a tambourine rather than a semi-automatic rifle. During the Middle Ages the Church had to fight against the opposite heresy. In their emphasis on Our Lord’s godly nature, there were those who went so far as to deny the reality of His humanity. These dualists were reluctant to accept that God could allow Himself to be “contaminated” by union with human flesh.

This was a serious error. We are able to be saved because Christ unites our human nature with the Divine Nature within His own person. In the words of St Gregory Nazianzus: “What has not been assumed has not been healed; it is what is united to his divinity that is saved.” Unless Our Lord’s human nature is real, then we are still in our sins.

It was to counter the dualist heresy of the Cathars that St Dominic promoted the Rosary in France. St Francis’s Crib had a similar value in Italy. These two great devotions are complimentary. Both are designed to draw us into a more profound meditation on the reality of the Incarnation.

In the Crib, we see how our Lord’s flesh is tender and vulnerable. The rough sides of the manger look as if they might graze those soft little hands – the same hands that will one day be nailed to the rough wooden arms of the Cross. Reflecting on the Resurrection and the Ascension in the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, we remind ourselves how that flesh was raised and taken up into Heaven to be glorified forever.

Once we do begin to appreciate the implications of the Incarnation, then our relationship with the world around us must be deeply affected. The Christ Child comes not only to redeem our souls but also our bodies. His Incarnation, moreover, makes possible the sanctification of the material universe. Oil, water, bread and wine are all able to become instruments of sacramental grace. Dates, places and objects become sacred through contact with the Word Made Flesh. The Holy Land is truly holy because it contains the stones that were trodden on by His feet.

We also need to sanctify our imaginations. We live in a world that bombards us with images. Many of these images are degrading and destructive. Engage with them and they will drag us into an abyss of selfishness and sin. The devil knows that once he has control of our imaginations then it is easy for him to reach down and take possession of our hearts. So we should make every effort to fill our imagination with pure and holy images that elevate our minds by meditating on that wondrous scene of love and worship at the Crib so that it fills our hearts.

Christmas begins on the eve of 24th December, and it continues all the way to the Epiphany. It is a season in which the eyes of all children should sparkle with wonder. Whatever age we are, we should all come to the Crib like little children, with open hearts.

Bethlehem means House of Bread. The manger is a feeding trough. The Holy Child came in His Flesh so that He could feed us with His Flesh. An ideal time to visit the Crib is at the end of Mass, after receiving Holy Communion. Kneel down with Our Lady and St Joseph, the shepherds and the Magi, the ox and the ass. Give thanks, and pray that God will make 2013 a year of blessings for us all.

December 2012 Letter from the Provost

A royal birth is traditionally the occasion for celebration. When the civilized world was ruled by kings and disputed succession might mean civil war and the threat of foreign invasion then the hopes of an entire nation would be invested in a new-born child, especially if he happened to be a first-born son.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a royal Son who carries within Himself the fulfilment of all our deepest human aspirations. The Nativity is a royal birth with a difference. There are no palace walls or gates, and no guards, to protect this royal Child; and although a convoy of V.I.P.s will eventually make its way to Bethlehem from the East, the first subjects to pay homage to this Child will be some shepherds summoned from the surrounding hills by an angel.

Popular tradition relates that Our Lord was born into the cold and the dark of a winter’s night. As they knelt to adore the Child in a manger, however, those shepherds must have realized that they would never have to fear the dark again. With the new Faith infused into their souls on that first Christmas Eve, their hearts were warmed by the rays of divine light that streamed out of the manger and into the world around them.

 Looking into the face of anew-born child can be an unsettling experience. The clarity in the eyes and the purity of expression are an indication of innocence of soul within. Catch a glimpse of our own reflection in those eyes and what we see looking back at us might not be so agreeable. No child was ever more perfectly pure than the Child Jesus. And yet He has not come to reproach us. Rather He comes into the world to restore to us a childlike innocence that has been lost.

His arrival in a stable rather than in a palace is no accident. His desire is that we should be moved to offer him a home within our hearts. An army would be completely useless in establishing the sort of reign that He intends. He has not come to govern by force of arms. Rather He has come to take possession of our hearts by invitation. He asks for entry, but we always remain free to lock Him out.

There is of course a catch. Around December, animal welfare societies have been known to put up posters declaring “A pet is not just for Christmas”. And the Christ-Child is certainly not just for Christmas. Once accepted, the divine gift of the new life that He offers us has to be fed and nurtured. We must become sensitive to what nourishes that life and we have to learn to avoid whatever is harmful to it. The life of grace has to be sustained by loving contact with its divine origin, through prayer and worship. It has to be expressed in good works.

In some churches it is apparently customary for preachers to berate those “Christmas Catholics” who turn up to sing the carols at Midnight Mass and are never seen again until a year later. Not at the Oratory. The Fathers of the London Oratory are famously liberal and soft-hearted, and have never been known to berate anyone- and certainly not during the season of good cheer.

The truth is that the Child Jesus invites everyone to the manger. At Christmas especially Love Incarnate extends His warmth and His friendship to everyone, the shepherd and the wise man, the virgin and the whore. No one is to be excluded from the celebration at the crib.

If you are wondering how to mark this Year of Faith, perhaps you should invite someone who has been away from the Church, or never really been to Church, to come with you at Christmas. If you happen to be in London, try to bring them to the beautiful Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve at the Oratory. It begins with Carols at 11.30pm. In the precious moments of silence that draw us into the heart of the Roman Liturgy, encourage them to listen in their own hearts for the voice of the Child Jesus. Pray that they will hear Him speaking from the manger, inviting them to come back to find Him in the Mass again and again.

After the carols have ended with Silent Night, Mass begins after a life-size plaster figure of the Christ Child is carried in procession and enthroned above the High Altar amid golden rays. This painted figure is a holy image, which is why we venerate it; but it is only a figure. Directly underneath it is the Sacred Reality that it represents. If only we had the faith of those shepherds in Bethlehem, then perhaps we should be able to see the rays of divine light escaping from behind the veil of the Tabernacle, and perhaps our hearts would glow in the warmth that they exude. Our Lord did not just come to us once, on a winter’s night, two thousand years ago in Palestine. He comes to us every day on the Altar. He comes to feed and to nourish us with His living Body and Blood. He remains on the Altar so that we might always find rest and strength in His Presence.

Perhaps we have set our hearts on some particular gift this Christmas. The best gift by far that we can ever receive is Our Lord in Holy Communion. That little white disc is infinitely more precious than the whole material universe in all its majesty. The Sacred Host is God Himself.

Why did the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who lives eternally in Heavenly bliss, take on our frail human flesh and come into this violent and unwelcoming world? The answer is to be found in the Sacrifice of the Mass. At the Offertory, the celebrant pours a small drop of water into the un-consecrated wine. That drop of water becomes one with the wine that will soon be transformed into the Precious Blood. And the priest prays that, by the mystery of the water mingling with the wine, we may come to share in His Divinity Who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.

And so the Holy Mass contains the answer to why that holy Child was born into this world in Bethlehem, He takes on our human nature in order to communicate to us His Divine Nature. In a phrase that was dear to St Athanasius and others of the Fathers of the Church: “He became man so that man might become God.” How blasphemous this would sound, had it not been revealed to us by God Himself. This transformation is effected in Baptism, when the very life and holiness of Christ is poured into our hearts in Sanctifying Grace. It is increased and perfected whenever we make a well-prepared Holy Communion.

Normally at Christmas there will be a good number of people present at Mass who are not in a position to receive Holy Communion on Christmas day itself. Perhaps it is a long time since you last had an opportunity to go to Confession, and you are in need of absolution. If this is the case, then all is not lost. Christmas only actually begins on Christmas Eve, and it lasts a whole twelve days. Come and find a priest during one of the quieter days that follow, and explain to him that you wish to prepare a place for the Child Jesus in your heart by making a good Confession. Having received sacramental absolution, you can then look forward to the lowly stable of your heart being transformed into the palace of a King when you receive Holy Communion.

Fr Julian Large

November 2012 Letter from the Provost

If you come into the Oratory Church on 1st November, you will find the Altar of St Philip Neri and the High Altar decked with reliquaries. These are the trophies of Christian victory. They contain the bones of saints whose souls now behold the Beatific Vision in Heaven. These mortal remains point us to the day when bodies and souls will be reunited to participate in heavenly glory together after the end of time. The liturgical colours of the Mass on this feast of All Saints are white and gold. White signifies the Resurrection, and the gold reminds us of the crown of eternal life that awaits everyone who dies in a state of grace.

On the following day the atmosphere is very different. Come into the church on 2ndNovember, and you will find it shrouded in black and violet. The candles on the altars are unbleached. This sobriety of All Souls’ Day sets the tone for the rest of the month as we launch into a whole series of Requiem Masses for deceased parishioners, Fathers and Brothers of the Oratory.

There can be a temptation to send everyone straight to Heaven when they die. Funerals can sometimes seem more like canonization ceremonies for the deceased. This does a great disservice to the dead. Most of us, when we die, probably need to be prepared before we can enter the Presence of Almighty God. The light is too dazzling, the fire of Divine Love too intense, for us to be able to bear without some acclimatisation. We have to be purified of all remaining sin, and of the disfiguring effects of sin on the human soul. During life many of us construct layers of impenetrable defence to hide our vulnerability. This armour, and every other obstacle that obstructs the perfect communication of love, need to be peeled away.

The Church has always taught that the prayers of the living are of great assistance to the souls in Purgatory. Catholics have a very practical response to death. We do not waste time in wishful thinking, neither do we wallow in a shallow remembrance of the dead. We actually do something very positive them. We show our love by accompanying them on their progress towards Heaven with our sacrifices and prayers. 

One of the most difficult aspects of bereavement can be a sense of regret. Perhaps we feel that we could have done more to comfort a loved one, or possibly there are painful misunderstandings that remain unresolved. Thanks be to God we are able to express our affection beyond the grave, by praying for those whom we have lost, and especially by having Masses celebrated for them.

A Requiem Mass is a very practical response to death. In a memorial service the intention is really to distract the congregation from the troubling reality of mortality with anecdotes about the subject. At a Requiem Mass we actually confront death head on. At the Altar, the merits of Our Lord’s Passion and Death are applied to the soul of the deceased, washing his soul in an ocean of Divine Love.

It is only when the Church informs us that a soul is definitely in Heaven that we can confidently stop praying for the person concerned. When a new saint is canonized, we then ask him to pray for us. In this sense, the Church is a society of mutual assistance. We in the Church Militant on earth assist the souls of the Church Suffering in Purgatory. Meanwhile, the saints of the Church Triumphant in Heaven help us with their intercession before the Throne of Grace.

What an amazing scene awaits us if and when, by God’s grace, we arrive in Heaven. We shall see Our Lady robed in majesty as Queen. We shall immediately recognize St Joseph and the Apostles near the throne of God. Our fellow guests at the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb will include those legendary heroes of the Faith, Ss Philip Neri, Francis of Assisi and the Little Flower. Certainly there will be countless saints whom we never heard of, who lived and died in obscurity, but whose holiness now shines brighter than a million stars. We should also expect some surprises. Every saint so different from the next; but each one a glorious living icon of Almighty God.

Monsignor Ronald Knox once talked about the curtains of Heaven being transparent. He did not mean to suggest that we can see in. He meant to say that the saints are able to look out. They see us ploughing along through the muddy and rocky furrows of this earthly existence, feeling our way with difficulty and occasionally stumbling into a ditch. And they are able to help us, not only by the light of their example which makes it easier for us to see what we should do, but also with their prayers – prayers that are wise and strong, whereas ours tend to be so feeble and blind.

Saint Philip Neri used to say that in times of great need, we should make ourselves like beggars, and visit as many churches dedicated to the saints as possible, to ask for their assistance. This is much easier in Rome than it is in London. Visiting St Philip’s Altar on All Saints’ Day, however, we find it laden with the relics of many saints. We venerate the bodies in which these saints achieved holiness, bodies that once contained hearts that were overflowing with purity, meekness and divine charity. Following the advice of St Philip, we should approach these saints like poor mendicants with empty bowls. Ask the saints to fill them, gaining for us all the graces that will secure us a place with them in Heaven.

Fr Julian Large

October 2012 Letter from the Provost

We do not need religion to tell us that there is a God. The Church teaches that the existence of the Creator can be known with certainty through His works by the light of natural reason. Furthermore, our unaided human intellect can and should lead us to the knowledge of important truths about God’s nature and about our relationship with Him. We can know that God must be infinite, that He is perfect and that He knows His creation. Our very experience of being human should lead us to the conclusion that man is free and responsible for his actions, and that he has a soul which is spiritual and therefore potentially immortal.

Even if he possesses the brains and the time to arrive at such knowledge, however, the thinking man will then find himself troubled by questions that he cannot answer with any certainty. If God is perfect, how can there be such imperfection in the universe that He has created? What is the source of sickness, natural disasters and moral evil? If man is free and responsible for his actions, then where do we find justice in a world where the oppressed often die in wretchedness while their oppressors seem to escape scot-free? And if man’s soul is immortal, then where does it go when body and soul are separated at death?

The answers to such questions lie beyond the grasp of human reason. The likelihood is that, left to his own devices, man will formulate his own responses. Perhaps that which is evil in the universe is the creation of a lesser god, or ‘demiurge’? And when a man dies, why should his soul not take up residence in another body – perhaps in a fruit fly, if his conduct in his last body has left much to be desired? Thus we have the birth of man-made religions based on speculation and myth. 

Often these home-made religions will contain valid insights. With the hindsight of Calvary we might concede that the Aztecs were on to something with their cult of human sacrifice; but the torrents of blood from thousands of victims that flowed down the steps of the Mexican temples illustrate the grotesque fruits that come from a skewed appreciation of religious truth.

Having created man with the capacity to ask questions about his own origin and destiny and about the meaning of life, it surely makes sense for a good God to provide some answers, in order to save His creature from stumbling into the blindness of mythology and paganism. Throughout the Old Testament we see God gradually revealing these answers, and revealing Himself, to His Chosen People. After the Fall of Adam and Eve the human intellect becomes clouded, and so God reveals even truths that man could in theory know by the unaided light of natural reason. He constantly reminds His people that He is One, and He reveals the core of the ‘natural law’ in the Ten Commandments. He also reveals His name – “I Am Who Am” – which allows a glimpse into His Nature. Through His prophets He reveals the coming of a Messiah who will save His people.

It is with the arrival of this Messiah that Divine Revelation reaches its climax, when God comes to us as one of us in the Incarnation. The Incarnate Word founds His Church on St Peter and the Apostles, and gives to this Church the mission to transmit the Gospel to all nations and all generations henceforth. With the death of the last Apostle, the Deposit of Faith is sealed, meaning that there will never again be any public Revelation until Our Lord’s return in glory at the end of time. Henceforth, it is the task of the popes and bishops, as successors of Peter and the Apostles, to guard, unpack and teach in all its fullness this Deposit of Faith, which contains all we need to know and to do to be saved.

In Divine Revelation, then, God intervenes in history to answer those questions that rise up from the depths of the human soul. He tells us the purpose of life, He reveals the source of suffering and death, and He gives us the blueprint for and the means to achieve eternal salvation. He reveals that within the substance of His perfect oneness there are Three Divine Persons, whose life is characterised by an eternal outpouring of perfect knowledge and love; and He reveals to us the wonderful truth that we have each been created to participate in this Divine Life, through Baptism in this life and through the Beatific Vision in the life to come. He also reveals how, at the end of time, our bodies will be raised from the dust and reunited with our souls to participate in our eternal destiny.

Faith is our response to this marvellous gift of Revelation. And Faith itself is a gift. According to the old Penny Catechism, which contains some of the most eloquent and concise definitions ever crafted, “Faith is a supernatural gift of God which enables us to believe without doubting whatever God has revealed”.

The fact that Faith is a ‘supernatural gift’ means that we cannot manufacture it for ourselves. We cannot argue ourselves, or anyone else, into the Faith. We may prepare the ground by means of rational deliberation and prayer; but ultimately Faith must be freely offered by God, and freely received by us. When a small child is Baptised, his parents make that decision on his behalf, and the ‘theological virtue’ of Faith is planted in his heart like a tiny seed that needs to be nurtured and nourished as he grows up. Once he reaches the age of reason it is then up to him to decide what to do with that gift. It is in the nature of a gift that it must always be free, so the possibility of rejecting or losing the Faith always remains.

In some religious systems faith and reason are presented as unrelated and even incompatible. Faith without reason, however, gives us fundamentalism, and the Catholic Church does not ‘do’ fundamentalism. God is the author of all truth, whether we are talking about those truths which may be established by natural reason or the great Mysteries of the Faith that He reveals to us. The gift of Faith does not supersede our human reason or leave it behind. Rather, it elevates the faculty of reason to the level of supernatural truths, so that by God’s grace we can now apply our intellect to exploring the inexhaustible Mysteries of Divine Revelation that He has made accessible to us.

In the words of the Penny Catechism, Faith is a gift which enables us to believe “without doubting, whatever God has revealed.” This might strike a jarring note in modern ears that are used to hearing that doubting is a sign of maturity and humility, and is therefore virtuous. Today it has become fashionable to say that Faith is a personal encounter with Christ, rather than an assent to a list of ‘propositions’. The result of this is that the contents of Divine Revelation have taken on a secondary importance, and so there are now whole generations of otherwise well-educated Catholics who are surprisingly ignorant of Catholic doctrine.

For our Faith to be genuine it must include both the inter-personal aspect and our assent to the contents of the Faith. Yes, my act of Faith consists in a personal adhesion to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But it must also embrace everything that my Saviour teaches, as expressed in the doctrines of the Church which He endowed with His authority to teach all nations. If I knowingly deny a single doctrine that the Church proposes as de Fide, or binding on the faithful, then I am essentially saying that Our Lord’s promises to His Church – that the gates of hell will never prevail against Her, for example – are false. This is a breach of faith. I can now no longer be said to hold the Faith as a theological virtue (a supernaturally infused habit inhering in the soul). I am a heretic.

As Bl. John Henry Newman wrote in his Apologia pro vita sua, “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.” Newman’s lifelong quest for religious truth is perhaps one of the greatest examples of Faith seeking understanding that we have in the English-speaking world. Newman was forever searching and forever questioning. Once he had acknowledged that the Catholic Church was instituted by Christ for the salvation of all men, however, he never again expressed any doubt about Her divinely-invested authority to teach the Gospel. Having been received into the Catholic Church, never once did he utter a hint of doubt towards any one of the Articles of Faith that She proposes as de Fide.

Blessed John Henry Newman would be a good patron to guide us through the coming Year of Faith that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will inaugurate on the 11th of this month. Do you have any difficulties with certain aspects of Catholic teaching on faith and morals? Then please use this coming Year of Faith as an opportunity to address them. You are very welcome to come and talk about them with a priest. An important ‘charism’ of the Oratory is the availability of the Fathers for those who seek guidance in the Christian life. 

Perhaps there was a time when western society provided structures that supported the Faith, so that it was almost possible to take it for granted. In this post-Christian age those props no longer exist. The apostles of militant secularism look forward to a religion-free future in which society is organised on purely ‘rational’ principles. What we actually find, however, is that man’s irrepressible appetite for the transcendental increasingly finds expression in the weird and not-so-wonderful world of New Age superstition and other manifestations of neo-paganism. We should use this Year of Faith as an opportunity to refresh our knowledge of the contents of the Faith and to deepen our practice of the Faith. We should be willing to tell anyone who will listen that our Catholic Faith is the most enriching and the most beautiful thing in our lives. Modern society is actually thirsting for Divine Truth. We must be willing to share this extraordinary gift of our holy and life-saving Faith.

Fr Julian Large