January 2014 Letter from the Provost

As the Church’s liturgical calendar transports us through the Christmas season into Epiphany, we continue to meditate on the centrality in the Christian life of giving. Last month we gave thanks for the greatest gift ever – God’s gift of Himself, when the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took on our human flesh and was born into the world in Bethlehem so that He might eventually give Himself on the Cross for our salvation. This month, we celebrate the arrival of the Magi from the east, who bring their own precious gifts to the Christ Child. These gifts carried by kings from the east represent the oblation that we must all make of our hearts as we kneel in homage to the King of Kings.

At that first coming in Jerusalem, Our Lord and King was clothed in meekness. Born in a stable rather than a palace, His throne on this earth would be the Cross, and His crown a wreath of thorns. He seems to have chosen that His Kingship should be something we must be free to embrace or to reject. But He has promised that there will be a Second Coming, on which occasion there will be no mistaking His Kingship. Returning in glory amid angels and clouds, His presence on that day will fill the skies from east to west. And the judgement that the world receives on that day from the King who comes in power will depend on the reception that the world gave to the King who arrived for the first time in the frailty of an infant’s flesh.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, Our Lord gives us quite specific details of the criteria that will be applied to us as individuals on that Day of Judgment. To those gathered at His right hand He will say: “I was hungry, you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” And when they ask Him: “Lord, when did we do these things for Thee?” the King will answer: “As you did it to the least of one of my brethren, you did it to me.” The reward for those on His right hand: “Come, Oh blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

But to those on His left hand – those who neglected Our Lord in His sick and in His poor – He will say: “As you did not do it for the least of these, you did not do it for me. Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

These very startling words leave no room for doubt: giving of ourselves in ministering to the disadvantaged can never be seen a mere supplement to a life of piety and devotion. God Himself has told us that our salvation actually depends on it. So we each have to ask ourselves this question: what can I do to minister to Our Lord in His poor and destitute?

Last November, we launched an appeal to our parishioners and regular worshippers. It was not an appeal for financial assistance, but rather for ‘human resources’ to assist us in our mission to the needy whom God brings into our lives. I would like to use this Provost’s Letter to extend that appeal to all of our readers.

Speaking with those who frequent the Oratory, it is clear that there are resources of expertise and good will in our congregation that can be put to excellent use serving Christ in His poor, and also with the running of this busy parish. The question we are asking everyone to pose to himself or herself is this: “Is there more that I could be doing for the good of the Church, for the community and for my own spiritual growth?”

To enable us to expand and co-ordinate our apostolate more effectively, we have enclosed a copy of a questionnaire in all of the hard print copies of The Oratory Parish Magazine. 

The questionnaire gives you the opportunity to tell us ways in which you might be able to assist us in our service to the parish and in the wider community. Perhaps you can help us in a new project to assist in the rehabilitation of ex-offenders. Or you might be able to provide informal advice on debts or legal matters to someone who needs help. The list is long and varied. Other possibilities include organising a mothers’ prayer group, or hosting tea-parties for the elderly. There will also be resources of skill and expertise that can be of great assistance to us in the practical aspects of the running of the church and parish.

And we invite you to your express your own ideas of how the London Oratory fathers and faithful might collaborate together to give ever greater glory to God in our society.

At the London Oratory, we always aim to give to the King of Kings the worship that is His due with as much solemnity as we can muster. Beautiful worship is an important expression of our Faith in the God who comes to us on the Altar to feed us with His Body. But our Faith must also have practical expression, in our care for the needy and the sick. When the King of Kings returns in majesty to judge the world, the authenticity of the worship we have lavished on Him in the Oratory church will be gauged by the love and care we have extended to Him in the disadvantaged and the needy. Please respond generously to our appeal.

December 2013 Letter from the Provost

At this time of year the focus of our devotions turns ad orientem, that is to say eastwards, to the scene at the Manger in Bethlehem. Perhaps this provides a good opportunity to address a question sometimes posed by visitors to our church: Why, they ask, do the fathers of the London Oratory say Mass with ‘backs to the people’? The answer the Provost usually gives, at least on a good day, goes something like this: “The priest celebrates Mass in union with the congregation, all facing towards God.”

The truth, of course, is that the Holy Mass is always the same Sacrifice of Calvary whether celebrated over a wooden box in a communist prison or on a marble altar in a cathedral. The direction in which this Sacrifice is offered does not change that. In an age when unity amongst the Faithful is one of the most urgent needs of Christendom, fisticuffs over the direction in which different congregations celebrate Mass are best avoided. The purpose of this letter is not to graze anyone’s sensibilities, but rather to explain our practice at the Oratory.

A first look at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome might seem to favour Mass versus populum, or facing the people, as more ancient and liturgically correct. The Papal Altar at St Peter’s is situated over the tomb of the Apostle near the west end of the building, and so arranged for the celebrant to offer the Holy Sacrifice facing down the nave of the basilica towards the main doors. Closer examination of the situation in St Peter’s, however, actually lends support to the practice that is maintained to this day at the Oratory. If you are ever blessed with the chance of a pilgrimage to Rome, go to St Peter’s and see for yourself.

The most edifying time of day to visit the basilica is in the early morning, when most of its altars are occupied by priests celebrating Mass. Amongst them you will see weary-eyed curial functionaries on their way to work under the neon lights of Vatican offices, and fresh-faced pastors leading pilgrimages from parishes all over the world. As the hum of quiet prayer builds up and fills the basilica, St Peter’s takes on the atmosphere of a beehive of pious industry. If you exit the building via the main doors at the right time on a clear morning then you will be greeted by the sun rising over the Apennines directly ahead. This is because St Peter’s is almost perfectly ‘oriented’. Ever since the basilica was built by the Emperor Constantine in the first half of the 4th century, any pope celebrating Mass over the tomb of St Peter at the Papal Altar around dawn has faced the sun rising in the East.

Fr Louis Bouyer, respected scholar and priest of the French Oratory, suggested that the congregation in ancient times would not actually have faced the celebrant from the nave of the original Constantinian basilica. Instead, for the most solemn part of the Mass at least, the Faithful would have turned to face the same direction as the celebrant, i.e. eastwards. The rising sun seen through the open doors would have put celebrant and people in mind of the Resurrection of Our Lord in Jerusalem, and of His glorious return at the Second Coming. Fr Bouyer’s thesis has been challenged. An alternative theory is that the congregation would have faced the altar which was screened or veiled. Either way, opportunities for celebrant and people eyeballing each other would have been severely restricted.

If you wish to consult something more heavyweight on this subject than the Provost’s amateurish meander into liturgical history, by the way, then you should read The Reform of the Roman Liturgy by Monsignor Klaus Gamber, an important liturgical scholar greatly admired by Pope Benedict XVI. Another indispensible study is Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer, by the talented Franconian polymath Uwe Michael Lang with a preface by one J. Ratzinger. And there is, of course, Cardinal Ratzinger’s own work, The Spirit of the Liturgy.

Away from Rome, the custom developed of building churches with the sanctuary at the ‘east end’ of the building, so that the celebrant would lead the congregation up at the front rather than from behind. East was considered the ideal direction for all to face, at least from the western point of view, because it was in the Orient that Our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended into Heaven. It is also from the East that we expect His return in glory at the Second Coming: “For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man” (Mtt 24:27).

Such ‘orientation’ is by no means unique to Christian liturgical practice. Jewish synagogues have traditionally been built to facilitate worship towards the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. And if an itinerant priest journeying through Hyde Park were ever wondering in which direction to set up his travelling altar, he should not have to go too far before finding a devout Muslim with his body bowed eastwards in prayer.

On sites where an east-west configuration has not been possible to achieve physically (e.g. the London Oratory, which faces north), we Catholics are still able to celebrate Mass adorientem in a liturgical sense, by means of priest and people facing in the same direction towards what is known as ‘liturgical east’, i.e. towards the altar on which Our Lord comes to us at Mass.

At each and every Mass that is celebrated, those central mysteries of our Faith that occurred in the Holy Land are made present in a mystical way as the Sacrifice of Calvary is renewed. The Word made Flesh Who came into the world in Bethlehem and was crucified in Jerusalem returns to us on the altar, so that we may adore and receive His Risen and Living Body. And it is surely reasonable that when we say “Thy Kingdom come” in the Pater Noster we should all stand united, as the Bride of Christ awaits the arrival of the Groom Who will come in glory from the East.

Whichever way Mass is offered, it is important to understand the symbolism of celebration ad orientem and to know the reasons for it, if only for the light it casts on the deeper meaning and nature of the Mass itself. For this reason, those places that maintain this tradition offer a service to the whole Church by keeping ad orientem worship alive.

During the season of Christmas especially, try to remember as the celebrant reads the Canon of the Mass that we stand and kneel united facing the Holy Land, liturgically even if not physically. Please offer petitions for our beleaguered Christian brethren in the Middle East. The Christian presence in the ‘Cradle of Christianity’ is in danger of being squeezed out of existence. In this season of joy, we must not forget those for whom the Calvary of anxiety and fear is a daily reality even at Christmas. United ad orientem, let us pray for them, as we await His Return.

November 2013 Letter from the Provost

Grown-ups reading The Oratory Parish Magazine will remember the years of rationing that followed the Second World War, when every ounce of sugar, drop of petrol and sheet of paper was held to have value.

How distant that world seems today, when almost everything we buy comes swathed in layers of packaging that is torn off and immediately discarded. Supermarkets and fast food chains consign tons of unsold perishables to dustbins every night. Public buildings are heated to such blistering temperatures that it should not surprise us if hospitals become incubators for tropical diseases.

One of the best-known stories of wastefulness ever told is the parable of the Prodigal Son. Having turned his back on his family and squandered his patrimony on fast living, he finds himself in destitution. The foreign land in which he takes up residence is blighted by famine, so that he is reduced to coveting the husks that he is employed to feed to swine. In the Jewish context in which this story was told, we can assume that the boy’s proximity to pigs is a sign of moral degradation.

This parable might be read as an allegory for the society in which we live today. Pope Francis recently decried a “throw-away culture” which he says has “enslaved the hearts and minds of so many.”

Increasing wastefulness with material goods in recent decades has been accompanied by prodigality with the treasures of a spiritual patrimony. Many of our contemporaries have turned their backs on the Christian heritage on which our civilisation was constructed. As a result of this, many who on the material level have been blessed with an embarras de richesses now find themselves in a land that has been blighted by spiritual and moral famine. 

The parable of the Prodigal Son should give us hope. It is when he has hit rock bottom that the boy wakes up to the desperation of his predicament. In his hunger pangs his mind returns to the comforts and the security of his father’s house – so much so that he resolves to return home and to offer himself as a lowly servant in the household.

Is our society hurtling towards rock bottom? The context for the Holy Father’s reflections on wastefulness was an audience with gynaecologists in the Vatican. Amongst other casualties of the “throw-away culture”, His Holiness identified unborn children, and also the elderly who are sometimes cast aside as if they had passed a sell-by date. When human beings, each and every one created in God’s Image, are consigned to the scrap heap in their thousands every day, it is hard to imagine how much lower there is to descend.

There are indications of an increasing awareness of the desperation of this predicament. The vulgarity and aggression that are characteristic of so much contemporary culture seem to indicate a growing sense of dissatisfaction. At the same time there are so many signs of good faith and a sincere desire to ‘make the world a better place’. We must never forget the essential goodness of humanity which, while wounded by Original Sin, has been created by Almighty God for truth, love, and life eternal. Within every man and woman alive on this planet today there is a God-given capacity for expansion and holiness. Our vocation as Christians is to recognise this potential in our neighbour and to do what we can to make it flourish. We know in faith that ultimately the only solution to the world’s problems is to be found in a Person – Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

So the throw-away culture presents not only a challenge but also a great opportunity. Surely the circumstances are ideal for us to say: “Wake up! Return to your Father’s house. There is no need to live off these filthy husks that are only fit for pigs. A feast has been laid out for you at the marriage feast of the Lamb of God.”

The Prodigal Son, however, is blessed with one great advantage. The thought of his father’s house evokes nostalgia. It is a place that conjures up memories of security and love. Many of our contemporaries do not have any such nostalgia for the Church. Rather, the image that comes to their minds is of the abuses of authority and betrayals of trust that have soiled the garments of the Immaculate Bride of Christ in recent decades.

This means that we must be patient and understanding with those who, through no fault of their own, have gained a most negative view of the Church as an institution. To borrow the jargon of the spin-doctors, we have to ‘detoxify the brand’. It is down to us to make the Church that we love attractive by our holiness. We have to demonstrate by the peace that is in our hearts and by our generosity of spirit that the Church has something priceless to offer to the world today. And we have to bear witness to the Faith, Hope and Charity that are within us, so that those who are lost will come back to the House of our Father.

The Pope recently described the Church as a field hospital after a battle. When, in the Creed, we proclaim our belief in a ‘Holy’ Church, we mean this in much the same way that we might describe a hospital as ‘healthy’, at least when we are talking about the Church on earth. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and She has been endowed with everything necessary to make us holy, just as a hospital has the means to foster health. We do not come to Mass expecting to find a congregation full of perfect saints any more than we expect to find the incumbents of hospital beds in excellent health. But anyone coming into our church should find at least find humility, kindness, and healing.

At the Oratory we have many strangers coming to Mass. We need to ask ourselves what sort of reception they are likely to receive. Is the worship that we pay to Our Lord in our liturgical functions matched by the solicitude we extend to Him in our neighbour, and especially in the disadvantaged?

We should assume that the young woman who does not genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament and who pushes past us with her two unruly children, knocking our Missal to the floor, has been brought to us by God. Perhaps she has not yet been baptised, or been to Mass since her first Holy Communion. Perhaps she is a single mother, and is currently under unbearable pressure to have an abortion to prevent the birth of a third child. Her emotions on entering the building include embarrassment, reluctance and fear. But some stirring of Divine Grace in her heart has given her the courage to cross the threshold.

What will she find? Heaven forbid that she should encounter the disapproving frown of the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. May she find in us the merciful and loving face of Our Saviour, and through our witness and kindness may she come to realise that a life lived in Christ has a value that is beyond price.

October 2013 Letter from the Provost

Last month, His Holiness Pope Francis issued a most urgent call to prayer. The intention was for peace in Syria, where civil war has inflicted terrible suffering for the last two years. Recent threats of foreign military intervention and the presence of warships from Russia, America and France in the Mediterranean mean that there is currently much unsettling talk of the possibility of conflagration igniting on an international scale.

In response to the Holy Father’s plea, Syria sustained a concentrated bombardment on Saturday 7th September. This bombardment did not consist of weapons of destruction, thanks be to God. Instead, Syria was bombarded with grace, as salvos of prayer that were loaded with Faith, Hope and Charity were launched to Heaven while the Pope presided at a vigil for peace in Rome. A well-attended Mass for peace at the Oratory was followed by four hours of prayer, timed to coincide with the papal prayer vigil. With Rosary and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, we broadly followed the pattern of devotions and intercession at St Peter’s.

Pope Francis reminded us that prayers are fortified by penance. Confessionals were set up around the colonnades outside the Vatican Basilica because, as His Holiness explained, prayer rises from a heart that has been purified by reconciliation with God. When we are in a state of grace the Holy Ghost intercedes from the depths of our souls “with sighs too deep for words”, and our petitions merit a positive response from God. Before praying for any important intention, then, we should examine our consciences closely. If we are aware of any mortal sin, we need to receive God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance. If our prayers are to be sure of finding favour before the Throne of Grace, it is necessary for the flame of charity to be alive in our hearts.

The Pope also declared 7th September a day of fasting. The connection between fasting and prayers of petition is evident in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Book of Jonah we see that “God repented” of the sentence of destruction He had pronounced over Nineveh, in response to the fasting of its inhabitants. In the Gospels, when the disciples fail to exorcise an evil spirit, Our Lord explains that this particular type of demon is driven out “by prayer and fasting.”

Perhaps we feel helpless as world events unfold around us. Fatalism and despair are easy temptations to give in to, especially when ‘the people in power’ seem hell-bent on a course of destruction. As Christians, however, we are never powerless. We can and we must pray. At the end of last month’s vigil in Rome, the Pope exhorted us to keep praying for peace in Syria.

The month of October is devoted to one of the most powerful forms of prayer, the Rosary. The magnificent Lady Altar in the Oratory Church can be read like a triumphal arch, testifying to the victories that God has granted to His Church in response to devout recitation of the Rosary in the face of imminent danger. Originally built in Brescia for a Rosary Confraternity, it was saved by the Oratory Fathers when the original Dominican Church in which it stood was closed during the Italian Risorgimento.

To the left of the altar is a statue of St Dominic, who is said to have been issued with the Rosary by Our Lady as an invincible weapon in his struggle against the Albigensianheretics of the Languedoc. Albigensianism was an expression of dualism that denied the reality of the Incarnation and aimed to abolish the Sacraments. For Albigensians, salvation involved spirit liberating itself from matter which was considered evil. This bizarre heresy, which forbade procreation and advocated suicide through starvation, actually gained a considerable following amongst the educated and powerful. The Rosary, with its traditional meditations focusing on Our Lord’s infancy, sufferings and Resurrection, and on Our Lady’s bodily Assumption and glorification in Heaven, proved the ideal antidote to the disembodied spirituality promoted by the heretics. Besides the graces given in response to its recitation, the Rosary played a crucial role on the devotional level in the eradication of an ideology which had threatened to overrun the whole of southern France.

On the right side of the altar stands another Dominican, Pope St Pius V. This pontiff organised a Christian League to defend Europe from the threat of Ottoman invasion and called for a Rosary Crusade to ensure a Christian victory over the Turks. When the warships of the Christians engaged a superior Turkish fleet in the Gulf of Lepanto in 1571, the Pope was granted a vision in which Our Lady revealed that the Christians had been victorious, thanks to the recitation of the Rosary.

The central niche of the Lady Altar is occupied by a nineteenth century statue of Our Lady of Victories. The first shrine to Our Lady of Victory was erected in 1213, after the defeat of the Albigensians at the Battle of Muret, which St Dominic attributed to the power of the Rosary. In thanksgiving for Lepanto, Pope St Pius V instituted a commemoration of Our Lady of Victory on 7th October, the date of the battle. This was altered by his successor Pope Gregory XIII to a commemoration of Our Lady of the Rosary, which he allowed to be celebrated as a feast in any church which had an altar dedicated to the Rosary. A century later, a Rosary Crusade and invocation of Our Lady of Victory also preceded the important Christian triumph over the Turks at the Battle of Vienna, which took place in 1683 on the 12th September, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.

These battles were all decisive in securing the freedom of Christendom. The Oratory Lady Altar was constructed only ten years after the Battle of Vienna, in 1693, while the fear of Ottoman invasion was still very much alive. Protection from Turkish aggression was a major concern for all of the Rosary Confraternities that were established around the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas at this time. Eventually, in 1716, the Holy Roman Empire would win a critical victory over the Turks at the Battle of Petrovaradin in Serbia. This occurred on 5th August, the feast of Our Lady of the Snows. In recognition of the role of the Blessed Virgin’s intercession on this occasion, Pope Clement XI extended the celebration of the feast of the Holy Rosary to the whole Church.

Throughout October, the Rosary is prayed at the Oratory’s Lady Altar twenty minutes before the evening Mass. A plenary indulgence may be gained from praying the Rosary in a group, under the usual conditions. At this time of great urgency, when it is no exaggeration to say that Christianity risks extinction in the Middle East and Holy Land, please join us in praying daily for peace, and especially in praying for our beleaguered fellow Christians. If you cannot come to the Oratory then unite yourselves with us at home or wherever you are. On countless more occasions than those mentioned above, the intercessions Our Lady of the Rosary have rescued Christendom from calamity.

Our Lady Queen of Peace, pray for us.

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.