January 2022 Letter from the Provost

An elderly Catholic prelate was recently asked what he believes to be the secret of a peaceful retirement. After a few moments of reflection, His Lordship replied: ‘Try not to watch television. And if you do, never watch the news’.

The Provost must admit that he has a singular weakness for television. Were it not for the difficulty of negotiating the plethora of remote control devices required to switch on a modern set and find a watchable channel, and for his sacerdotal duties, he could happily spend days on end engrossed in re-runs of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Are You Being Served?, The Good Life and, best of all, The Les Dawson Show. He has, however, no temptation at all to the watch the news, and made a conscious decision to avoid it altogether at the beginning of the Coronavirus panic when the mainstream news services, and one broadcasting corporation in particular, eschewed reasoned caution and common sense in favour of a frenzied panic-mongering that seemed positively calculated to induce mass psychosis and hysteria.

It has been said that we live in a ‘post truth society’. Last month, on Gaudete Sunday, we had the great joy of welcoming a dear friend back to the Oratory after what had been a considerable hiatus, when His Eminence George Cardinal Pell returned to celebrate a Pontifical High Mass. Anyone who followed the trial of His Eminence in 2018 in Melbourne, a travesty of justice which led to a good man approaching his 80th birthday languishing in jail in solitary confinement for 404 days, will, or should, have realised just how pervasive and pernicious the bias, not to say the diabolical mendacity, of the media can be. The good Cardinal was to a large extent the victim of trial by media, which, with one or two honourable exceptions, treated the grotesque allegations against ‘the defendant’ as if their veracity were a foregone conclusion. One painful aspect of the saga was witnessing how many decent and intelligent, but it has to be said foolish, people were taken in by a media narrative which, even at its most bombastically vitriolic, could not disguise the inconsistencies and absence of substantial evidence presented by the prosecution. One can only hope and pray that, realising how misled they allowed themselves to be in this case, those who were bamboozled by what they read and listened to will now have learnt never to allow the propaganda and dishonesty of a generally biased media to form their world view, or indeed to colour their opinions on any important issue of the day. All too often, if we read about something in the newspapers, hear it on the wireless, or watch it on the television, and it concerns something about which we happen to know the ins and outs, we soon realise that what we are being told is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth.

If we wish to make a good New Year's resolution, perhaps we should consider taking the advice of the venerable prelate mentioned at the beginning of this letter, and boycotting the news – and especially those news sources that stoke social anxieties and would have us living in a constant state of fear and suspicion of our neighbours. As Catholics, we have a source of news that is infallibly trustworthy, and this is the Good News of the Gospel. On the Feast of the Epiphany, we have great cause for celebration, as we commemorate the manifestation of our Incarnate God to the Gentiles in the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan, which is His promise to us of our participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity, and the marriage at Cana at which water is transformed into wine in a sign of Transubstantiation.

Perhaps, despite all of this, at the beginning of this new year we find it hard to summon up much joy. Restrictions which we were told twenty months ago would only last for two weeks seem to have evolved into an endless cycle, and to have become the occasion for the roll-out of a surveillance structure which Herod and Chairman Mao might both have envied. Meanwhile, in a Church whose mission and credibility in modern times have been hobbled by abuses of power and betrayals of trust, many Catholics struggling to be faithful to the Gospel feel beleaguered and despised by the very shepherds from whom they might have hoped to find encouragement and fatherly solicitude. We must not, however, allow any of this to disturb our peace unduly, or to spoil our rejoicing in the Mysteries of the Epiphany which so luminously announce the salvation that is in our midst. If God is allowing His faithful to be sifted, and permitting His Mystical Body to suffer, then this can only be for a purpose known to the Divine Mind. We must trust in His Providence and unite whatever ills we must endure with the Passion of Our Lord. The fake news that has so much of the world in its grip must ultimately be destroyed in the light of the Gospel, just as surely as the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion. At the beginning of this new year, let us immerse ourselves in the Good News which strengthens us for whatever battles lie ahead.

Father Julian Large

December 2021 Letter from the Provost

After a highly publicised “private visit” to the Vatican, the current incumbent of the White House told the press he had been assured on the highest authority that he was “a good Catholic” and should continue receiving Holy Communion. In view of this same professional politician's famous declaration during his election campaign that “We choose truth over facts”, and in the absence of any confirmation of his recent statements regarding Holy Communion from the relevant Roman authorities, we can probably be forgiven for wondering if this man's understanding of what constitutes reality coincides to any meaningful extent with that of most ordinary mortals. However, his claim on its own provides a useful lesson insofar as it illustrates an error which is common among the poorly catechised: the notion that Holy Communion is a reward for being good.

St John the Evangelist warns us that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity” (1 Jn 1:8). When we talk about "worthy reception" of Holy Communion, we cannot mean any intrinsic worthiness of our own, but rather the supernatural Sanctifying Grace that animates the soul of someone in a state of grace and is a gift from God. It is hard to imagine even a saint as near-perfect as our own St Philip calling himself, or allowing anyone else to describe him as, “a good Catholic”. When St Philip beat his breast at the triple “Domine non sum dignus” before consuming the Sacred Host during his own celebration of Holy Mass, the trembling of his body reverberated around the whole church.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaias, God remonstrates wearily with the rulers of Israel: “I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats...incense is an abomination to me” (Is 1:11,13). When we consider that it was God Himself who had required these oblations in the first place, we realise that it is not the sacrifices themselves but rather the spirit in which they are offered that is sickening to God. The hands of those publicly going through the motions of offering sacrifice are, in fact, stained with the blood of the innocent, the poor and the vulnerable. Ostentatious observance of religion without inward conversion of heart is something of which we should all be wary, and the instrumentalisation of religious practice for political advantage is an abomination in the sight of God. The only sacrifice acceptable before the Throne of Grace, we are told, is offered with repentance: “a contrite and humble heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 50:19).

Applied to our experience as Catholics today, this means that we must first have repented of our sins before approaching the altar rails for Holy Communion. This is not to insist that we must be in a state of “perfection” (who would claim that?); but it does require that any mortal sins first be confessed and absolved in the Sacrament of Penance, which must always be accompanied by a purpose of amendment. Mortal sins, which extinguish Sanctifying Grace in the soul, involve grave matter, and to qualify as mortal must have been committed with freedom of action and full knowledge of the gravity of the sin. Voting in favour of barbaric laws that facilitate the slaughter of innocent children, and prioritising policies to repeal legal protections for the unborn, undeniably constitute grave matter. It might be argued that the other two criteria could, in a particular instance, be mitigated to the point of absence on the grounds of mental incapacity caused by cerebral decline, but even if this were the case then it would clearly be highly inappropriate for someone of high profile who had committed such crimes against the Divine Law to be seen receiving Holy Communion without having first made a public statement of repentance. To receive the Blessed Sacrament in a state of mortal sin is to commit an additional sin of sacrilege, earning further punishment in hell. A pastor who, out of human respect, failed to warn a member of his flock against this dreadful peril to his soul in such circumstances would obviously endanger his own salvation, as well as that of his feted victim.

As Christmas, approaches, we prepare to celebrate the sublime event of the Incarnation, when the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son, became man in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. The King of all creation chose to be born into the humblest of circumstances for a purpose. He might have come in splendour, but it was ordained that this would only happen at His Second Coming when He is to return in majesty, in the company of legions of angels, to judge the living and the dead. On that first coming He arrived in poverty and was laid in a manger. This was so that we might be moved to offer Him a home in our hearts. Bethlehem means ‘House of Bread’. That manger was a feeding trough. On the Altar the Word becomes Flesh once again so that we may adore Him and consume Him. To participate most fully in the joy of Christmas, we should prepare ourselves during Advent, in spite of all our unworthiness, to make the best possible Holy Communion. Adorned with the practice of the virtues and supernaturally enlivened with Sanctifying Grace, may our contrite, shriven and charitable hearts become the beautiful palace that was denied to the King of Kings in His Nativity. Wishing you a peaceful, prayerful Advent, and a very blessed Christmas.

Father Julian Large

November 2021 Letter from the Provost

The sardonic observation that nothing in this world is certain except for death and taxes is usually attributed to the eighteenth-century polymath, Freemason and American Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin. Some of those rich enough to afford expensive accountants actually do quite an impressive job of avoiding taxation. The pursuit of immortality, meanwhile, has apparently become a popular subject of conversation among the sort of billionaire “philanthropists” and their star-struck groupies who annually descend on the Swiss canton of Graubünden in fleets of private jets to bemoan the evils of carbon emissions and inequality. Not long before the Coronavirus struck, a lifestyle feature appeared in the Guardian with the fascinating title “How to live forever: meet the extreme life extensionists”. The article introduced its readers to James Strole, a businessman from Arizona and founder of something called the Coalition for Radical Life Extension, which promotes initiatives aimed at prolonging human life “not by days and weeks, but by decades and even centuries, to the degree that mortality becomes optional – an end to The End”. The Coalition's promotional literature is bullish: “The deathist paradigm has to go... It's time to look beyond the past of dying to a future of unlimited living”. It describes its supporters as “early adopting advocates, numbering in the thousands”. The Guardian article informs us that the community of life-extensionists “includes venture capitalists and Silicon Valley billionaires [...] who consider death undesirable and appear to have made so much money they require infinite life to spend it”.

We should pray that it will not be long before Christian missionaries penetrate into the darkest depths of Silicon Valley to proclaim to its indigenous tribes the Good News that “the deathist paradigm” has in fact already been long dead and buried. It was conquered definitively between the first Good Friday and the Easter Sunday that followed it, two millennia ago in Jerusalem. And while immortality does not come cheaply – it was paid for in a currency of infinite value, the Precious Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus on the Cross – it is offered freely to all to seek it with a contrite and humble heart. The Catholic Church has been in the business of offering the world the option of “unlimited living” ever since that first Easter Sunday. In the Sacrament of Baptism, we die with Christ and are buried with Him. Emerging from the waters of regeneration, we are raised from the tomb with Our Lord, and filled with everlasting life. At the font, we receive the vocation to keep dying to ourselves in this life so that the Life of the Resurrection might take ever greater possession of our souls. At the Altar we are able to unite ourselves daily with the Death of Our Lord in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to partake of His Living Risen Body in Holy Communion. Thanks to the Resurrection, and to our participation in the Resurrection through the Sacraments, life has the last word over death for eternity.

Those looking for a solution for the problem of death would do well to examine how death became a reality in the first place. Never intended for us by our Creator, death entered the human story only after our first parents allowed themselves to be beguiled by the false promises of the Father of Lies. Tempting Eve to take the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Serpent assured her that she and Adam would be like God and never die. The opposite was true. Owing to the breach of faith occasioned by that first sin, the immortality and supernatural likeness with which our first parents had been endowed were forfeited for humanity. The consequences included suffering, sickness and, most radical of all, the separation of body and soul which is death. We need to learn our lesson that when men try to usurp the place of God, the outcome is never pretty.

During this month of November, our minds are lifted to contemplate the reality of everlasting life, first of all on the great feast of All the Saints, those who have died in Sanctifying Grace and whose souls are already in Heaven, enjoying the Beatific Vision and awaiting the restoration of their bodies at the end of time. They have such a capacity for love that they are granted an eternity to share it and to participate in God's glory. They intercede for us at the Throne of Grace, and invite us to friendship with them so that they might provide us with particular assistance in our needs. The following day, we commemorate the Souls of the Faithful Departed. We call them the Holy Souls, because they died in the State of Grace and their place in Heaven is assured. In this sense they are better off than us, because on earth we must work out our salvation in fear and trembling. But they are also the Poor Souls, because they suffer in Purgatory until they are perfectly purified for entry into Heaven. The Church teaches that we may speed them on this journey, with celebrations of the Holy Mass, by our sacrifices and prayers and through the gaining and application of Holy Indulgences, and that this is a great act of charity. The black vestments and unbleached candles of All Souls really set the tone for this month. Let us remember to pray for the Holy Souls, in the assurance that the Saints are interceding for us, and give thanks that death has been conquered by love.

Father Julian Large

October 2021 Letter from the Provost

If we had to sum up our Holy Catholic Faith in two words, we would probably have to say “Jesus Christ”. This is because everything about our religion must ultimately have its beginning and its end in Him. The theological discipline concerned specifically with the study of Who and What Christ is called Christology. Since roughly the 1960s, a certain school of Christology has tended to be nurtured in some of the trendier theology faculties. The “Jesus” whom we encounter here ends up resembling a rather drippy singer-songwriter of a none-too-memorable psychedelic band. This figment of the imagination of mid-century theologians is so eminently insipid that his message is platitudinous to a fault, and invariably inoffensive.

What a different Jesus we find if we open the Holy Scriptures. In the Gospels, not a single banality ever passes His lips. And when it serves the cause of the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and the salvation of souls, Our Lord is ready and able to say things that are clearly intended to be stingingly offensive to those whom He addresses. Think of when He says to the Scribes and the Pharisees: “Woe unto you hypocrites! You are like whitened sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful to men, but within are full of dead men's bones and all filthiness!”; or the occasion on which He tells the Pharisees that they can go and tell Herod that he is a devious old fox. If we consider that Our Lord's cousin John the Baptist called the Sadducees a brood of vipers to their faces, then we might well wonder if this facility for vituperation is something that ran in the family, at least among the men.

It is notable, of course, that these insults are never aimed at the little people – the poor or the sick, or repentant sinners looking for forgiveness. They are reserved exclusively for the great and the good, the rulers and especially the religious hierarchy of this world. The most devastating reproach of all is by no means an exception to this rule. When Our Lord outlines what He must suffer in Jerusalem, and Peter takes Him aside to remonstrate with Him, Our Lord upbraids Peter with the shocking words “Get behind me, Satan.”

This terrible rebuke looks all the more extraordinary when we see it in its full context. The Holy Gospel of St Matthew informs us that it comes just moments after Our Lord has declared Simon to be Peter, the rock on which He will build His Church, and granted to Peter the keys of the Kingdom. And then, almost in the same breath, there He is calling His newly minted first-ever Pope “Satan.”

Peter's fault is that, at this stage, he still has his eye on a beautiful jewelled crown and a gleaming gilded throne for Our Lord. His keenness to deflect his Master from His mission to die for our sins is all too reminiscent of the temptations which the devil dangled before Our Lord during His fasting in the wilderness:  “Turn these stones into bread – feed the masses and you will have them in your pocket! Throw yourself off this Temple, let the populace gaze in amazement as the Angels catch you in their arms...hypnotise the media with novelties and sensational gestures. Bow down and worship me, kowtow to the politburos and steering committees of this world, and I shall give you all the kingdoms of the earth. Peter did not yet see – would not allow himself to understand – that Our Lord's throne on this earth had to be a rough-hewn Cross; that His crown, at least until His return in Glory to judge the living and the dead, must be made of thorns bejewelled with clots of blood.

So what does this teach us? Most obviously, that popes are not ready-made saints. We need to pray for them, that they always make supernatural realities and salvation a priority; that God will assist them in teaching and governing the Church, so that She is aided to the full in Her mission of saving souls for everlasting life. In Peter, Our Lord would eventually make one of His most glorious and lovable saints out of what might have looked at the beginning like rather unpromising material. But if we flick through any respectable history of the Church for more than five minutes, we shall soon discover that some of Peter's successors have been utter scoundrels who inflicted a good deal of harm on the Mystical Body of Christ on earth during their tenures. In modern times we have come to expect clean-living popes as a matter of course, but only a fool would take them for granted.

Pray also for your bishops, and pray very much for us priests. The temptation to tone down the more stringent demands of the Gospel in favour of a comfortable life and a cosy relationship with the authorities of this world and the Zeitgeist to which these powers are in thrall is always a temptation to all us – of course it is. Pray that worn down by the desire for respectability, and intimidated by the tyranny of relativism that threatens to “cancel” anyone who steps out of line, we do not turn our faces away from the Cross and leave our flocks to the wolves.

Pray, also, for the grace and the strength that you will need yourselves to remain faithful, to be steadfast in holding to the Faith in all its full-bloodedness, to be patient and painstakingly thorough in countering the Woke brainwashing to which your children are quite likely being subjected at school. We might end up being crowned with the thorns of ridicule and crucified for daring to sing a different tune in this world. You might find the social services battering at the door if your children are found to be too well-versed in the Catechism. But we can be sure that, if we are willing to make sacrifices and suffer a little for our Holy Catholic Faith in this life, then there is a golden crown of everlasting life awaiting us in the life to come.

Father Julian Large

September 2021 Letter from the Provost

Our holy father St Philip had a knack for winning souls in a manner which could be simultaneously gentle and discomfiting. Francesco Zazzara was one of the jeunesse dorée of his day in Rome, a talented student of law with a circle of fashionable friends and a promising future at court. On one of his visits to the Oratory, he found himself lavished with compliments by our saint. “Oh happy you!” said St Philip, “now you are studying, then you shall be a doctor and begin to make money, and to advance your family; you will become an advocate and perhaps someday be raised to be a prelate...” As St Philip continued to list the honours and riches that young Zazzara could look forward to, he repeated “Oh happy you!” Zazzara's eyes widened in excitement as his spiritual father reached a crescendo in this panoply of praises with the exclamation: “Oh happy you! Then you will look for nothing more.” St Philip then pressed the boy's head close to his chest and whispered in his ear, “And then?” Those two words made such a searing impact on Zazzara that he could not sleep. Recalling all of the prospects that Philip had lain before him, he found himself asking himself over and over again “and then?” Unable to banish these words from his heart, he resolved to turn all of his thoughts and plans to God, and eventually entered the Congregation of the Oratory, in which he persevered until death and played an invaluable role in securing the canonisation of St Philip.

Most disciples of Our Lord are not called to the consecrated life. The majority of Christians must make a living in order to shelter and feed themselves and their loved ones. Commerce and the professions have their proper place within the dynamics of civilised society. Saint Philip, however, was acutely aware of the spiritual perils of disordered ambition and acquisitiveness, which can easily derail the sanctification and ultimately the salvation of the best of men. Our Lord Himself warns us that we cannot serve God and mammon. Some theologians have personified Mammon as a ferocious demon, to whom we enslave ourselves when we give in to the temptation of making worldly gain, and especially money, a priority in our lives. Mammon certainly becomes an idol when we allow it to topple Our Lord from the throne which He occupies in our hearts through Baptism. An expanding bank account might give us the impression that we are secure and prosperous, while all the time our soul is becoming ever more desiccated, malnourished and shrivelled.

The Gospel makes it clear to us where true riches are to be found: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice,” Our Lord teaches us, “and all these things shall be added unto you.” We reap in eternity what is sown in this life. We know from what has been revealed to us that Heaven is a hierarchy, where Our Lord reigns as King, and His Mother is Queen over the Angels and Saints. In contrast to earthly societies, however, the hierarchy to be found in Heaven is one of holiness. It is those saints whose hearts have been expanded most by the exercise of the supernatural virtue of Charity who are most like God and closest to His Throne. Whether we are able to enter the glory of Heaven will depend on whether our souls are found to be in a state of grace at our particular judgment. If, pray God, that judgment is favourable, then we must be purified in Purgatory of any undue attachments that we have retained towards earthly possessions. Our eventual capacity for participating in the glory of Heaven will depend on how much we have loved God and our neighbour in this life. Now, then, is the time for us to be earning treasures for ourselves in eternity. Saint Philip, who was vouchsafed extraordinary glimpses of heavenly realities during his life, and who enjoyed a profound peace and joy made possible by a detachment from created things, to which we are all called, used to say, “He who desires anything other than God deceives himself, and he who loves anything but God errs miserably.” To be truly and magnificently rich in eternity, we must cultivate poverty in spirit and detachment from worldly gain in the here and now. The more we give, now, for the love of God, the more we shall receive in the way of imperishable treasures.

Our Lord's warning about mammon is issued in His Sermon on the Mount, soon after He has taught us to petition God for “our daily bread” in the Our Father. The Douay Rheims version of Holy Scripture renders “daily bread” in St Matthew's Gospel as “supersubstantial bread”. The two translations are beautifully complementary and mutually illuminative. Praying for our daily sustenance saves us from habits of hoarding and avarice which create spiritual starvation. In the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord feeds us with His very Self so that we are truly rich and well-nourished beyond imagination.

Like young Francesco Zazzara, we should learn to ask ourselves often the question “and then?”, with an eye on that eternally-defining moment when our souls depart from our bodies and we find ourselves naked, with no earthly possessions to hide behind, at our particular judgment. We ask our holy father St Philip to intercede for us, so that like him we may be blessed with a spirit of detachment from worldly goods which liberates us to love God and our neighbour with the greatest possible generosity.

Father Julian Large

August 2021 Letter from the Provost

A cartoon that appeared in the New Yorker some decades ago depicted a weary looking angel sitting on a cloud, a harp lying at his feet. The caption underneath read something along the lines of: "If I'd known Heaven would go on for this long, I'd have brought some magazines."

The difficulty with trying to imagine what Heaven might be like is that it transcends all earthly experience. We might be tempted to think that Hell is not so difficult to visualise, because attempts during the last century to create earthly utopias without regard for the laws which God has written into human nature have gone some way to creating it on this planet. However, even within the most ghastly socialist gulag or death camp, we still find glimpses of heroism and sacrificial generosity which remind us that in this life redemption (and with it the attainment of everlasting life in Heaven) always remains possible if only hearts are opened to the working of God's grace. The utter and irreversible desolation of Hell is only possible when we have stubbornly closed ourselves to God's promptings through to the moment when our bodies and souls are finally separated, and mercifully that is something that no-one reading this has ever experienced, nor ever need to.

This month, we celebrate the great feast of Our Lady's magnificent Assumption into Heaven. Rather than taking the Blessed Virgin away from us, this glorious mystery and event actually brings Heaven closer to us. In His Ascension, Our Lord took His humanity along with His divinity (and including His flesh) into heavenly Glory. In the Assumption, He received His Blessed Mother, body and soul, into the Heavenly Court, where She would take Her place by His throne as Queen Mother. While the other saints await their reunification with their bodies at the end of time when Our Lord returns to judge the living and the dead, Our Lady's body is already in Heaven. This explains why, while we honour the relics of many saints here on earth, we find no mortal remains of Our Lady to venerate. The presence of at least two bodies in Heaven, through the Ascension and the Assumption, makes Heaven a real place, because bodies exist in places, not merely in "states".

The Blessed Virgin's Assumption is our assurance that our bodies as well as our souls have been created to participate in everlasting glory. Death was never a part of God's intention for the human race, and only became a feature of our human story thanks to sin. The Assumption demonstrates par excellence that Our Lord's victory over sin in His Passion and Resurrection is complete and definitive. Monsignor Ronald Knox described the Assumption as Our Lord's "first step to reconciling all things in heaven and on earth to his eternal Father, towards making all things new". With all the trouble our bodies give us now, some might wish that salvation meant being liberated from them forever. But God is no Platonist, and when He surveyed His work at the end of the sixth day of creation, with Adam and Eve at the apex of that creation and mankind as the hinge that fused the material realm with the spiritual, and saw "that it was very good", it was His plan that this most wondrous and unique of His creatures should be raised to participate in His glory in the fullness of being in Heaven, matter as well as spirit.

So what about that harp, and those magazines? We need not worry about ever wearying of the marvels of Heaven. God is infinite in all of His perfections. Eternity is beyond and outside of time, but to use a temporal analogy it may be said that we could behold the Beatific Vision for a thousand trillion years and yet hardly should we have begun to scratch the surface of His majesty or to fathom the depths of that dynamic of love which flows eternally between Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and into which we have already been inserted in our Baptism. Even though the best we can do now is to see through a glass darkly, meditating on the infinite marvels and blessedness of Heaven helps to put our earthly troubles into perspective. Our Lady participated in Our Lord's Passion in a unique manner as a sword of anguish pierced Her Immaculate Heart, and now She participates to the highest possible degree in His glory in eternity. As we survey the Church on earth wounded by scandals, division and dissent, we can take heart in the truth that Our Lady's Assumption prefigures the moment when the Church Militant on earth will be subsumed and glorified in the Church Triumphant in Heaven. During this month of the Assumption, let us fix our gaze on eternity and ask the Queen of the Angels to intercede for us in our efforts to build the Kingdom of Heaven in the here and now.

Father Julian Large

July 2021 Letter from the Provost

Preaching on the feast of Pentecost in 2012, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI described Pentecost as the feast of “union, comprehension and communion.” He also lamented how the revolution in communications which we have witnessed in recent decades, and which might have been expected to bring people together, has too often been accompanied by increasing divisions and hostility: “We witness daily events in which it seems people are becoming more aggressive and belligerent; understanding each other becomes too demanding so they prefer to remain closed in on themselves, in their own interests.” His Holiness proceeded to compare our modern society with the account we read in the Old Testament, in Genesis chapter 11, of the inhabitants of Babel who thought that they could use their technological expertise to build a tower that would reach to Heaven, in order to open the gates of eternity and usurp the place of God. Suddenly they found that they were building against each other, they all began talking in strange tongues so that they could no longer comprehend each other, and the whole project ended in chaos and ruins. “While endeavouring to be like God,” explained Pope Benedict XVI, “they even risk no long being human because they have lost a fundamental element of being human – the ability to agree, to understand and to work together.”

In the wake of the immeasurable suffering caused during the last year and a half by the disruption that has accompanied the Coronavirus contagion, there has been much talk of “building back better.” This might give us hope. The Christian life is all about “building back better”, because the Gospel is God's rescue plan for a mankind enslaved to sin and mortality by the consequences of the Fall. Saved from spiritual death in Baptism and elevated to the life of Grace, it is our task as Christians to build the Kingdom of God on earth in the here and now, as well as looking forward to that perfect blessedness in Heaven that awaits those who depart this life in a state of grace. Conflict, injustice and every manner of suffering can all be traced to that primeval rebellion against God when our first parents disobeyed our Creator. As Christians we know that there can only be true peace and justice where Our Lord is recognised and honoured as Sovereign ruler in all aspects of human life and society.

Alas, if we investigate some of those who talk most enthusiastically about “building back better”, we soon find that their vision for our future has little or no place for God, and that some of the solutions that are being offered are creepily reminiscent of ideologies that created so much misery, destruction and death in the last century. Too often, the “philanthropists” who speak euphorically of the opportunities the Coronavirus crisis has created for building a brave new world turn out to be keen proponents of population control, abortion and contraception. The biblical account of what happened in Babel should serve as a perennial reminder that when man determines to build back better on his own terms, without regard for the laws which God has written into human nature, and which He gave to Moses on Mount Sinai amid thunder and lightning, it is the Almighty Whose finger rests on the great reset button that has the power to reduce our most audacious plans to chaos.

During this period of the Church's calendar traditionally known as time “after Pentecost”, we should reflect on how that wondrous event in Jerusalem in which the Holy Ghost descended on Our Lady and the Apostles marked the launch of the Church as the one true vessel of a unity which is supernatural and far more substantial and profound than any other type of union that can exist between human beings on this earth. The Holy Ghost binds the Church together as a single living organism, of which we are all members, with Christ at our head. Pentecost was really the absolute opposite of Babel. Yes, the disciples began talking in strange tongues. But the effect was that those from foreign nations were able to understand them in their own languages, and the result was the incorporation of many thousands into the Mystical Body of Christ as the Church began to spread into every corner of the globe.

If “Build Back Better” is to be anything other than a vacuous slogan or, even worse, a cover for something sinister, we cannot hope to succeed without the co-operation of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. During this time “after Pentecost”, let us pray for the assistance of the Holy Ghost, and for the infusion of His gifts into our hearts and the flourishing of His fruits within our lives, in order that we may play our part in building back better God's way. May our Holy Father St Philip, whose heart was inhabited by the Holy Ghost in a most miraculous way, intercede for us.

Father Julian Large

June 2021 Letter from the Provost

In our Triduo devotions during the three days leading up to the feast of our holy father St Philip, we are reminded in one of Father Faber's most brilliant hymns that our Saint's death in 1595 coincided with the celebration of Corpus Christi:

"Day set on Rome: its golden morn
Had seen the world's Creator borne
Around St Peter's square,
Trembling and weeping all the way,
God's Vicar with his God that day
Made pageant brave and rare!"

At the time of St Philip’s birthday in Heaven, God's Vicar was our Saint’s penitent, the formidable Clement VIII, who spent a good deal of his pontificate tormented by gout. It is quite possible, however, that the inspiration for this verse of the hymn came from a later successor to the Prince of the Apostles, whom the young Frederick William Faber had observed at close quarters while still an Anglican clergyman, during his first visit to Rome in 1843. In a letter to his brother, he described visiting St Peter's on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and watching Pope Gregory XVI receiving Holy Communion: "On Thursday morning I went to the Pontifical Mass: its effect on me was just as much as I could bear; one moment was intolerable; the thousands in that tremendous building of course made a considerable noise, but when the canon of the Mass began all sank on their knees, and not a pin could have dropped unperceived, and (I had not been told of it before) when the Pontiff, his eyes streaming with tears, slowly elevated the Lord’s Body, suddenly from the roof some ten or twelve trumpets, as from heaven, pealed out with a long, wailing, timorous jubilee, and I fell forward completely over-come. One other thing touched me extremely: the Pope receives the Communion standing at his throne, and as they were bringing it up to him, when it came near, in one moment, without arranging his robes, without dignity, he threw himself down on the ground till it reached him, when he rose to receive it. While he stood praying before it, his beating and striking of his breast were so vehement that you could hear them all over, and he looked a saint.” In addition to this striking devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, Pope Gregory XVI possessed robust views and impressive directness. He roundly condemned slavery and forbade all Catholic participation in the slave trade, banned the construction of railways in the Papal States, and told Faber in a private audience on that 1843 visit to Rome that he must think of the salvation of his own soul and, laying his hands on his shoulders, prayed "May the grace of God correspond to your good wishes and deliver you from the snares of Anglicanism and bring you to the true Holy Church."

Whichever Supreme Pontiff may have been the inspiration for Father Faber's hymn, the date of St Philip's death could hardly have been timelier from the liturgical point of view. That the saint who often experienced ecstasies in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament and was afforded visions of Our Lord in the Sacred Host, and who had been so instrumental in establishing the Forty Hours Devotion (Quarant'Ore) in Rome, should have departed for eternity after receiving Holy Communion on the great feast of Corpus Christi is surely a sign of God's special favour towards His faithful servant.

The timing of St Philip's feast day is also a wonderful grace of Providence for the Church and a blessing for us. This year, our Triduo devotions began on Whit Sunday itself, so that we celebrated St Philip's day within the Pentecost Octave. We could not hope for a more fitting companion to guide us through the beautiful season of Whitsuntide than St Philip. The defining moment of his apostolate in Rome was that event which occurred on the Vigil of the Feast of Pentecost in 1544, when he was still a 28-year-old layman and was praying fervently in the catacombs of St Sebastian. The Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a ball of fire which entered his mouth and settled with some force in his heart. This Pentecost miracle, and the abiding presence of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in such a unique manner within St Philip's breast, seem to have ruled his life from then on, and to have been at the root of his ecstasies in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. The heart palpitations that he experienced as a priest when offering the Holy Sacrifice were so violent and disruptive, and risked causing such admiration, that he eventually felt constrained to cease from celebrating Holy Mass in public altogether, and retired to his little private chapel.

Saint Philip always insisted that we should never desire such phenomena, which he found unwelcome and which were the occasion of considerable suffering and embarrassment to him. But we should certainly ask him to intercede for us so that we too are filled to capacity with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and that we may manifest the fruits of the Holy Ghost in our lives. Through Baptism, we are already living Temples of the Holy Ghost, but we should pray for that divine Presence to be a steady consuming blaze in our hearts, rather than a flickering pilot light. And as the great feast of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ approaches, we ask the Spirit Who leads us into all truth to fill us with the same faith in, and devotion to, the Blessed Sacrament that we find in the life of our patron saint.

Father Julian Large

May 2021 Letter from the Provost

It has been asked whether the Oratory is visited regularly by a team of elves who appear during the night to prepare the church for feasts and ceremonies. The truth is that, in addition to our faithful sacristans, we are blessed with the assistance of a certain Mr Cross, a resident of Oratory House and long-standing Brother of the Little Oratory, whose talent for restoration work and creative ingenuity are invaluable beyond words. Many of you will be familiar with Mr Cross's discreet but commanding presence directing ceremonies in the sanctuary, where he brings to the Oratory's liturgical functions a sensibility for romanità not even seen in St Peter's Basilica itself since the great ceremonieri of the Venerable Pope Pius XII. In addition to coordinating the assembling of the decorations for our famous annual Forty Hours devotions, it is Mr Cross who climbs a high ladder to change the robes and crowns of the statue of the Virgin and Child at the altar of Our Lady, so that they are always in line with feasts and seasons. We also have Mr Cross to thank for our magnificently hand-painted Paschal Candles.

Belying the suspicion that seems to linger among some of our fellow countrymen that the patriotism of "papists" is not to be trusted, Mr Cross is a monarchist to the marrow of his bones. As a consequence of this, the decorations of the Oratory's Paschal Candle always include some symbolic allusion to the Royal Family, as well as the requisite Cross, Alpha and Omega, etc. The unveiling of this year's candle just before the Easter Vigil on the night of Saturday 3rd April revealed the arms the Duke of Edinburgh, which had been lovingly and painstakingly painted with heraldic precision to mark the year in which His Royal Highness was to have celebrated his hundredth birthday. Since the sad news of the Duke's death just six days later, this year's Paschal Candle will serve as an enduring mark of our respect and affection for a man who has served this realm and the Commonwealth with an heroic sense of duty ever since his gallant service as an officer in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, and who has been a rock of stability to our beloved Monarch.

Many Masses have been offered at the Oratory for the repose of the Duke during the last weeks, and various of the Fathers have also celebrated Holy Mass for Her Majesty the Queen, whose solitary figure at her husband's funeral in St George's Chapel will have touched the heart of every decent human being who witnessed it. It was reported that the Duke had planned his own funeral meticulously, and as Anglican services go it was solemn and beautiful, and one of the most refreshingly unwoke public events of recent times (or semi-public, as it was in fact technically private but broadcast). There were no cheesy poems, pop songs or preening celebrities, no sermon or eulogy, and most surprisingly of all no representative of the nowadays ubiquitous female clergy. Instead, there were just psalms, prayers (in old-style English), Holy Scripture (from Ecclesiasticus, which Catholics include in the canon of the inspired word of God, but which the Church of England counts as apocryphal) and good old-fashioned hymns. The Duke proved himself to be as elegant in death as he always was in life.

No doubt a devout Catholic could have taken issue with the Duke on subjects such as freemasonry and population control. Most of us will be united, however, in our gratitude for the immeasurable contribution he made to the good of this country throughout his life, and for making us laugh. Po-faced goody-goodies among the commentariat might have disapproved at his "gaffes" when he made comments that were politically incorrect. The rest of us knew that it was just his brilliant and irreverent sense of humour, which he used with masterful dexterity to prick pomposity, dispel boredom and dissolve stuffiness on public occasions. Unlike many of his generation, the Duke remained untainted by the bizarre fashions and ideas of the 1970s, and utterly uncontaminated by the toxic sentimentalism of "Cool Britannia". Incapable of virtue-signalling, he did not jump to attention to hashtags, and never subjected us to the embarrassing spectacle of an elderly man taking the knee in deference to the latest manifestation of coordinated outrage. For this he is to be all the more loved and respected.

When next you look at the Paschal Candle in the Oratory Church, be grateful to Mr Cross who painted it, as well as to the bees who provided the wax. And please say a prayer for the repose of the soul of the late Duke of Edinburgh, and one for our Sovereign the Queen. May God save her and keep her.

Father Julian Large

April 2021 Letter from the Provost

There is something of a consensus amongst scientists that the origin of this universe as we know it lies in a great explosion in which space began to expand from a single point – the theory known as the Big Bang. Many will try to convince you that this discovery disproves the account of Creation that we find in the Holy Scriptures, and relegates any belief in a creating God to the dustbin of history. What these apostles of atheism have lost sight of, and what most of those taken in by their propaganda do not realise, is that the man who is credited as the father of the Big Bang Theory was a devout Christian and a very committed Catholic. He was in fact a Catholic priest from Belgium, Father Georges Lemaître.

         In 1933, Father Lemaître travelled to America to address a seminar attended by Albert Einstein in California. After Fr Lemaître had explained his theory, Einstein is reported to have stood up and applauded, and then said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.” For Fr Lemaître, the Big Bang was just one manifestation of the ingenuity of God's creative genius. It was a discovery which deepened his Catholic Faith.

         On Easter Sunday, we celebrate an event infinitely more magnificent even than the Big Bang. We stand in awe and wonder and profound gratitude before the event of Our Lord Jesus Christ's Resurrection.

         The truth is that the Big Bang and the creation of this universe in itself really cost God nothing. The Almighty Creator could have fashioned a hundred million universes like ours instantaneously and with no effort at all. All He has to do to create is to will something, and whether He wills the existence of the feather on a sparrow or a whole cosmos is equal to Him.

         The Resurrection, on the other hand, cost Him a great deal. In the Incarnation, God the Son took on our frail human flesh and came into a fallen world. The Lord of lords made Himself vulnerable in a world in which jealousy and cruelty abound. On Good Friday, we are given the opportunity to meditate on just what a price the Creator of mankind was ready to pay in order to become the Saviour of mankind. Artists have depicted angels weeping and howling with indignation at the dreadful sight of their Creator and King being mocked, scourged and nailed to a cross.

         Unlike the Big Bang, then, the Resurrection cost God very dearly. However, it was a price that Our Lord paid willingly out of love for you and for me. And there are similarities between the Big Bang and the Resurrection. Einstein was enthralled by Father Lemaître's assertion that the power of that primeval explosion known as the Big Bang is still pulsating energy into the universe today, in the form of cosmic rays. Likewise, the Resurrection is still pulsating its power into the world today. In Holy Week, countless souls are lifted up from the death of sin and restored to the life of the Resurrection in the Sacrament of Penance.

         The grace conferred in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony remains live and active throughout the life of a married couple, enabling them to meet the challenges and opportunities that come their way, just as long as they remain tuned in to the Presence of Our Risen Lord in their marriage.

         In the Sacrament of the Sick, the souls of the suffering and fearful are raised up and filled with hope in the general resurrection of our bodies that will happen at the end of time. In the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord feeds us with His living Body, making Holy Communion the most perfect encounter with the Resurrection that we can experience on this earth.

         Looking at the history of the Church, we see how, when her lustre has been tarnished by the venality and waywardness of her shepherds, faith in the Resurrection has raised up new generations of saints to bring refreshment and renewal to her sacred mission. Of course, the power of the Resurrection is not restricted to the visible confines of the Church and her Sacraments. The countless baptisms that normally take place at Easter Vigils around the world testify to its potency to raise up new Christians from the mire of unbelief, superstition and false religion, and to incorporate them into Christ’s Mystical Body.

         Intriguing and persuasive as it may be, the Big Bang remains a theory. A scientific consensus only holds sway for as long as it remains unchallenged by a more compelling explanation. Even if it stands the test of time, most scientists seem to agree that this universe and time itself will come to an end. The Resurrection, in contrast, is not a theory but a fact. Its effects are in their youth and will endure into eternity.

Father Julian Large

March 2021 Letter from the Provost

On the First Sunday of Lent, we heard the Gospel account of Our Lord's forty days in the desert. Our Lord was led by the Spirit into the wilderness “to be tempted by the devil”. But why should this be? Why should the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who can neither sin nor be deceived, allow Himself to be subjected to temptation?

If we reflect on the temptations that Our Lord endured, we shall see that they are the very same temptations which the Church often encounters in Her earthly mission. “Command that these stones be made bread”, the devil suggests. Just think of the popularity the Church might enjoy and the influence She might exert if only She gave up insisting on all of that wearisome preaching about conversion from sin and devoted Her every resource to social activism. Imagine how much more authentic She would look to our contemporaries if only She were to sell all of those precious vessels of the altar and elaborate vestments and to make a well-publicised gesture of handing over the proceeds to good causes. The media would certainly congratulate us on having finally woken up to the real needs of modern man. Surely we are missing a trick?

Our Lord's answer to Satan is masterful: “It is written, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. The truth is that the Messiah could easily have produced enough bread to feed Himself, and sufficient food and resources to feed, clothe and house humanity for the rest of history. But in itself, such a magnificent miracle would have done nothing to combat the self-centredness that has been the blight of the human soul and of the human race since the Fall. Any “Great Reset” of society based on purely human efforts to create an earthly utopia can only end in further social disintegration. All efforts to “build back better” which ignore the reality of Original Sin and the need for God's healing and restorative supernatural grace, and which disdain the laws which the Creator has written into human nature and handed to Moses amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, are hell-bound from conception.

Certainly, care for the needy and solicitude for the disadvantaged are touchstones of the authenticity of our Christian religion. Without them, our profession of faith is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Fasting and prayer are an integral part of our Lenten observance, but in the absence of charity they become a grotesque parody of religiosity. Almsgiving is really the queen of Lenten precepts, because charity is what gives sweetness to the incense of our prayers and makes them pleasing to God. Our Lord's response to the tempter, however, reminds us that He has come to do something far more wonderful than turning stones into bread. He has come into the world to transform human hearts from hearts of stone into hearts that are vibrant and overflowing with divine love, in order that we might be moved to share the bread that we have with others. At Mass He does something far more marvellous than turning stones into bread when He transforms bread into Himself. This is so that in consuming the Blessed Sacrament, we might be transformed more perfectly into His likeness.

Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. This month we shall celebrate the feast of St Joseph solemnly with a High Mass and in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio, to mark this year dedicated to the most holy foster father of Our Lord. Nowhere in the Sacred Scriptures is any word spoken by St Joseph ever recorded. He is presented to us rather as a listener, who obeyed the word of God with perfect trust. We should ask St Joseph to accompany us through this Lenten season and to help us to discern what the word of God is speaking to our hearts. The urgent message of the Lenten liturgical texts is “Metanoia”, or profound conversion.

When we are dismissed from our churches at the end of Mass, we are sent out into the world to build the Kingdom of God around us. If we come to Mass in humility, with a recognition of our own neediness before God, if we bring with us our contrition for sins committed and ask for God's forgiveness and assistance, then we shall leave the church transformed and energised by the encounter we have had with God at the Altar in Holy Communion. In the Catholic view, we are all poor and in need of God’s forgiveness. It is this aspect of conversion, repentance and obedience to the word of God that the devil finds so irksome. He knows that even if we devote our whole lives to philanthropy and humanitarian endeavour, we are still his if only he can persuade us to remain in our sins. We must call the devil's bluff. It is once our sins are forgiven and we are on the road to renewed and continuous conversion that our efforts to do good have the power to build the Kingdom of God on earth, and to count towards salvation.

Father Julian Large

February 2021 Letter from the Provost

"Father, what will it be like when we die?" This is a question that priests are used to being asked by both children and adults. A priest is probably just as good a person as anyone to ask. In addition to their theological training on the "Last Things" – Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell – most priests probably have a certain amount of face-to-face experience of death, from tending to members of their flocks in their last moments on earth. One of our great worries at the beginning of the Great Lockdown last spring was that it would be difficult to see those who were gravely ill in hospitals. As it turned out, nursing staff have been excellent about alerting us to the presence in their wards of Catholics in need of sacraments, and in kitting us out with contagion-proof clothing. As Catholics, we should each of us pray every day for the grace of a "good death", with our sins shriven, fortified by the Sacraments and, ideally, with someone to pray with and for us as our souls prepare to meet Our Lord at the moment of Particular Judgment, when our eternal destinies are sealed.

To that increasingly weird and wonderful creature whom German theologians like to call ‘Modern Man’, death is the ultimate affront. For those scientists and social engineers who have convinced themselves that they can save humanity without regard for the laws which Almighty God has written into nature, death can only be an awkward reminder that we cannot compete with the Creator. No scientist or medic has ever yet conquered death, or ever will. In some of the whackier parts of America there are institutions that, for vast sums, will freeze and store human bodies in the conviction that they will soon find a technique to bring them back to life. For a lesser fee one can pay to have just the head frozen, presumably in the expectation that it may one day be attached to the body of a donkey or a goat. To make such quackery sound more scientific, they have given it the name "Cryonics". The truth, however, is that man does not have the gift of life in his possession. He may take life, but he can never revive what he has killed. Christian burial is a testimony to our acknowledgment that our mortal flesh returns to the soil from which God created Adam in Genesis. The Latin word for ‘earth’, or ‘ground’, is ‘humus’. Death is humbling. It reminds us that we are not really in charge.

We might smile at the thought of Silicon Valley oligarchs looking forward to eternity among the frozen veg. But as Catholics we cannot afford to be glib about mortality. Bereavement is one of the most acute psychological agonies a person can suffer, and grief is quite capable of producing physical pathologies. Death is the ultimate divider, which separates us from our loved ones and violates the human being at his most fundamental level as an entity, by sundering body and soul. All of this indicates that at the source of death is that great divider himself, Satan. Our Holy Catholic Faith teaches us that death was never part of God's plan for the human race at all. It is the most radical and terrible consequence of that rebellion of our first parents, when they allowed themselves to be tempted by the devil.

As a stark reminder of our mortality, the ashes which we receive on our heads on Ash Wednesday with the words "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return", are typical of the Church's realism in the face of death. Unlike the modern world, She does not try to conjure death away and out of sight by means of distraction and euphemisms. She confronts it head-on and unapologetically. But the ashes are not merely a memento mori which serve to put us in our place as sinners destined to decomposition in the dust. The whole Lenten season which is launched with this ashing is a preparation for Easter, when the Church celebrates with utmost solemnity Our Lord's definitive and glorious triumph over death in His Resurrection. In Lent we unite ourselves with His Passion through self-denial, so that on Easter Sunday we may participate most fully in the joy of His Resurrection.

We cannot escape death. But in His Resurrection, Our Lord has overcome the lasting power that death might have had over us. He came precisely to reverse the effects of the fall, so that what has been separated as a consequence of Original Sin – our bodies from our souls, and our loved ones from us and from each other – may all be reunited in eternity at the Throne of Grace. Descending into the waters of Baptism, we have already died with Christ and been buried with Him in the tomb. We emerged from those waters of regeneration full of the supernatural life of His Resurrection. Thanks to the Resurrection, and to our insertion into this Mystery in our Baptism, life has the last word over death.

The only serious threat to this new life is self-centredness, through which our enemy the devil may find an entrée into our hearts, and the old Adam of sin is able to reassert his presence within us. Lent is our opportunity to lay siege to self-centredness, so that the supernatural life of the Resurrection is able to take ever greater possession of our hearts and souls. Through prayer we enthrone God at the centre of our lives, through almsgiving we put the needs of others before our own comfort and satisfaction, and through fasting we die to ourselves so that we might have life in all its fullness in Christ. The answer to that question "What will it be like when we die?" is "It depends." What it depends on is how much we becoming used to dying to ourselves now. This Lent, let us ask for the grace to conform ourselves with the death of Jesus, so that we may participate in the glory of the Resurrection at Easter.

Father Julian Large