October 2023 Letter from the Provost

The Holy Scriptures are so full of angels that we should not be surprised if our Bibles suddenly sprout feathery wings and flutter into the air. And at this time of year, the Church’s liturgical calendar is replete with angelic feasts. To the annoyance and inconvenience of the Oratory Parish Magazine’s poor editor, this letter is being written on the feast of St Michael the Archangel, days after the deadline designed to ensure the arrival of the printed editions in time for the beginning of October. On 2nd October we celebrate the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels. The 24th of the month is the feast of the Archangel St Raphael, who according to the Book of Tobit guided young Tobias by the hand on his perilous journey into Persia, along with Tobias’ dog. This inspired Fr Faber to make St Raphael the patron of the London Oratory’s noviciate, so that he might accompany the novices through their three-year journey towards becoming full-fledged Oratorians. For complicated logistical reasons the Archangel was later replaced in this role by St Wilfrid, but at least St Raphael remains patron of the fund which pays for the training of our candidates for the Sacrament of Holy Order.

We know of the existence of angels with certainty through Divine Revelation. Even without the Gospel, however, we might have guessed at their presence. In Creation we observe a clear hierarchy of being. At the base of the pyramid is inanimate nature, from which we progress to plant and then animal life, eventually reaching the pinnacle of the physical universe where we find man, who combines within himself both the material and the spiritual. It would seem to make sense that the immense gulf between man and God, Who is pure spirit and infinite, should be occupied by created finite spirits ordered within their own divinely appointed hierarchy. And so we find references to angels even in the false religions, and especially today in New Age superstition.

Those of us who have been blessed with the benefit of true religion know that we must be discriminating in our dealings with the angelic realm, divided as it is between the Holy Angels who worship at the Throne of Grace and those rebels who fell with Lucifer in revolt against the Creator. Any gift must be freely given and freely received and so, like us, the angels needed an opportunity to accept or decline Sanctifying Grace and freely to embrace the ultimate gift of Glory in Heaven which, once received, can never be forfeited. Lucifer & co seem to have become indignant at the prospect of God mixing messy matter with glorious spirit in the creation of man, and to have taken an even dimmer view of the Incarnation, in which the Divine Nature itself would be “contaminated” (in the devil’s opinion) by union with human flesh. Realising that he would be required to bow before and adore the Incarnate Word, Lucifer cried “I will not serve”, and that howl of “Non serviam” has reverberated from the deepest caverns of hell ever since.

We thank God, then, that St Michael, who cast Satan and the rebellious angels out of Heaven before the creation of this world, has also been given the power to imprison the demons in hell for eternity at the Final Judgement when Our Lord returns in glory. Meanwhile, we occupy a battlefield in which the enemies with which we must contend consist not only of the temptations and trials presented by this fallen world around us and the vagaries of our own human nature wounded by Original Sin, but also of principalities and powers made up of spiritual beings that regard us with profoundly malicious loathing. The outcome of this war, however, has already been secured. We must just make sure that we are allied to the side to which victory in the final conflict is assured.

The Holy Angels are a great example to us of humility. They are closer to God than us and considerably higher in the hierarchy of nature, and yet in perfect obedience to God’s will they exercise themselves in the service of our well-being. Thus we find St Raphael guiding Tobias, St Gabriel visiting the Blessed Virgin to announce God’s plan for our redemption, and St Michael flying to our assistance whenever we invoke his protection. Thus we are each accompanied throughout this life by a holy Guardian Angel, whose company and friendship we do well to cultivate. The fallen angels have no direct access to the hidden secrets of our hearts. Confident that our Guardian Angels know what is good for us better than we do ourselves, we can grant to them a distinct advantage over our spiritual foes by inviting them to read our hearts.

In our October Devotions, the Litany of Loreto also reminds us of the extraordinary privilege that has been given to one human creature, when we invoke the Mother of God under Her beautiful title “Queen of Angels”. May we imitate the Holy Angels in their humility, and invoke their aid and protection in all the circumstances of our lives. And may the intercession of Our Lady gain for us a place with them at the Throne of Grace in eternity.

Father Julian Large

September 2023 Letter from the Provost

Reading the account of Our Lord’s encounter with the Canaanite woman in The Gospel of St Matthew (15:21-28), we might well be surprised by the tone of their exchange. Our Lord Jesus, whom we know to be the living embodiment of charity and tenderness towards the needy, seems to insult this poor woman mercilessly. First, she approaches Him crying “Have mercy, O Lord, Son of David!” and she explains that her daughter is severely possessed by a demon. What a terrible affliction. And yet Our Lord cuts her dead. The disciples urge Him to send her away, because she is making such a nuisance of herself. And when she kneels at His feet and implores His help, He replies that it is not fair to give the bread of children (He means the bread of the children of Israel) to dogs. It would be hard to imagine a ruder rebuke.

Once we are told the outcome of this extraordinary conversation, however, it seems that Our Lord was employing playfulness all along. For the Jews, the Canaanites were just about the most despised of all gentiles. In the Book of Joshua, we read that God had commanded the Jews entering the Promised Land to eradicate any Canaanites they discovered there, so that the moral depravity and superstition of these pagans might not contaminate and corrupt God’s Chosen People. In the days of Our Lord’s ministry, it was apparently usual for Jews to call descendants of any surviving Canaanites dogs.

In insulting this woman who approached Him, Our Lord was playing up to the caricature of how His fellow Jews, and His own disciples, might have expected Him to behave. Meanwhile He was allowing this female gentile – from a despised pagan tribe – to manifest her faith in Him. The call to Conversion, and Faith, are supernatural gifts from God. In addressing Him as “Lord” and “Son of David”, and in begging Him for mercy, she was manifesting her conversion to true religion, uniting herself in faith to the One Who has declared Himself to be the Way, the Truth and the Life.

In response to her conversion and her request, Our Lord praises her for her faith, and He Who possesses invincible authority over the whole of Creation, physical and spiritual, immediately frees her daughter from the demon that has taken possession of her soul.

It should come as no surprise that the woman’s daughter has been possessed by a demon. The Canaanites were idol-worshippers, and pagan practices predispose the soul to demonic influence, and sometimes even possession. The Fathers of the Church – those early theologians who unpacked and articulated the Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Apostles – taught that the idols of the pagans were infested with demons, who were all too ready to take advantage of those who opened the doors of their hearts to them in false worship.

It has been said that when men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, but rather become capable of believing in anything. The vacuum left by the retreat of true religion from so many areas of public life in our own society is replaced by ever more weird and not so wonderful forms of neo-paganism and nature-worship.

Our Lord warns us that the devil often disguises himself as an angel of light. Sometimes we can expect to find the demons lurking in the supposedly secular idols of diversity, equality and inclusivity – idols which have been enthroned in almost all of our once-venerable institutions, and to which we seem expected to render complete submission. But while the camouflage of the demons might adapt itself to the colours of the day, the intention of the fallen angels is always the same: to gain entry into our hearts, to distort and disfigure that divine image emblazoned on the soul which is the glory of every human being, and ultimately to deprive us of our salvation. Dabbling in the occult, by playing with Ouija boards and tarot cards, or consulting fortune tellers and mediums, is of course an open invitation to the devil to create havoc in our lives.

Too much interest in the demonic is unhealthy, and gives undeserved attention to the devil. For most of us it is enough to be aware of where the dangers lie and to avoid them like deadly poison. We should cultivate the friendship and the assistance of the Holy Angels, and especially our Guardian Angels. The fallen angels tremble in the presence of St Michael, and fell in terror at the invocation of the Queen of Angels, whose birthday we celebrate this month.

So what can we learn from the Canaanite woman in this Gospel account? First of all to be grateful, if we have been blessed with the gift of faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who frees us from the power of the forces of darkness, and Who heals us and makes us whole when we ask for His assistance. We also learn from this woman to be persistent in our prayers. If it seems that God is ignoring us, or even that He is treating us roughly and rudely, then we should never lose heart. Rather we should redouble our petitions, in the confidence that He hears us, and is purifying our Faith so that our hearts will be prepared to receive His blessings in full abundance.

Father Julian Large

August 2023 Letter from the Provost

We are all familiar with the parable of the sower, who distributes his seed with such varying success. Our Lord helpfully unpacks and explains this particular parable for us, teaching us how to interpret His parables in general.

Something we might bear in mind is that in the ancient world, even more than now, seed was a highly precious commodity. In the days before combine harvesters, the seeds of crops had to be gathered at considerable expense of time and effort. In the parable of the sower, however, we see the seed being dispersed with great generosity, and even abandon – so much so that a good deal of it ends up being scattered along the pathway, or on earth too shallow to support a root system. And yet the sower continues in the confidence that, however much seed goes to waste, the crop that eventually grows to maturity will have made his efforts worthwhile.

The living and life-giving seed of the Gospel, and the salvation it brings, is also a commodity that comes to us at great cost. Its price is, in fact, Our Lord’s own Precious Blood. When Mel Gibson’s remarkable film The Passion of the Christ was released in London in 2004, the Oratory fathers booked a cinema in Chelsea so that we could attend as a parish. It was a memorable evening for various reasons. At the beginning of the viewing someone sitting near the Provost of the day complained that his view of the screen was obstructed by a sizeable statue of Our Lady of Fatima, complete with crown, which had been placed on the chair in front of him. Hearing his remonstrations, the statue’s owner turned around to inform him politely but firmly that Our Lady’s ticket had been paid for with good money, and so the Mother of God had as much right to a seat as everyone else. As we spilt onto the King’s Road afterwards, a number of parishioners remarked that one moment in the film which they had found especially harrowing was the scourging at the pillar, in which Our Lord’s Body was beaten and flayed like wheat on the threshing floor, until the courtyard of the Praetorium resembled a glistening crimson lake of blood. During that scene there was one person in the crowd who seemed to realise the value of what had been spilt. It was Our Lord’s Blessed Mother, who fell to Her knees to soak up the blood of Her Son with linen cloths. The message was clear: each and every drop of that Precious Blood was valuable beyond words.

Those of us who have been baptized have received a most precious blessing – and one which bears its fullest fruits in eternity. At our Baptism, the supernatural gifts (“Theological Virtues”) of Faith, Hope and Charity were planted like little seeds within us. And our godparents made the promise to tend and nurture those seeds and bring them to fruition. The heart of a newly baptised infant actually provides very fertile ground for the nurturing of these precious seeds. Perfectly pure and innocent, there is nothing within a young child to stand in the way of the fullness of God’s life and His love. And so a newly baptised child is in fact brimming over with the Sanctifying Grace which is the life of God. Whenever we feel that sanctity is distant from our hearts, then, we should perhaps remind ourselves that when we were baptised, we were each one of us made saints, at least for a time.

Perils to our salvation then arise as we mature. That is when the seedlings that were planted so safely and securely in our infancy have to contend with thorns and the scorching rays of the sun, such that the supernatural life that was infused into us in childhood can be in danger of being stunted or even suffocated.

We should reflect, often, on the value of those seeds that were planted in our hearts and souls in Baptism. With God’s help we need to tend what has been sown within us carefully, pruning away and uprooting the thorns and thickets of vices and unhelpful worldly attachments that threaten to throttle the supernatural life of the soul. We need to pray for the strength to chase away the predatory birds of temptation, which would snatch those seeds from us; we need to turn away from the blinding scorching light of all that information (so much of it misinformation or downright disinformation) with which we are dazzled by the media, and focus our attention towards that light of the Gospel which feeds our Faith, the light that strengthens our Hope, and the light that teaches us to love God above all else and to recognise and honour His image in our neighbour so that Charity is brought to perfection within us.

During this month of the Blessed Virgin’s glorious Assumption into Heaven, let us ask for Our Lady’s intercession to gain for us a true appreciation of the value of the graces that we have been given, and to use them well.

Father Julian Large

July 2023 Letter from the Provost

Father Hugh Barrett-Lennard, who died just six days short of his ninetieth birthday in 2007, is remembered with great fondness by those who encountered him during his sixty-two years at the Oratory. In addition to a host of remarkable qualities, he was endowed to an uncommonly high degree with the attractive gift of seeing the best in his fellow human creatures. As a chaplain in one of London’s tougher jails, he organised annual Corpus Christi processions within the prison precincts. The four “lifers” whom he trained to carry the canopy over the Blessed Sacrament might have been notorious violent criminals in the eyes of their warders. To Father Barrett-Lennard they were a quartet of “the most excellent gentlemen – impeccably pious Catholics”.

One Holy Week about twenty-five years ago the ceremonies in the Oratory church were disturbed by a heckler, whose protests reached a resounding crescendo during the Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday. Removing his cotta in the sacristy afterwards, Father Barrett-Lennard remarked “It was decent of that fellow to cheer us on, but he might have chosen a more appropriate moment to shout, ‘Long live the Oratory!’” It had to be explained that what might have sounded like “Long live the Oratory!” to the innocent ears of Father Barrett-Lennard was actually “Pagan idolatry!”

Mercifully such interruptions of our liturgical functions tend to be quite rare occurrences. There was, however, an incident during last month’s Corpus Christi celebrations which left a number of parishioners feeling unsettled. As the Blessed Sacrament procession made its way towards the front of the church after leaving the courtyard of Oratory House and proceeding along the pavement of the Brompton Road, the face of a pedestrian who was approaching head-on became animated with indignation and he began to protest quite vigorously. Entering the church and processing up the nave it was still possible to hear cries of “You Catholics will burn in hell!” coming from the street.

It should not surprise us if our religious practices sometime elicit hostile reactions from those who have not been blessed with the light of our Catholic Faith. To non-Christians who are zealous for the honour of their particular deity, our belief in the Blessed Trinity can easily seem like the polytheism of pagans, and the worship that we offer to Our Lord Jesus like a shocking blasphemy. Is it so strange that to a convinced Protestant the adoration that we lavish on the Blessed Sacrament (the “Latria” that is due to God alone), and the veneration with which we honour Our Lady and the saints, should seem to be flagrant idolatry?

And so we must strive be patient with the hecklers, and charitable towards those whose consciences make them feel duty bound to protest. The vehement objection of the man whose religious sensibilities are inflamed by the sight of us adoring what he sincerely believes to be a wafer of bread probably indicates that he is more solicitous of God’s honour than those who politely step out of the way of our processions with their gazes glued to telephone screens, as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening around them. In the view of our founding Provost Father Faber, the tepidity of the indifferent was a more formidable obstacle to evangelisation than the hot-blooded animosity of protestors. When the first generation of Brompton Oratorians were fixing riot shutters to the ground floor of the Oratory House in the 1850s, he told them not to worry themselves unduly, adding “the first brick through the window will be the sign that the message is getting through.”

Having been a fanatical persecutor of the early Christians, St Paul became “Apostle to the Gentiles” and the most effective missionary in the history of our Church. One of the most implacable and vociferous opponents of the Church in more recent times, meanwhile, was the Jewish Frenchman Alphonse Ratisbonne, whose railings against the Mystical Body of Christ on earth are not suitable for repetition in a family publication. Thanks to a divine intervention which involved the prayers of his Catholic acquaintances, the recitation of the Memorare, the Miraculous Medal, and apparitions of a black dog and Our Lady, he received the Faith miraculously in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, on 20th January 1842. After baptism, he trained for the priesthood, becoming Father Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, S.J., and founded an order devoted to missionary work among his fellow Jews.

Those familiar with the life of our holy father St Philip will be aware of the numerous instances in which his patience, charity and prayers gained the souls of those who had come to mock and to obstruct the work of the first Oratory in Rome. So let us ask Our Lady and St Philip to fortify our intercessions with their own, as we pray for the hecklers who occasionally raise their voices, along with those who sometimes vandalise the fabric of the church. Pray that the zeal which makes them so obnoxious in their ignorance will be transformed by the gift of the Faith into a burning devotion that sanctifies and saves their souls, and contributes to the mission of God’s Church on earth.

Father Julian Large

June 2023 Letter from the Provost

Everyday language inevitably fails us when it comes to expressing the Mysteries of our holy Catholic Faith. The first sign that we are beginning to penetrate more deeply into the truths of Divine Revelation is when words fail us and we are left speechless in wonder before the Majesty of Almighty God. 

When this happens, it is time to let the Church’s Sacred Liturgy take over. Never is this more true than on the great Feast of Corpus Christi. The flowers strewn in the path of the Blessed Sacrament, the incense and genuflections that accompany the procession, and the solemn enthronement of the Sacred Host in a monstrance over the altar all testify more poignantly than any words to our firm belief that the King of Kings is present. 

But how is He present? And how can we possibly justify lavishing what appears to be the adoration reserved for God alone on something that seems to onlookers to be at best a humble symbol of the Body of Christ?  

In order to explain why it is appropriate to offer the highest level of worship to the Blessed Sacrament – adoration, or latria – we have no choice but to resort to human language. The most basic answer we can offer must be something like this: “We offer the adoration due to God alone to the Sacred Host because we believe that the Sacred Host is God.”   

In describing how God is present on earth we cannot do any better than revisiting what has been said already, by saints, Doctors, and the Church in Her own solemn definitions. Theologians talk about the Blessed Sacrament in terms of the “Real Presence”. This distinguishes Our Lord’s Presence on the Altar from all those other ways in which He is truly present. As The Second Person of the Trinity, He is of course everywhere at all times. He is also present in the Church which is His own Mystical Body, and He lives in the heart of anyone who is in a state of grace. When we talk about His Real Presence in the tabernacle, however, we mean that He is actually with us in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.   

This Real Presence is also referred to as a “Sacramental Presence”. This tells us that Christ’s Presence on the Altar is realised and remains hidden under the signs of bread and wine. It is only through faith that we know He is there: He has said “This is my Body”, and we take Him at His word. 

The Church offers us an expression, one that actually describes the process by which Our Lord’s Real and Sacramental Presence comes about: Transubstantiation. 

The doctrine of Transubstantiation describes how the substances of bread and wine are actually transformed into Our Lord’s Living Body and Blood. Only the “accidents” – the taste, smell, colour and texture – of bread and wine remain. This means that in the Blessed Sacrament there is not only a Real Presence, but also a real absence. The substances of bread and wine are no longer there. The little white wafer has given way to the Sacred Host. The liquid in the chalice has become the Precious Blood. 

This is why we are able to offer to the Blessed Sacrament the worship due only to our Creator. To adore bread, however solemnly that bread had been blessed, would be idolatry; but we can, and must, adore the Host because the Host is the Living God. 

Our Lord comes to the altar in this way primarily to feed us, so that we can enjoy a union with Him that is more complete and intimate than any other union this side of the Beatific Vision in Heaven. He also remains on the Altar outside of the Mass so that He may be carried to the sick and dying; and He abides on the altar so that we may worship Him. 

We have Our Lord’s assurance that there is nothing demeaning about Christian worship: “I do not call you servants,” He says in the Gospel of St John; “I call you friends.” (Jn 15:15) This friendship with Christ is made possible because He shares His own Divine Life with us in the Sacrament of Baptism. The glory that we praise in God is a Glory in which we ourselves have been called to participate, and to be transformed by, in Heaven. The Blessed Sacrament is the token par excellence of Our Saviour’s friendship. 

No friendship can survive for very long without communication.  For this reason, the Church provides many beautiful prayers for us to use in front of the Blessed Sacrament. We need never be afraid, however, of using our own poor words, telling our Friend in the Blessed Sacrament what is on our minds. If we are afraid, ask His protection. If there is some recurring temptation that seems impossible to resist, ask Him to reach into our hearts to break the chains of bad habits with the invincible solvent of Divine Grace. 

While there is a time for speaking, however, there must also be time for silence. The need for constant chatter in any relationship is a sign of insecurity. The ability to rest in the presence of the other indicates that our friendship has reached greater maturity. 

These days we are blessed to have churches, in London at least, that are open during the day. Catholics who suffered during the centuries of persecution would have rejoiced to know that this would once again be possible. At Tyburn Convent near Marble Arch, close to the spot where so many of them were martyred, the Blessed Sacrament is even exposed for adoration throughout the night. Our forebears in the Faith surely plead with us now from Heaven never to take any of this for granted. When we see the open door of a Catholic Church and a light flickering before the Tabernacle, we should always go in, if only for a few moments. Open our hearts before our Friend in the Blessed Sacrament and allow Him to refresh us with His peace, His joy, His love. 

Father Julian Large

May 2023 Letter from the Provost

It is surely a grace of Divine Providence that the feast of our holy father St Philip falls within the month that is so sweetly fragranced by its dedication to Our Blessed Lady. Saint Philip’s whole life and apostolate was lived under Her mantle. His disciples recounted him conversing with Her from his bed during periods of sickness with such affection and familiarity that it seemed as if She were actually present in his room. Indeed, he was blessed with visits from the Blessed Virgin, as when She appeared one night to show him that She was holding up a dislodged beam in the roof of the church which was likely to crash down on to the congregation below. On another occasion She appeared to him when he was ill with a severe fever and seemed to be nearing the point of death. Immediately cured, he sat up and was amazed that no-one else in the room seemed to have seen Her whom he was wont to call ‘Mamma Mia’.

For St Philip, it was a special blessing that the church given to the Congregation in Rome had been dedicated since the 12th century to Santa Maria in Vallicella (St Mary in the Little Valley), and it was at his insistence during the rebuilding that every chapel should contain an image of Our Lady over the altar. His personal favourite was Federico Barocci’s rendering of the embrace between the Blessed Virgin and Elizabeth, for the altar of the Visitation, before which he was seen to be in ecstasy. And so, when the Roman Oratory fathers constructed a shrine after his death to contain his mortal remains, they made sure that the beautiful painting of our saint by Guido Reni over the altar depicted him on his knees, in Mass vestments, in front of a vision of the Madonna and Child.

It is a nineteenth century copy of this Guido Reni that was placed above St Philip’s altar in the first church of the London Oratory off the Strand, and which came with us to Brompton, where it was eventually placed in a magnificent carved and gilded surround sponsored by Father Ralph Kerr. One of the attractions of St Philip for the first English Oratorians was his profound devotion to the Blessed Virgin. After his reception into the One True Fold of the Redeemer in 1845, St John Henry Newman was given a house at Old Oscott by Cardinal Wiseman. He renamed it “Maryvale”. Father Faber would point out the similarity of this name to “Santa Maria in Vallicella” when, in 1848, the first Oratorian community in England was canonically erected there.

Our own church in London contains many images of Our Blessed Lady, from the poignant Pietà in the war memorial near the Baptistry, to the Nazarene School painting of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Dolours Chapel, the altar to Our Lady of Good Counsel and the nearby painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe in St Wilfrid’s Chapel, to our magnificent Lady Altar with its statue of Our Lady of Victories. This last chapel, flanked by statues of Dominican saints, is a monument to the Church’s victories throughout history over the cancer of heresy from within, and at times of menace from the infidel without. Above the High Altar, meanwhile, we see a large red heart pierced with thorns. This represents the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to which our church is dedicated and which Our Lady has promised will have the final triumph over all evil.

Our May devotions include daily recitation of the Holy Rosary followed by the Litany of Loreto at Our Lady’s altar twenty minutes before the evening Mass, throughout the month (to be on the safe side, arrive twenty-five minutes before the Mass, as some of the fathers tend to be a bit quick off the mark). A plenary indulgence may be gained by this public participation of the Rosary, under the usual conditions. In these days of heightened international tensions, which coincide with an unprecedented crisis of credibility in the leadership of our governments, it is only normal that there should be great anxiety among decent people who feel helpless as they witness policies being pursued which seem to guarantee escalation. As children of the Mother of God, however, we are not helpless. The Rosary is our secret weapon, both against the forces of evil at work in the secular realm, and against the heretics who work to wreak so much havoc within the Church. Let us pray it with great trust and faith, remembering the countless occasions on which Our Lady has intervened to rescue Christian civilisation in response to this devotion which She has so often commended to Her children.

As the nation prepares to celebrate the Coronation, we must pray for our new King, Charles III, asking God to guide him, bless him, and give him the gumption to resist the zeitgeist of these days of all-pervading “wokery”. Ultimately the criteria by which the success of this new reign will be judged will be the extent to which it conforms to and extends the reign of our divine Sovereign, Christ the King. With that in mind, let us entrust our earthly King to the care and the constant intercession of our heavenly Mother Who has been crowned Queen of the Angels and Saints.

Father Julian Large

April 2023 Letter from the Provost

This year the feast of the Annunciation fell on a Saturday. A family from the north of England that worships at the Oratory on visits to London attended the High Mass in the morning. Afterwards, they marched around to the house and the parents explained that their twin daughters had a question. “Where are the ghosts?” asked Twin Number One, somewhat indignantly. “Yes,” chipped in Twin Number Two, with a doleful expression: “We came to see the ghosts.” A brief investigation revealed that the last occasion on which this demanding duo had been here was during Passiontide last year. On hearing this, the Provost finally realised what must have caused such grievance and advised them to return to the church the following day, when they would be greeted by ghosts galore.

The veiling of the images that takes place on Passion Sunday, and especially of the statues of the Twelve Apostles that line the nave and flank the sanctuary, certainly gives a spectral appearance to the church. The shrouded figures serve as a memento mori, a reminder of death. This is a subject that most of us probably have a tendency to avoid. Our own death, and especially the death of our loved ones, is something that we naturally fear. Bereavement can be one of the most painful and traumatic experiences we ever have to endure.

Rather than skirting around the reality of mortality with banalities and euphemisms, the Church confronts death head on, with Requiem Masses and daily intercessions for the Holy Souls. She calls us to mourn with the grieving, as Our Lord wept with Martha over the death of His friend Lazarus. At the same time, St Paul enjoins us not to be sorrowful like those who have no hope. The truth is that, through Baptism, death has been transformed for us. We have, in fact, already died, and been buried, and been born again to eternal life in the waters of the Sacrament of regeneration. Through Baptism, we are all “born again” Christians. For those who depart this life in the state of grace, death has become the threshold over which the soul must pass on the last stage of its journey into everlasting life in all its glorious fullness.

Liturgically, the Church’s ultimate confrontation with death occurs on Good Friday, when we enter a building stripped bare of altar linens and even the Blessed Sacrament, and contemplate the horror of God the Son, the King of all creation, being scourged, stripped of His garments, nailed to a Cross and exhaling His last breath in agony. The unbreathable atmosphere of this most sombre of days would be unbearable were it not for the assurance of Easter Sunday, when we know that we shall celebrate the definitive victory over suffering and death that took place near Golgotha on a fresh spring morning in a cultivated garden. It is the triumph of the Resurrection that puts the “good” into Good Friday.

“Father, what will it be like when we die?” This is a question with which most priests are probably familiar. And the answer is that it depends. What it depends on is how much we have been used to dying to ourselves in this life. If we are unduly attached to the created goods and comforts of this world then we can only expect to find it difficult to loosen our grip and repeat those words of Our Lord as He reached the consummation of His Passion- “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46) – as we leave this earth stripped of everything to face our Particular Judgment.

Lent and Passiontide are a great gift that helps us to prepare for that moment. Through self-denial, and through the giving of ourselves to others by means of alms giving and the Corporal Works of Mercy, the aim is to put self-centredness to death and to enthrone God at the centre of our lives by worshipping Him in spirit and in truth and ministering to Him in our neighbour. This is where those Oratory “ghosts” come into play. Most of us have probably lapsed in our Lenten observances to some degree during the last weeks. How conceited we should sound if we told ourselves we had kept the penitential season perfectly. The veiled statues are a stark reminder that the season has shifted into top gear. Now is the time to renew our good resolutions, and to strive to keep them well - and especially to make a real effort in the area of charity, without which our fasting and devotions are worthless. The more effort we make to die to ourselves during the days leading to the Sacred Triduum, the better prepared we shall be to participate most fully in the joy of Easter Sunday. Let us pray for the grace of living in conformity with the death of Jesus, to arrive at the glory of the Resurrection.

Father Julian Large

March 2023 Letter from the Provost

On the first Sunday of Lent, we accompanied Our Lord into the desert where the devil tempted him. If we examine the temptations that Our Lord endured, we shall see that they bear an uncanny resemblance to the temptations that the Church on earth seems to be experiencing in our day.

“Command that these stones be made bread”, the devil suggests (Mt 4:3). Just imagine the popularity the Church might enjoy and the influence She might exert if only She gave up insisting on all of that preaching about conversion from sin and devoted Her every resource to social activism; how much more authentic we should look to our contemporaries if only we were to auction off our precious chalices and to make a grand gesture of handing over the proceeds to the homeless. The media would perhaps hail us as the “Church of the poor”.

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” (Mt 4:4). The truth is that the Messiah could easily have produced enough bread and resources to feed and 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 human nature since the Fall. Instead, 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 alive and overflowing with divine love, in order that we might be moved to share the bread that we have with others, in charity. At Mass He does something far more marvellous than turning stones into bread when He transforms bread into His living Body and Blood. This is so that in consuming the Blessed Sacrament, we might be transformed more perfectly into His likeness.

When we are dismissed from the church at the end of Mass, we are sent 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 for God, if we bring with us our contrition for sins committed and ask for God's forgiveness, then we leave the celebration of Holy Mass renewed, refreshed, and energised by the encounter we have with our Risen Lord at the Altar in in Holy Communion.

We are all poor and in need of God’s forgiveness, and during Lent we are called to rend our hearts and return to God wholeheartedly. It is this aspect of conversion and repentance that the devil finds so irksome. He knows that 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. The easiest way he achieves this is by persuading us that there is no sin, that the very concept of sin has no place in a church of the twenty-first century.

The second temptation is also painfully familiar: “If Thou art the Son of Man, cast thyself down from this Temple, and let us see the angels come to your rescue” (Mt 4:6). What an amazing spectacle that would have been, to be witnessed by the whole of Jerusalem. However, we know from experience how quickly novelty wears off. The Word was not made flesh in order to dazzle the fickle crowds with displays of celestial acrobatics. He came rather to win and transform our hearts through friendship, and to manifest the depth of God's love for us by embracing the world in His open arms on the Cross. Even when He is hanging on that throne of agony, we hear the devil’s voice in the mocking of the chief priests who say: “If He is the King of Israel let Him come down from the cross, then we will believe him” (Mt 27:42). May God save us from the Sadducees of today who would have the world saved by crowd-pleasing gestures, gimmicks and soundbites, rather than preaching the Gospel of salvation through repentance, and sanctification through self-denial.

Mercifully for us, our Saviour did not come down from the Cross until He had breathed His last breath and the nails had been pulled from the dead flesh of His hands and feet. To be true to Her founder and Her Spouse, the Church must resist the temptation to replace the preaching of Christ Crucified with novelties and gestures calculated to win the approval of the media.

During Lent, each one of us is invited to defy Satan by confessing our sins and doing penance. We unite ourselves with the Cross through confession, penance, fasting and self-denial. We renew and refresh our relationship with God in our resolution to pray without ceasing. We make sacrifices from our own resources for the poor. We go into the desert with Our Lord so that we may follow Him to Calvary, so that at Easter we shall be well prepared to participate in the joy and the glory of the Resurrection.

Father Julian Large

February 2023 Letter from the Provost

In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul makes an impassioned plea for unity (1 Cor 1: 10-17). Dissension has arisen among the fledgling Church there, with some declaring themselves as followers of Apollos, some of Peter, and others as disciples of St Paul himself. With no desire at all to be the leader of his own party, St Paul makes it clear that factionalism has no place whatsoever in the Church, which is the one and undivided Mystical Body of Christ on earth.

Reading the Catholic press these days, it is to be lamented that we see a good deal of discord within the Church, and a resulting dissipation of energies which can only impede Her mission. Categories which might have a place in the secular realm are applied to us as Catholics, so that we find ourselves being labelled conservatives or liberals, progressives or traditionalists. As in the world of contemporary politics, these divisions are the cause of increasing polarisation. When we reach a point at which our disagreements are irreconcilable, then we find our beloved Church teetering on the brink of schism.

So where must we look for saving truth when all around us we hear a cacophony of voices conflicted on quite fundamental doctrines concerning marriage, the Eucharist and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, among other subjects better not mentioned in polite society? A clue to the answer is to be found in the Nicene Creed which we say or sing together at Holy Mass every Sunday, and in which we profess our belief in a Church which is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. True faith – genuine soul-saving doctrine – is to be found in teaching and belief which is in continuity and consistent with the Deposit of Faith which was entrusted by Our Lord to His Apostles, with nothing added and nothing omitted. The successors of the Apostles are, of course, the bishops, whose mission is to unpack and proclaim that Deposit of Faith in all its fullness, and to guard it against all contamination of error.

Some readers might be saying that this is all very well, but in our own times we cannot escape the fact that there are disagreements among bishops on quite basic teachings. Many of the German bishops, for instance, seem to be lobbying hard for what would be a radical overturning of many truths that have been believed and professed by the Church in every generation. The answer to this must be that we should beware of everything that savours of novelty. Anything that obviously contradicts and is inconsistent with what has been clearly taught and believed down the centuries is foreign to the Deposit of Faith and to be avoided like poison.

In a fallen world, every society governed by men is prone to division and dissension. The only solution to this is to have someone in authority with whom the buck stops. And so Our Lord appointed St Peter as the chief shepherd, and the rock on which He built His Church. The buck stopped with Peter, as it stops with his successors in every age. In order to assist our popes in this mission of adjudication, Our Lord has invested the office of the papacy with papal infallibility.

Our Oratorian saint and cardinal, John Henry Newman, was actually rather opposed to the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility that took place in 1870. It was not that he did not believe in it. He certainly did. His concern was that it would be easily misunderstood and abused. The key to understanding papal infallibility correctly seems to be the realisation that it is a negative guarantee, which prevents a pope from positively teaching error whenever, addressing the whole Church, he invokes the authority of his office as successor of Peter and makes it explicitly clear that what is being pronounced on a matter of faith or morals is henceforth universally binding on the faithful. On the practical level, infallibility means that if time travel were possible, we could visit planet earth at any time between now and Our Lord’s return in glory and we would find the same Church, with the same hierarchical structure of (an exclusively male) episcopacy and presbyterate, the same seven Sacraments, and doctrine on faith and morals in perfect continuity with the faith of the Apostles.

Infallibility certainly does not mean that any pope is necessarily inspired by the Holy Ghost, or incapable of error in his own theological opinions or personal reflections. Historically, some popes have been renowned teachers, while others have been better known for aggrandising their families or leading the armies of the Papal States into battle. One or two have even made such a mess in the area of doctrine that they have had to be corrected by their successors. This means that we Catholics need to pray for our popes, to assist them in their mission. In our own time, with dissensions in the Church simmering towards boiling point, we should probably accompany these prayers with fasting and penance, as we ask God to bless and guide the Successor of St Peter in his task of unifying and governing the Church. Something to keep in mind as we prepare for our Lenten observances.

Father Julian Large

January 2023 Letter from the Provost

The restoration of the feast of the Epiphany to its proper day in this country is to be welcomed. Keeping the 6th January as one of the holiest of days is a tradition of the greatest antiquity. The sanctification of that date since the earliest centuries of the Church's existence meant that the 6th January remained a holy day in the hearts of the faithful even if, for one whole decade, it was not recognised officially as such in the liturgical calendar of this land.

The rehabilitation of 6th January to something of its proper glory, then, is a gift which should make us appreciate all the more the treasures contained in the Feast of the Epiphany – treasures which are unpacked as the month of January progresses. In his The Liturgical Year, Dom Prosper Guéranger explains the time-honoured belief that three great events all occurred on 6th January. Although, in the western Church, the 6th January is primarily associated with the arrival of the Magi carrying their precious gifts, the Epiphany also encompasses Our Lord's Baptism and the Marriage at Cana, each of which is commemorated separately at Holy Mass this month.

These days, we hear a lot about “Dry January”. Those of us who find the intrusion of publicly-funded busybodies into our personal lives tiresome can find refreshment in the Church's celebration of Our Lord's first known miracle, at Cana, in which He changed water into an impressive quantity of top-class wine. Of course, we understand that this miracle signifies much more than the facilitation of prolonged festivities at a wedding breakfast. Its meaning is profoundly Eucharistic: the transformation of water into wine points towards the more wondrous transformation of wine into Our Lord’s most Precious Blood on the altar. In working this miracle within the context of marriage, Christ reveals Himself to us as the Bridegroom, and the Church as His Bride. As members of the Church, we await the return of the Bridegroom, and so we pray “Thy Kingdom Come” with deep conviction at Mass. We long for the Bridegroom to return in glory and establish His Kingdom in its fullness when the Church Militant on earth is subsumed, perfected and glorified in the Church Triumphant, where we are invited to participate in the eternal marriage banquet which is life in Heaven.

In the epiphanic event of Our Lord's Baptism, the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity is made manifest like an icon, in which God the Holy Ghost appears over the head of God the Son, and the voice of God the Father is heard announcing from heaven “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”. It is significant that this manifestation takes place within the context of Baptism, because it is in the Christian Sacrament of Baptism that God the Son is enthroned in our hearts, in our Baptism that we become living temples of the Holy Ghost, and in our Baptism that God the Father adopts us as His beloved children. In Baptism we are swept up into the very life of the Trinity.

The work of transformation that takes place within us at Baptism, and the transformation of bread and wine into Our Lord’s living Body and Blood, is certainly not the end of the story. With God’s divine life infused into our souls, and nourished by the Blessed Sacrament, we are invited to participate in transforming and healing this broken world around us. With our vertical relationship with God established and nurtured supernaturally, we may then set about the serious work on the horizontal plane of building His Kingdom on this earth, and especially within that small part of creation which has been entrusted to our influence – our home, place of work and parish. The Sanctifying Grace we receive in the Sacraments renders our good works pleasing to God and meritorious for Heaven.

The revelation of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity tells us much about God’s love for us, and how we must strive to love our neighbour. The love that flows eternally between Father, Son and Holy Ghost is infinite and eternal. This means that God has no real need for us. He created us in an act of pure generosity, so that we might participate in His divine life in this world and in His glory in the life to come. The “disinterestedness” of God’s love towards us, which means that He gains nothing but only gives, means that to be true to the divine love infused into us in Baptism, we are called to practise a charity towards our neighbour which is disinterested and generous. We Christians are called to give of ourselves to those who seem to have nothing to offer in return. This is a challenge because it involves including those whom we find dull and disagreeable into what we consider to be the sacred space of our lives.

As we contemplate the value of gifts during this Epiphanytide - the precious gifts of the Magi to our infant Saviour, and the priceless gifts bestowed on us from God, we should pray that gratitude will be the father of generosity in our lives throughout this coming year.

Father Julian Large

December 2022 Letter from the Provost

A 4th-century Egyptian observed that “the Son of God became man so that we might become God”. Such words might sound audacious to the point of blasphemy, until we realise that the author of this extraordinary statement was none other than the great saint, bishop and champion of Catholic orthodoxy, Athanasius of Alexandria.

St Athanasius has provided us with what is probably the most succinct explanation we possess for the Incarnation. In taking on our human flesh, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity has been born on earth not merely to teach us how to live and to love, but to transform us supernaturally so that we are able to participate in the very life of God.

This “divinisation” of the human race was part of God’s plan from the very beginning, and He declared it on the sixth day of Creation with the words: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). His image is to be found in our mind and will and belongs to us by nature, but His likeness is a supernatural gift by which He shares his own life with us and elevates us to the level of divine friendship. Alas, this gift was forfeited by our first parents through the spite and envy of the Devil, who enticed them to disobey their Creator’s word.

Mercifully for us, however, the suffering, strife and death that were the consequences of that catastrophic rebellion were not to be the end of the story. While the third chapter of Genesis presents us with the calamitous fall of man, the rest of Holy Scripture is the account of God’s rescue plan. It culminates in a revelation of God’s love for mankind which confounds human comprehension, with the God of all transcendence uniting Himself to our frail human flesh and being born as a baby in Bethlehem.

Jesus, then, is truly Emmanuel, God with us. When we contemplate the Creator of the universe and the King of Kings lying on straw in a manger, and protected from the cold night air only by a wrapping of swaddling bands, we soon begin to realise the absurdity of all human efforts at self-aggrandisement and worldly ambition. The only true and lasting aggrandisement we can ever hope to experience is given to us when we divest ourselves of every delusion of self-importance, and come meekly to the manger, to accept the Christ Child’s invitation to be partakers of his divine life. Bethlehem teaches us that to become like God, we must make ourselves small, and that God’s gift of Himself and our humility in receiving Him are the beginnings of genuine human greatness. Where the haughtiness of Satan has brought death and destruction, the meekness of the Infant Jesus promises everlasting glory in the life of the Blessed Trinity.

Our participation in God’s life can only reach perfection in eternity when “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn 3:2). But we begin to share in His divinity on this earth when sanctifying grace is infused into our hearts in baptism, making us living temples of the Holy Spirit. During the Offertory at Holy Mass, meanwhile, the priest prays that by the mystery of a drop of water mingled into the wine in the chalice we may be made partakers of His divinity who humbled himself to share in our humanity. At Mass we find ourselves in Bethlehem, the “house of bread”, as the Word is made flesh once again on the altar, and the God who made himself tiny enough to be laid in a feeding trough makes himself small again in the Sacred Host so that we might dare to approach and consume him.

If we really wish to offer the Infant Jesus a home in our hearts this Christmas, we should prepare ourselves to make a good Holy Communion, going to Confession and receiving sacramental absolution. We need to ask for the grace to forgive anyone who has offended us, and to pray for the gift of humility. The Word made Flesh whom we receive at the altar will work His divinising wonders in us in proportion to our meekness and our charity.

This year, the Oratory Fathers will greatly miss the dry humour of our own dear Father Charles Dilke, which has enlivened Christmas Day lunches in Oratory House for over six decades. His not always such sotto voce commentaries on the Monarch’s Christmas speeches will no doubt be remembered within the community for many years to come. Father Charles died in his room at the Oratory on the morning of 14th November, at the age of 85, having persevered in the Oratorian habit for 61 years and in the Sacred Priesthood for 56. He was a faithful priest and a true son of our holy father St Philip. He would have asked you, in your charity, to say a prayer for the repose of his immortal soul.

Father Julian Large

November 2022 Letter from the Provost

One of the most moving verses in Holy Scripture is also the shortest: “Jesus wept.” This appears in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St John, after Our Lord has arrived in Bethany to be told the news of the death of Lazarus. At first Our Lord’s reaction might seem puzzling. After all, moments later, He will raise Lazarus from the dead and call him from his tomb. It is, however, a striking testimony to the reality of Our Lord’s humanity. Seeing Mary, Martha and their companions grief stricken, He shares their sorrow. This teaches us that mourning is an appropriate and a Christian response to the loss of someone we love. Our tears have been sanctified by the tears of the Word Made Flesh.

There is also another reason for Our Lord’s grief, however, which has more to do with His divinity. As the Eternal Logos, through Whom the universe was created, He well knows that death was never part of God’s original plan for humanity. Rather it is the consequence of the devil persuading Eve that if only she would take the forbidden fruit, she and Adam would “not die the death” and would “be like gods”. Forgetting that she had already been given a supernatural likeness to God, along with the preternatural gift of immortality, Eve succumbed. Seeing His friends in such profound grief outside Lazarus’s tomb, Our Lord surely “groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself” in the face of the whole history of human suffering and sorrow, which was the result of that original deception by the enemy of God and man, the father of lies.

Death was the most fitting and terrible punishment for sin. Adam, whom God had formed from the dust of the earth, and into whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, would suffer separation of his soul and body, the latter returning to the soil from which it had been created. Mercifully for us this was not to be the end of the story. If the third chapter of Genesis details the tragedy of the fall and all its dreadful consequences, the whole of the remainder of Holy Scripture is an account of God’s rescue plan for His creation, culminating in Our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven, and the mission of the Church to bring all nations to salvation through the proclamation of the Gospel and Baptism. In this sacrament, we die with Christ and are buried with Him, ascending from the waters of regeneration unto everlasting life. Our Catholic funeral rites bear witness to this, in the honouring of the mortal remains of the deceased with holy water and incense. This reminds us that the corpse on the catafalque was once a living temple of the Holy Ghost, and that the bodies of those who die in Sanctifying Grace will one day be reunited with their souls in eternity, incorruptible and glorified. Meanwhile, we mourn with and comfort one another in times of bereavement, just as Our Lord grieved, even though He knew He would soon raise Lazarus from the tomb. But our grief is tempered by hope, and the knowledge that life has triumphed over death.

In this month of November, the Church invites us to meditate on mortality. On the first day of the month, we celebrate the feast of all the saints, whose souls share in God’s glory at the Throne of Grace. Even for them, the best is yet to come, when they are reunited with their bodies at the end of time. Meanwhile, we venerate their holy relics, the earthly remains in which they cooperated with divine grace in the achievement of sanctity. We take courage from their intercession for us, in full knowledge of the difficulties and temptations that beset us in this life. Monsignor Knox said that we should think of the saints as the scouts who have been sent on ahead on a gruelling expedition. They turn around and assure us that our destination, the promised land, is in sight and well within our reach. They stretch out their hands to lift and steady us when we falter and fall. Cultivating their friendship gives us a great advantage in this earthly pilgrimage.

On the second day of the month, our attention turns to the souls in Purgatory. We call them the Holy Souls because they are somewhat better off than us. They have died in the state of grace, and their eternal salvation is secure. But they are also the Poor Souls, because they must be purified of all attachments to sin which have disfigured them, and in this they are unable to help themselves. Just as the saints support us, so are we able to assist the Poor Souls with our prayers, the application of holy indulgences and, most powerful of all, offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in their behalf.

May Our Lady, St Philip and All the Saints pray for us. And may the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

Father Julian Large