September 2022 Letter from the Provost

“I am a very spiritual person Father, but I am not religious”. If only the Provost had received five pounds for every time he heard this old chestnut or some variation on it, he could by now have sponsored the long-overdue renovation of the Oratory Church’s lighting fixtures.

The first thing to be said in answer to this bromide is that religion is not a sentiment but a virtue. The human mind is capable of establishing that God exists, that He is infinite in all of His perfections and that everything in Creation receives its being from Him. We do not need Divine Revelation to tell us that every rational creature is therefore bound to render to the Creator the worship that is due to Him as the source of all being and the principle of government of all things.

Lactantius, Christian apologist and mentor of the Emperor Constantine, speculated that the word religion derives from religare, meaning ‘to bind’. Although this particular etymology has been challenged, it certainly expresses a phenomenon that is manifested in diverse ages and cultures – the sense that somehow man’s good relationship with his Creator has been undone and needs to be re-connected. A tie that has been broken needs to be ‘re-bound’.

Left to his own devices, man will devise homemade answers to the quandary he finds himself in, and his own solutions to the problem of his awareness of some need for salvation. He might easily conclude that the existence of evil can be explained by the existence of some lesser malevolent god as well as the good God. Perhaps he will decide that salvation must consist in the spiritual soul somehow struggling free from what he perceives as its imprisonment in flesh and matter, and arriving in a realm of pure spirit, possibly via a process of reincarnation. Here we have the birth of man-made religions. Man’s intellect having reached the boundaries of what can be known by reason alone, it then carries him into the thickets of myth and superstition, a dark realm of gaping chasms where demons lurk in readiness to take advantage of his blindness.

Thank Heavens, the God Who has endowed us with a mind capable of discerning His existence has not left us prey to myth and superstition. He has revealed Himself to us, along with everything we need to know and to do to be saved. The fullness of this Divine Revelation is not some shadowy gnosis, accessible only to an initiated caste of cognoscenti. Neither is it a book. ‘It’ is in fact a Person. The fullness of Divine Revelation is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made man. In the Divine Person of Jesus Christ God has revealed Himself to us as The Way, The Truth and The Life.

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has given to us a very definite religion. On Holy Thursday, we saw how He instituted the Sacrifice and the Sacrament of the Mass, commanding the Apostles whom he ordained to the priesthood on that same occasion to: “Do this is memory of me.” Having on different occasions instituted all seven of the Sacraments, He entrusted their administration and governance to the Apostles, and to their successors the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter. Likewise, the Gospel (the whole body of Catholic teaching) has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the Pope, whose duty is to preserve this ‘Deposit of Faith’ from novelty and to teach it in its fullness in every age.

The devil is spiritual but not religious. As an angel he is pure spirit. According to tradition he set out on life as one of the most splendid angels, the name Lucifer denoting his office as ‘bearer of the light’. And he is distinctly anti-religious. It was an irreligious act of rebellion against the Creator that occasioned his fall from grace. The Jesuit theologian Francisco Suarez is among those who have speculated that this calamity occurred after the angels had been given a preview of the creation of man. The devil was distinctly unimpressed by the idea of glorious spirit being ‘contaminated’ by contact with matter in a lesser creature. When it was further revealed that God would unite Himself with human flesh in the Incarnation, and that the angels would have to bow down and worship the Word made flesh, the thought of such an ‘indignity’ was too much for his pride to bear. The cry “Non serviam!” that issued from the fallen angels as they were expelled from Heaven has echoed throughout history whenever sin has been committed ever since.

Father Suarez’s thesis would certainly help to explain the devil’s particular malevolence towards human beings. It might also throw light on the source of the insidious strains of dualism that have so persistently threatened to pollute the pure milk of Christian doctrine down the centuries.

Our Lord’s Incarnation puts paid to the pernicious notion that spirit is good and flesh is intrinsically evil. The Resurrection of His Body, in which His spirit and flesh were reunited, demolishes the argument that salvation involves the soul freeing itself from matter. His Ascension, body and soul, into Heaven should leave us in no doubt that Heaven is a real place in which our salvation will include the reunion of our bodies and souls for eternal life. Since the Assumption of Our Lady, there are already two bodies that we know of at the Throne of Grace.

Baptism sanctifies not only our souls but also our bodies, because through this Sacrament our bodies become living temples of the Holy Ghost. And so our bodies have an essential part to play in religion. Grace is imparted to our souls by the touch of physical substances such as oil and water to our flesh. We worship God through singing His praises with our lips, and we honour Him on our knees as we adore Him at the Altar. We achieve the higher level of Communion with Our Lord by receiving His Body in Holy Communion.

Through the Incarnation, places and objects take on a role in our sanctification. Whenever someone says: “Father, I can pray to God on a mountain or in the bath, I don’t need to go to church,” one has to explain as patiently as possible that, while praying in the bath is indisputably a laudable habit, you will not very often find the Mystical Body of Christ united around the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary taking place in a bathroom. We can and should pray to God in all places, but there is something unique and irreplaceable about worshipping Him at Mass, especially on a Sunday.

Another type of dualism that many people fall into very easily is the thought that religion which includes worshipping God with beauty and solemnity is somehow incompatible with love of the poor and care for the disadvantaged. The God we honour in the Blessed Sacrament with incense and sacred music is the same God Whom we go out to look for in the needy. The Sacrifice of all sacrifices that is made present on the altar is the main source of strength for all of those acts of self-sacrificial love by which we should strive to bring Our Lord into the lives and hearts of our neighbours.

So please, as Christians, let us not be ashamed to be both spiritual and religious.

Father Julian Large

August 2022 Letter from the Provost

When St Philip died in 1595, all of his possessions were lovingly preserved at the Roman Oratory. To this day they are displayed in the rooms where St Philip lived. Amongst these relics there is an intriguing object that connects St Philip with England. It is an alabaster relief, sculpted in Nottingham in the late Middle Ages, depicting the severed head of St John the Baptist. A faded label describes the dramatic circumstances by which it came to Rome. It was discovered on 7th October in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto, in the cabin of a Turkish sea captain.

The man who rescued that image of the Baptist was a Knight of Malta whose name was Ricci. He brought his booty back with him to Rome, intending to present it to Pope St Pius V as a trophy. But on his way, he called in on St Philip, and as a result of that visit the poor Pope never received his gift. Instead, St Philip persuaded his friend to leave it with him, so that he could venerate it himself. Many years before, St John had appeared to St Philip while he was a young layman, in a vision that convinced him to spend the rest of his long life in Rome.

At first sight, St John, the feast of whose beheading or “decollation” we celebrate at the end of August, and St Philip might not seem to have very much in common. The Baptist was a firebrand, with an impressive line in insults. When the religious hierarchy of his day came to see him baptizing, he called them a “brood of vipers” to their faces. Saint Philip, by contrast, was always a model of meekness and respect before his religious superiors, even though the ecclesiastical culture of Rome when he began his apostolate was a byword for decadence. While there were hellfire and brimstone preachers who stood on the street corners decrying the depravities of the papal court, St Philip’s way was quite different. He was more like a fly-fisherman, who patiently caught souls one by one and reeled them in quite gently to the harbour of salvation. Prelates and cardinals were among those he won to the way of holiness.

On the surface, then, St John the Baptist and St Philip might look like chalk and cheese. But on a deeper interior level, there is a very strong bond that unites them. When St John is assuring his own disciples that he is not the Christ, but is rather the one who has been sent to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, he explains to them: “The friend of the bridegroom, who waits and listens for him, is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:29-30).

In those words of St John, we recognise an intense joy and profound humility, and there is a clue to how humility and joy are intimately connected. Saint John is really the proto-Apostle of Christian joy. He leapt for joy in the womb when the Blessed Virgin, who was carrying Our Saviour in her own womb, visited his mother Elisabeth. Saint Philip Neri, meanwhile, is known the world over as the “Apostle of Joy”. And the Oratory that crystallised around St Philip in his rooms in Rome was a perfect school of Christian humility.

Those of us who take ourselves too seriously would be at risk if St Philip were to appear amongst us now. We would be at risk of being teased and made to look silly. Saint Philip had a perfect horror of self-aggrandisement. When he detected that a senior officer in the Swiss Guard was looking quite pleased with himself in his magnificent uniform during a papal ceremony, St Philip ran up to him in front of everybody and pulled on his beard. When a talented new priest in the Oratory preached brilliantly the first time he went into the pulpit, St Philip ordered him to preach the exact same sermon word for word every Sunday until further notice. As a result, the congregation would groan whenever he appeared and say to each other: “Here comes the father with only one sermon.”

At his death, St Philip’s friends complained that they had no honour left – their spiritual father had taken it all from them. But he always made sure that he was the first victim of his own irony. When a delegation of Polish dignitaries who had been sent by the Pope arrived at the Oratory in the hope of finding a living saint, they discovered St Philip having frivolous pamphlets read aloud to him in the sacristy, and he boasted that it was his spiritual reading.

There was an effervescent sense of fun and spontaneity in all of this. But it also had a serious purpose: “Always humble yourself and abase yourself in your own eyes and in the eyes of others” St Philip would say, “so that you can become great in God’s eyes.” In other words, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” That saying of St John the Baptist could have been engraved on St Philip’s heart. For Philip, humility was a prerequisite for human flourishing. He could not resist deflating pompous people, and this was because he wished to liberate them from the shackles of self-delusion so that they would be free to share in the joy of divine friendship that was the mainstay of his own life.

He must increase, and I must decrease. Those words sum up what Christian humility is all about. Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that the word “humility” comes from the Latin humus, for earth. And if we look in Genesis, we shall see that God made Adam out of the dust of the earth. So, to be humble is nothing more and nothing less than to live in reality. It is to acknowledge that we come from nothing, and all that we have is gift. Read a little further in Genesis, however, and we shall see how the gifts keep coming. It was God Himself who breathed the breath of life into Adam’s face. Read the Scriptures more thoroughly and we shall see that God also intends for us a Divine Likeness, which means supernatural ennoblement and a participation in His Own Life.

This means that there is nothing degrading about Christian humility. Rather it is an indispensable element in the foundation for all of the great blessings that God wishes to build in our lives. Humility is the beginning of genuine self-awareness and of human greatness.

Most of us, at some stage in life, will be afflicted by a nagging sense of our own inadequacy – we certainly should be, unless we are monsters of self-delusion. The way that fallen human nature tends to deal with this is through pride. The proud man exalts himself in the hope that it will provide him with a sense of worth and inner peace. It never does. Even the pagan Greek playwrights knew that hubris was the precursor of tragedy.

Humility liberates us from the insatiable appetite for honours and recognition. If we decrease, by placing Our Lord at the centre of our life, and by honouring our neighbour over ourself, then the Life of Christ will increase within us to overflowing, just as it overflowed in St Philip, and in St John the Baptist.

May we decrease, so that the Life of Our Saviour is able to increase within us. And through the intercession of St Philip and St John the Baptist, may our joy be full in this life and, more importantly, in eternity.

Father Julian Large

July 2022 Letter from the Provost

“I don’t need to confess my sins to a priest when I can communicate directly with God.” This used to be a classic Protestant objection to the Sacrament of Confession. Such is the state of catechetical formation today that you might well hear exactly the same sentiment being expressed by a Mass-going Catholic, unfortunately. It is based on the notion that in the confessional, the priest is somehow a hindrance to a direct relationship with God. And this is really to misunderstand the nature of the Christian religion quite seriously. An object can stand between two things in different ways. Yes, it can be an obstacle that separates them, but it can also be a bridge which unites. The highest priest in pagan Rome was called the Pontifex Maximus, “pontifex” meaning “bridge maker”. Our Lord and Saviour is the bridge builder supreme, because He unites divinity and humanity within His own sacred Person. The Incarnation is therefore the bridge by which we are able to be perfectly united with God.

The whole sacramental economy is rooted in the Mystery of the Incarnation. Other Christian denominations actually realise this in so far as they recognise Baptism as the divinely appointed means of rebirth into the life of the Resurrection. No Christian worthy of the name would suggest that the baptismal water is an obstacle between a Christian and God. It is a visible sign which actually brings about, supernaturally, the invisible grace that it signifies when it is applied in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, washing away our sins and inserting us into the very life of the Blessed Trinity.

The institution of the Sacrament of Penance is beautifully described in the Gospel of St John, in chapter twenty (vv.19 ff.). It occurs when Our Lord appears to His disciples in the upper room after His Resurrection. They are huddled together behind locked doors, in fear for their lives. Jesus appears and says “Peace be to you.” He shows them His wounds, and they are glad to see Him. He repeats: “Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you.” He then breathes on them, saying “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them: and whose sins you shall retain they are retained.” And so begins the extraordinary transformation of the disciples from terrified fugitives to tireless evangelists who will preach the Gospel with irrepressible zeal unto the shedding of their own blood.

It is of the greatest significance that the institution of the Sacrament of Penance took place on Easter Sunday. While in Baptism we are made dead and buried with Christ so that we might rise with Him to everlasting life, in Confession we are raised up from the death of sins committed after Baptism and restored to the state of Sanctifying Grace which is life in the Resurrection. Confessing our sins and receiving sacramental absolution, meanwhile, prepares us for the ultimate encounter with the Resurrection that we can ever experience in this life, the reception of Our living and risen Lord Jesus in the Sacred Host in Holy Communion.

It is a sign of Our Lord’s love and care for our souls that He calls us to Confession, not only to forgive our sins, but also to bless us and to give us the assurance of His enduring friendship and His assistance in our lives. Through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, that divine breath which Our Lord breathed on the Apostles in the upper room is transmitted throughout the Church in all ages so that it may be infused to this day into souls that are weary and heavy-laden. Like the breath that hovered over the waters at the beginning of the universe, and the breath that God breathed into Adam’s face as He formed the first human body from the slime of the earth, this breath is creative and life giving.

It is surely one of the greatest privileges and joys of his vocation for a priest to know that he has been called to participate in the transmission of that creative, life-giving, restorative breath of God, and that he, a sinner, has been appointed to forgive sins and to raise souls to life in persona Christi. Any priest who understands his calling enters the confessional eager to lift burdens, and never to impose them. Sometimes he will find himself hearing the confessions of penitents who for one reason or another are not sure how to make a confession, but who have had the courage to come to the Sacrament. He will be happy to guide and encourage them.

“I don’t need to confess my sins to a priest when I can communicate directly with God.” There is, actually, some truth to this annoying refrain. To paraphrase St Augustine, God binds us by His Sacraments but He himself is not bound by them. Just as there is a “Baptism of desire” and a “Baptism of blood” by which those who have not been sacramentally baptised with water may be saved, so the Church teaches that even the gravest of sins are forgiven by means of “perfect contrition” if we are somehow prevented from confessing to a priest. A perfect act of contrition requires the purest of motives, “sincere sorrow for having offended God, and hatred for the sins we have committed, with a firm purpose of sinning no more” [The Baltimore Catechism]. As it is difficult to discern our own motives thoroughly (only God has access to the hidden secrets of our hearts), the Church insists that we should confess our mortal sins anyway when the opportunity arises, and definitely before receiving Holy Communion. The Sacraments give us certainty. The Sacrament of Penance gives us the confident assurance that we are forgiven, blessed, restored, and ready for the mission of building the Kingdom of God on earth. If it’s a while since you have availed yourself of this wondrous Sacrament, please return.

Father Julian Large

June 2022 Letter from the Provost

The liturgical texts of Eastertide have enabled us to participate in the joy of the Apostles, who enjoyed a precious forty days with Our Lord after His Resurrection, as He talked with them, taught them and dined with them. We have also witnessed the astonishing and wonderful effect that their encounter with our risen Lord had upon them. From fugitives huddled together behind locked doors ‘for fear of the Jews’, they became fearless evangelisers, preaching the news of the Resurrection throughout Jerusalem, even returning to the heart of lions’ den, the Temple. We can imagine the apprehension that the disciples must have felt when Our Lord explained that, after this period of contact and communication with His disciples, He must soon depart. However, He told them not to be sorrowful, but rather to rejoice. And we rejoice not only for God the Son, Who, mission accomplished, would now go to His Father in Heaven; we also rejoice for ourselves, in the knowledge that He has gone to prepare a place for us, taking His humanity and flesh and making Heaven a real ‘place’ for us.

If Our Lord had remained on earth in the form in which He walked and talked with the disciples after His Resurrection, then the Church would necessarily have remained a local phenomenon, focussed on where He happened to be present at any particular time. By His Ascension, He made way for the descent of the Holy Ghost on Our Lady and the Apostles at Pentecost, an event which really marks the birth of the Church as a truly Catholic entity, universally present in every subsequent age and spreading throughout all parts of the earth. Just as the soul maintains a continuity of memory and identity throughout the life of a human being as the individual cells of our bodies die and are replaced, so the Holy Ghost ensures the Church’s organic unity, and Her own continuity of memory and identity in every age, as generations of Catholics come and go.

The Gospel – that is, that Catholic Faith, including everything we need to know and to do to be saved (‘faith and morals’), as contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition – forms what is known as the Deposit of Faith. The Church has always taught that this Deposit of Faith was completed and sealed with the death of the last Apostle. This means that after St John the Evangelist, who died towards the end of the First Century A.D., there would be no new revelation until the return of Our Lord in glory to judge the living and the dead. The teaching mission of the Church, invested in the bishops as successors of the Apostles, is to safeguard, unpack and proclaim this Deposit of Faith in every generation. The presence of the Holy Ghost enables Her to proclaim this holy Gospel with nothing added and nothing subtracted.

Our Lord warned us to expect false prophets teaching in His name. In our own day we witness, and possibly experience ourselves, the spiritual turbulence caused by the stirring up of controversies over settled doctrines, most often in the area of morals. In Germany the dissenters have become so radical and loud that there is talk of open schism, but these problems are by no means confined to the Teutonic world. It is striking how often the innovators claim the Holy Spirit as their guide and inspiration. They should be more cautious: Our Lord has warned us of the dire consequences awaiting those who sin directly against the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The confusion caused by these sterile debates, which dissipates the Church’s missionary energy, suggests that their source is not the Holy Spirit at all, but rather that spirit whom Our Lord identified as a deceiver and a murderer of souls from the beginning.

We must pray for the Church, then, as She navigates these choppy waters. We should, not, however, allow ourselves to be unsettled. If Our Lord has warned us to expect the appearance of hireling shepherds among the flock, then this is to prepare us in order that our faith might be tested and purified. We do not need to be drawn into fruitless controversies. Let the dead bury the dead. We, meanwhile, must look for our salvation and sanctification in living and sharing the Faith that has been taught with constancy and clarity down the centuries, turning our backs on anything that is in contradiction with the Deposit of Faith as received and lived by countless generations of saints. May the Holy Ghost guide, protect and purify the Church Militant, and keep us true to the Faith of our fathers; the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith, undiluted and uncontaminated by ambiguity and error.

Father Julian Large

May 2022 Letter from the Provost

Trying to imagine what Heaven is like must ultimately turn out to be a frustrating exercise. The utter perfection of Heaven and the nature of existence there necessarily transcend all earthly experience. The Holy Scriptures inform us that no mortal man can look upon the face of God and live. To enjoy directly the vision of Almighty God – and this is the essence of life in Heaven – a soul must be elevated to a new level of existence. In Baptism we have already been raised supernaturally to the state of Grace, so that we are able to participate in the life of the Blessed Trinity. And in Our Saviour, Who is God made man, the divine is communicated to us through the medium of His perfect human nature. But to see God face to face in His divine essence we need not only to be in a state of Grace, but to be lifted further again to a new and higher plane altogether – to the state of Glory. This is something that can happen only after we have died and been purified of all remaining effects of sin on our souls.

The Beatific Vision, then, is not really possible for us to visualise with any effectiveness. The Ascension of Our Lord, which we celebrate this month, does however make a great difference to our limited perception of Heaven. It brings Heaven much closer to us. When Christ ascended there, He did not leave His humanity behind. He ascended in His Body, taking His full humanity with Him. This means that human flesh is now enthroned at the right hand of the Father. The marks of the wounds from His Passion may have been glorified as a sign of His triumph over suffering and death, but those wounds are still present, as an everlasting testimony of His tender love for each one of us.

As a Mystery of the Faith, the Ascension serves to humble our human reason. When philosophers deign to acknowledge the existence of God, they consider it more ‘rational’ to suppose that, being a spirit, God is in every place, and in no one place more than any other. As Christians we can answer yes, maybe, but on a certain day in the history of our world, this pure supreme Spirit adopted our human nature and united Himself with our human flesh in the Incarnation, and since His glorious Ascension, He reigns in that flesh in Heaven. If we were left in any doubt about the implications of this for our own bodies, then the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin body and soul into Heaven at the end of Her earthly life is our guarantee that our bodies as well as our souls have been created for everlasting life. A body does not exist in just a ‘state’ but in a place, and so the presence of at least two bodies in Heaven makes it a real place for us, albeit a place in which our bodies are to be perfected, ‘spiritualised’ and glorified forever.

Since Our Lord’s Ascension, the Church has lived in eager expectation of His return in Glory. It is at this ‘Second Coming’ that our mortal remains will be raised from the dust to be reunited with our souls in eternity (we pray, in Heaven). Meanwhile, we must carry on our earthly lives in a realm of light and shadows. Look at the world today. Of course, there are great opportunities that never existed before, including opportunities for doing good that never existed before. But there is also much anxiety at the present time, and fear about what the future holds. In this fallen world, earthbound solutions to human problems often take us to the abyss of conflict and all the miseries which attend it. Many live in terror of death and injury from war and terrorism. And if our vision, as Christians, is allowed to become earthbound, then we shall easily end up disheartened, debilitated, and of little use in building the Kingdom of God in the here-and-now.

Meditating on Our Lord’s Ascension liberates us from this earthbound mentality. When injustice and hubris seem to be gaining the upper hand down here, we raise our eyes to Heaven and we receive hope and courage from the knowledge that justice, humility and charity will ultimately prevail. In sickness we are sustained by the knowledge that in Heaven these broken and worn-out bodies will be renewed and made whole, released from earthly frailties forever. In the pain of bereavement, we live in the hope of reunion, in Christ, with those whom we have loved and lost for a while. In conflict, we receive the courage to fight for a just peace, in the knowledge that even if the odds seem stacked against us, the ultimate victory must be on the side of justice.

At the Roman Oratory, a Father who died a few years ago used to tell the congregation that if they wanted to imagine what Heaven is like they should look up at the interior of the dome in the Chiesa Nuova to the magnificent frescoes depicting Our Lord, Our Lady and St Philip surrounded by a host of angels and saints. This masterpiece by Pietro da Cortona is probably as close as we shall come in this life to a vision of what awaits those who die in God’s friendship. The artworks in the sanctuary of the London Oratory church are not quite in the same league, but surely only the most stringent aesthete would deny they possess devotional value. Next time you come into our church, please make time to meditate on the images of the angels and saints in the presence of Almighty God, and allow your hearts to be lifted heavenwards.

Father Julian Large

April 2022 Letter from the Provost

Insofar as it is an excessive exultation of human achievements and capabilities, triumphalism can only ever be an impediment to the Church’s mission. Any deviation from the path of humility exemplified in the life and ministry of Our Saviour inevitably takes us into a dead end in which we cannot expect Him to bless our efforts. Being members of the Church Militant on earth involves struggling, with God’s grace, against our own frailties, and allows no quarter to any sense of self-sufficiency. Convincing ourselves of our own invincibility is a hubris that inevitably carries us to the precipice of failure.

The Church’s celebration of Easter, however, is exceedingly and unabashedly triumphal. At the Easter Vigil the organ thunders loud and clear and an explosion of bells fills the church at the intonation of the Gloria, while altars decked with reliquaries and ornaments are made to resemble ancient Roman trophy monuments. This is exactly how it should be. The threefold Alleluia sung before the Gospel, and all the liturgical accoutrements which make the solemn paschal liturgy unique and beautiful, are not meant to extol any achievement of man. We are rejoicing, with as much splendour as we can muster on earth, in the definitive triumph of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ over sin and death. What is there not to celebrate?

Nevertheless, an observer from outside our religion might well question our sanity. What, he might ask two thousand years after the event, do we have to show today for Our Lord’s conquest over evil in the tomb? Renewed conflict in Europe, with reports of appalling cruelty and suffering, must surely cast a shadow over our celebrations? Meanwhile, the anticipation with which we have been looking forward to Easter will, for Christians in some parts of the world, have been marred by a severe sense of trepidation. In recent years they have become used to the fact that terrorists launch their most deadly attacks on churches during great feasts while large crowds are worshipping together. And within the Church, it sometimes seems as if a political culture of spin and prevarication is in danger of derailing the proclamation of the Gospel and the credibility that only comes through transparency and clarity. Perhaps this indicates a curiously modern form of triumphalism, which attempts to exercise power by means of worldly wiles rather than trusting in the power of the Incarnate Truth.

Despite appearances, however, the triumph of the Resurrection is definitive. It means that the outcome of the final conflict between good and evil, which will reach its denouement when Our Lord returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, is already decided. The devil and his angels are to be cast into hell forever. Every battle which occurs between now and then is a skirmish. Yes, Satan and his legions continue to wage ferocious guerrilla warfare against the reign of the King of Kings, and at times it looks as if we are losing ground. What matters in eternity, however, is not that we have been seen by the world to be victorious, but rather that we ally ourselves with the side to which we know the ultimate victory has already been granted. God does not tell us we have to be successful, but He does require that we remain faithful. The Resurrection of Our Lord, and His Ascension Body and Soul into Heaven where He has prepared a place for us, assure us where that final triumph lays.

At the beginning of Lent, Our Lord went into the wilderness, inspired by the Holy Ghost. There the devil promised Him success if he only He would impress Jerusalem by turning stones into bread and throwing Himself off the roof of the Temple into the arms of angels, and even offered Him all the kingdoms of the earth on condition that he bow down and worship him. God the Son, however, had not come to snatch possession of this world by means of novelties and gestures, or to conduct backdoor diplomacy with the enemy of mankind. Rather, He came to purchase humanity back by paying the price of our sins in an offering of perfect love on the Cross. His Resurrection, and His promise to us that we may participate eternally in the life of this Resurrection, are the guarantee that the Sacrifice on Calvary was effective and that we are able to be saved.

If triumphalism is incompatible with the meekness personified in Our Lord, defeatism is equally detrimental to the Church’s mission. We become defeatist when we recognise our own propensity to sin, the evils embedded in our society, or the wickedness of a godless regime, and tell ourselves that these evils are here to stay and so we might as well accommodate them. The Resurrection means that evil has a very definite sell-by date. With God’s assistance, we must combat it at all costs if we wish to be part of the Church Triumphant in Heaven.

Fr Julian Large

March 2022 Letter from the Provost

Our holy father St Philip liked to tell anyone who tried to praise him that they would one day see him hanged in Rome. Those hearing this who outlived him for long enough would have seen this strange prophecy come true on 12th March 1622, when his effigy was emblazoned on a banner suspended from the interior of the dome of St Peter's Basilica for his canonisation. This ceremony has been described as the most impressive event of its kind in the history of the Church. Canonisations at this time were few and far between. Only three saints had been raised to the altars between 1492 and 1587, each at separate ceremonies. In March 1622, St Philip's banner was accompanied by those of St Ignatius Loyola, St Francis Xavier, St Teresa of Ávila and St Isidore Agricola. Afterwards, the Romans quipped with characteristic chauvinism that Pope Gregory XV had canonised four Spaniards and a saint.

This month, we celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of this magnificent occasion in the life of the Church and of the Oratory. The Oratory Parish Magazine from April 1922 contains detailed information of the tercentenary celebrations when 'the children of St Philip gathered in their thousands' in the church. The author of the account writes that finding the Oratory in such a festal mode on a Sunday in Lent, strangers coming into the church 'may well have thought that we had all gone mad'. Even those visitors who did not question the sanity of the Fathers may have been a little startled to hear the Alleluia being sung at the High Mass during the penitential season. 1922 was a particularly significant anniversary, being marked in Rome by the transference of St Philip's body to a new crystal casket, which was carried in solemn procession through the quarters of Rome most associated with the saint, before being placed under the altar in St Philip's chapel at the Chiesa Nuova.

Three of the Spaniards canonised with St. Philip were his contemporaries: St Teresa of Ávila, St Ignatius Loyola and St Francis Xavier. While still a layman in Rome in the 1540s, Philip made the acquaintance of St Ignatius, whose face he described as 'resplendent', and who nicknamed him 'the bell'. St Ignatius seems to have meant by this that just as a church bell summons others into church while remaining in the belfry, so St Philip directed men into the religious life (including a good number into the Society of Jesus), while remaining outside himself. The Society of Jesus had been formally established in 1540, and St Francis Xavier, the Church's greatest missionary since St Paul, had been hard at work evangelising heathens in the east for a good decade by the time St Philip was ordained to the priesthood in 1551. As the first Oratory crystallised around him in his rooms at the church of San Girolamo Della Carità, where his disciples came for confession, prayer and meditation on the word of God, the reading out loud of letters sent back to Rome from the Jesuit missionaries in the East became a staple part of the early exercises of the Oratory.

For St Philip and his companions, the hardships endured by the Jesuit missionaries were reminiscent of the trials faced by the early Christian martyrs whose relics were being excavated in the Roman Catacombs at this time to be distributed around Christendom for the veneration of the faithful. So inspired were the members of the embryonic Oratory that they resolved to offer themselves for missionary service overseas, where they prayed that God would give them the grace to shed their blood in the service of the Gospel. This was not to be. A Cistercian mystic informed St Philip that his Indies would be Rome, where his mission was to contribute to the renewal of holiness within the eternal city. As the Oratory became a force within its own right in the glorious revival in the Church's life which came to be called the Counter-Reformation, St Philip faced many tribulations, misunderstandings, calumnies and, on occasion, downright persecution at the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities. Throughout these challenges, the trials endured by St Francis Xavier and the agonies which the Jesuit missionaries faced on their missions always remained a source of inspiration and encouragement to St Philip and the early Oratorians.

On Saturday 12th March, we shall celebrate a Solemn High Mass at 11am to mark the quatercentenary of the canonisation of St Philip, in gratitude especially for all of the blessings which the intercession our holy father has gained for us at the London Oratory. We share our joy with the Society of Jesus, remembering the significant, if indirect, contribution the missionary efforts of Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier made to the formation of our own institute; and with the Carmelites, as we all give thanks for St Teresa of Ávila and the extraordinary enrichment of the Church's spiritual life which God achieved through her. In these troubled times, we beg the intercession of Our Lady, St Philip and all the four Spaniards canonised with him, especially for peace in the world. By the grace of God, may the Oratory still be ministering to the faithful in Brompton in 2122 for the 500th anniversary, and beyond.

Father Julian Large

February 2022 Letter from the Provost

We have been given various images of the Church which help us to understand what it means to be Christian and Catholic. One such image is that of the Church as the Barque of Peter, in which we are carried through the choppy waters of this world with the assurance that, as long as we hold tight and remain on board, then we shall never be shipwrecked, fiercely though the waves and storms might crash.

Another image is that of the Church as the Bride of Christ. This emphasises the indissolubility of the union between Our Lord and His Church, which was born mystically from the wound in His side on the Cross, just as Eve was formed from the side of Adam in Genesis.

But perhaps the most informative image of the Church, and the one that gives us the deepest understanding of how we are made members of the Church and how we live in the Church, is to be found in the Epistles of St Paul, who tells us that the Church is the Body of Christ. We are incorporated into that Body as living members in our Baptism.

This divinely inspired analogy furnishes us with rich material for reflection. The human body is made of a finely balanced concoction of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, with smaller amounts of potassium, sulphur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium. Break us down into our basic physical components and separate us into test tubes and we each end up resembling one of those chemistry sets that as children we all asked for at Christmas so that we could construct home-made explosives in our parents’ attics.

What binds all of those chemicals and minerals into a single functioning organism is that principle of life which we call the soul. And what makes us a human person is a rational, soul, which not only gives us physical life, but which is spiritual and immortal.

When Saint Paul says that we are members of the Body of Christ, he means that we are incorporated into Christ just as completely as our heart, our brain and our eyes are incorporated into us, by the principle of life which makes us not just a pile of chemicals but a unified living organism. The principle of life that binds the members of the Church into one Body is supernatural. It is Sanctifying Grace – the Life of Our Risen Saviour Himself, poured into our hearts in Baptism. Our Lord is the Head of this Mystical Body to which we belong. This Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church are one and the same thing.

If you want to read more about this, there is a magnificent encyclical called Mystici Corporis Christi which was published in 1943, during the Second World War, by His Holiness Pope Pius XII. It is written with great clarity and coherence, and is freely available online, including on the Vatican website (Vatican.va).

This teaching that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ has wonderful implications. In a human body, our cells are constantly dying and being replaced, so that by the end of a long life, most of our cells will have died and been replaced several times; yet we remain the same person because, although the physical material of our body might have changed, we retain a continuity of identity and memory.

Likewise in the Church, the Faithful come and they go, and all the while the Church retains Her own identity and Her own memory. There have been roughly fifty generations of the human race since the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Our Lord. And yet the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are as fresh in the Church's memory as if they happened within the last week. Indeed, at Holy Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present on the altar during the words of Consecration, and Our Lord feeds us with His Risen Living Body in Holy Communion. We are fed with His Body so that we might be made ever-stronger members of His Mystical Body, the Church. He transforms bread into His own Flesh so that when we consume that Flesh, we are in turn transformed more perfectly into His likeness. It is through this sanctification that the Church on earth is made strong and holy.

This is a supernatural reality of which we must never lose sight. When we look at the Church, we see that She has many problems and wounds. Witnessing this, and living through these problems – especially when so many of them seem to be self-inflicted – it is easy to become hypercritical. But the spirit of hypercriticism soon dissipates our energy, so that we end up becoming a part of the problem, rather than a solution to the malaise. This can only be a victory for the devil, who aims to neutralise our evangelical zeal by dragging us down into bitterness, apathy and despair. Let us not give him any satisfaction. There is actually something very practical and positive that we can all do for the Church, and this is to say yes, in the depth of our hearts, to the call to discipleship and to sanctification that we all received in our Baptism.

A body is only as strong and healthy as its individual organs, limbs and cells. If we really want to help the Church, then we should look to our own spiritual health. So yes, in many ways the Church on earth is in a frightful mess. But if we make sure that we are healthy, functioning cells in the Mystical Body of Christ, then we shall do all in our power, by God's grace, to contribute to the restoration and the healing of this body. And we shall then participate in the full glory of the Mystical Body of Christ forever in Heaven, where the Church Militant on earth and the Church Suffering in Purgatory will one day be subsumed into the Church Triumphant for eternity.

Father Julian Large

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