Confirmation

Please pray for all the children of our parish who have, today, received the Sacrament of Confirmation. It is, of course, a once in a life time experience for them. It was a wonderful celebration and we thank Bishop Kenney for being with us.

Baptism of the Lord

Baptism of the Lord, Year C

What is a Sacrament? Not what are the Sacraments, but what is a Sacrament? Most children preparing for their Confirmation will be able to answer this. Many Catholics of a certain age, shall we say, will be able to answer this. Any student for the priesthood in seminary will be able to answer this, but what do you say a Sacrament is?

When we were in seminary preparing for our oral exam on the subject of Sacramentology, or the study of the Sacraments, we quickly came to realise that the simple definition by St Augustine of Hippo that a Sacrament is "a visible sign of an invisible reality" wouldn’t cut the mustard! We needed something more. Perhaps, we thought, we might be clever and commit to memory the definition from the Catechism: The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.

Well, that’s certainly an impressive statement, but what does it mean? Eventually one of us came up with the idea that a Sacrament is a like a Divine Kiss. We roared with laughter at the idea and determined that we would all get this definition into the exam somehow – we’d have the last laugh! Or so we thought. In the end, none us used the definition, or at least I didn’t, and yet why not? Well, partly because it doesn’t give the full picture, it only hints at what is going on during the celebration of the Sacraments. Like when a mother kisses her child, so God kisses us. A mother not communicates to her child that she loves him through the gentlest of kisses, but also that love is made real through her action. So, too, God communicates His love to us through the Sacrament and His love is made real in the liturgy of the Sacrament.

Today we think especially of the Sacrament of Baptism. It is not a coincidence that Jesus’ baptism should form part of the Christmas season, indeed bring it to an end; rather it highlights for us that in Jesus’ baptism he begins his public ministry. His vocation is made clear by the Father: You are my Son, the Beloved: my favour rests on you. Our Lord voluntarily submitted himself to the baptism of John the Baptist, intended for sinners, in order to "fulfil all righteousness." Jesus' gesture is a manifestation of his self-emptying. The Spirit who had hovered over the waters of the first creation descended then on the Christ as a prelude of the new creation, and the Father revealed Jesus as his "beloved Son."

Through Baptism, the first of the Sacraments of Christian Initiation, we enter the gateway to life in the Spirit. It is the door which gives access the other Sacraments. In Confirmation, the Church teaches, the baptised are more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed. Finally, in the receiving of our first Eucharist is the initiation into the Church completed. Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism, and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation, participate with the whole community in the Lord's own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.

This is heavy stuff! It takes a lifetime to get to understand what it is to become a Catholic. For some, we were baptised as babies and new nothing of the commitment our parents made on our behalf. For others, it is a leap of Faith and a total submission to God which led us to where we are today. For yet others, it is a road less travelled and perhaps only briefly considered, but for all of us it is a kiss from God we feel and we now have to decide – how do I respond?

Prayer is...

May your love be upon us, O Lord, as we place all our hope in you. These words, from today’s psalm, instinctively make me think of CJM and their happy approach to a ministry of music. Another favourite of mine is their ‘great Amen’: We lift our hearts and our voices to you, as we sing, Aaaamen...

This is, to quote St John Damascene, the definition of prayer: the raising of one’s mind and heart to God. St Therese of Lisieux, a source of much prayer in recent days, says: For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

Prayer is the heart of all that we are and for this reason this weekend we are presenting all those in year three, who are preparing for first confession and first communion, with a set of rosary beads. We learnt the essential prayers of the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory be when we were children ourselves. It is wrong if we, in our own time, do not share these simple and yet profound prayers with our own children. Yes, prayer both leads us to the Eucharist and prayer flows from it, too.

Prayer is, then, both deeply personal but it is also communal. We gather today for the greatest prayer of thanksgiving known and that is the Eucharist. In our opening prayer we said of God ‘our source of power and inspiration’. All prayer is inspired by God. It is from God that we are called to prayer, he moves our heart to desire him and so we can be confident that he stands ever ready to hear our prayer. God does not, however, ask of us something which is any different to that which Jesus undertook.

The letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the supreme high priest.” He knows our needs and he presents to the Father more than we even dare to ask ourselves. All of our prayer is through Jesus and “it is not as if we had a high priest who was incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us.” He knows our struggles, our hopes and our desires and he knows the temptations which may lead us from prayer. He’s been there, even if he didn’t actually buy the t-shirt like we all seem to have done. Jesus prayed at the key moments of his own life as well as regularly through his day. He learnt to prayer from his own mother, Mary, from his religious tradition, in Judaism, but also, “his prayer springs from an otherwise secret source” says the Catechism of the Church.

In Mark’s account of the Gospel, we hear of James and John asking something, through Jesus, which only the Father can answer. They ask to sit at Jesus’ right and left when in heaven. He answers them that they must drink the same cup and undergo the same baptism, which they happily agree to. Little do they know the suffering they will endure! But their prayer is answered. They seek to follow Jesus, no matter the cost, in order that they can be with him in the eternal life, in his Glory. Now whether they get, in the end, to sit on the seats next to Jesus is a moot point. He doesn’t say they will not, rather he says “they belong to those to whom they have been allotted.” Perhaps James and John followed the Lord’s teaching and learnt to be “slave to all”.

It is in being faithful to the teaching of Christ and most especially in his word and example of prayer that we, too, come to learn to be like him. Whether it is through adoration, petition, intercession, praise or, like now, through thanksgiving at Mass, we seek to be a people of prayer. We share our prayer with our children, and our children’s children and they in turn will do the same. It is, after all, our children who will pray over us in our final moments in this life.

In a few minutes we will begin our liturgy of the Eucharist, which will conclude today with the prayer “may this Eucharist help us to remain faithful. May it teach us the way to eternal life.” To this I say, Amen, so let it be.

Pray for me.

Priesthood, Communion and St Therese

This evening I needed to have a look at the website for the Archdiocese of Birmingham Vocations Team and was really pleased to see that it has been updated. Not that it wasn't already impressive, but it's great to see it very user friendly and, most importantly, I found the information which I needed very quickly. Go have a look for yourself, here.

www.vocations.org.uk

Please remember, this weekend, in your prayers, all of the children from Christ the King Junior School and St Augustine's Primary School; especially those in year three who are to make their first confession and first communion next year. All of the children will be presented, this Sunday, with a rosary to enable their year of preparation to begin with prayer. What better prayer that a decade of the rosary during October?

Finally, h/t to Jackie Parkes for the total number of pilgrims to visit the relics of St. Therese...

Portsmouth 4,500, Plymouth 3,000, Taunton 1,800, Birmingham 11,000, Coleshill 3,000, Cardiff 4,400, Filton 6,000, Liverpool 17,000, Salford 30,000, Manchester University Catholic Chaplaincy 2,000, Preston Carmel 2,000, Lancaster 8,000, Newcastle 5,000, Darlington Carmel, York Minster 10,000, Middlesbrough 15,000, Leeds 14,000, Kirk Edge Carmel (Sheffield) 3,000, Nottingham 8,000, Walsingham 5,000, Oxford 6,200, Gerrards Cross 2,000, Aylesford 17,000, Kensington Carmelite Church 10,000, Notting Hill Carmel 3,500, Wormwood Scrubs 250, Westminster Cathedral 95,000

286,650 pilgrims