Eucharistic Devotion - Solemnity of All Saints

 EUCHARISTIC DEVOTION Solemnity of All Saints

‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’ (Revelation 7.12)

Lord Jesus Christ look kindly upon your people as we gaze at your glory in the most blessed sacrament of the altar.

In your heavenly glory ‘a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, stand before [your] throne and before [you] the Lamb [of God], crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’’ (cf Revelation 7.9)

We come to adore you, to glorify you, to praise you.

We come as sinners yearning to be saints; as those broken yearning to be healed; as your humble disciples yearning to be exalted.

Lord Jesus Christ, king of glory, grant us the vision, with all your saints, of your beauty and goodness and truth.

May we be clothed, as the redeemed, in white robes, washed in the blood of the Lamb and made clean.

May we cry out from the depths of our hearts, coming before your throne of grace, that, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’

Salvation belongs to you, Lord Jesus Christ: we place our hope in none but you.

May the saints surround our steps as we journey on, the cloud of witnesses who testify to you, help us to lay aside the sin that clings so closely, help us run with endurance the race that is set before us, with our eyes ever fixed on you, King of Glory, you who perfect our weak faith, you, who endured the cross, who despised its shame, who made it a throne, around which saints and angels praise you, at the right hand of the Father, bound in the love of the Spirit. (cf Hebrews 12.1-2)

‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’

Not Perfect, But Being Perfected

 Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 ‘Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.’

1 John 3:1-3 ‘We shall see God as he is.’

Matthew 5:1-12a ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’

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I am not generally one for quoting Gandhi in sermons, but he did have some words to say about the Sermon on the Mount, part of which, The Beatitudes, we have heard as the Gospel for this great Solemnity of All Saints.

Gandhi is quoted as saying that, on hearing it, ‘The Sermon on the Mount went straight to my heart.’

It’s a beautiful sentiment, and the witness of the saints is that The Beatitudes do speak direct to the human heart.

Gandhi even said:

If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'O yes, I am a Christian.'

Oh dear.

It sort of sounds good, but the thing is that the Gospel is not solely the Sermon on the Mount; and it is not a bit of homespun wisdom to interpret to suit ourselves.

But it’s a view that’s been taken on by those who describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’.

Like Gandhi they might say:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Of course, that is a challenge to us that we must take seriously: we are to be ever more Christlike.

As the first letter of John puts it:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Christians are not perfect, but we are being perfected.

And if we want to know whether the Beatitudes can actually be lived, we look not to theories and philosophies but to the saints and to lived reality.

There are striking similarities between much contemporary spirituality and some of the assumptions of ancient Gnosticism.

Gnosticism has the idea that salvation comes through secret or mystical knowledge (gnosis).

This boils down to seeing Jesus as an inspired teacher, but not following his teachings; to seeing the mind as higher than the body, leading to the denigration of the body; to prizing private revelation and insight and rejecting the Church Christ founded.

All which Catholic Christianity refutes.

The problem for the Gnostics of old, and the many there are today, is that Jesus was incarnate; he had a body.

Catholic Christianity is rooted in the incarnation of the Son of God, who is born of the flesh of the Blessed Virgin; we are redeemed by his bodily crucifixion; glorified by his bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven.

Gnosticism is a great temptation for the contemporary Church: ‘spiritual but not religious’ sounds attractive, but it is incomplete, not bold enough: incomplete because it stops short of the bold claim that God became flesh.

The great antidote to all this is the lives of the saints whom we honour today.

To honour the saints is not to honour perfection, but those who are perfected.

The saints are human beings who inhabit the teaching of Jesus Christ in real lives.

We see in the saints the acknowledgment of their poverty of spirit: saints mourn over their sins; they are meek in the face of Christ’s majesty; they hunger and thirst after righteousness; they are merciful, pure in heart and, seeking the peace that is Christ's gift, they bear persecution on Christ's account.

To be sure, there are mystics amongst them, some who disciplined their bodies and undertook great feats of prayer: the saints are spiritual and religious!

The practice of our religion, lived out in our bodies, lifts our spirits to the Lord.

Saints can and should unsettle us too.

They set a bar to which we aspire, and we cannot domesticate them.

Look what is done to St Francis, he becomes a carbon neutral, eco-warrior rather than one who conformed his life to Christ so deeply that he bore, in his body, the very wounds of Christ.

Look at how the Celtic saints are appropriated as cuddly nature lovers, rather than those men and women who braved the elements and their intense and gritty encounter with the King of Glory.

Look at how Julian of Norwich has become a feminist icon whose Revelations of Divine Love are set aside by those for whom the bloodiness of motherhood and crucifixion are not spiritual enough.

The saints are not people who admired Christ from afar.

They followed him.

They suffered with him.

They were transformed by him.

And now they stand before the throne and before the Lamb, rejoicing and glad because their reward is great in heaven.

That is our calling too, because we are not perfect but are being perfected.

We hold before us the image of the Book of Revelation, of:

a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’

This is the beatific vision, revealed in heaven and anticipated on earth as we gather, with all the saints at the altar now, bowing down and worshipping God, crying out:

 ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’

The Greatest Commandment and the Shape of Love

 Exodus 22:21-27 ‘If you mistreat any widow or fatherless child, my wrath will burn against you.’

1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10 ‘You turned away from idols to serve God and to wait for his Son.’

Matthew 22:34-40 ‘You shall love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself.’

 

 

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‘Thomas’ said my grandmother to my cousin, ‘I love you, but sometimes I really don’t like you.’

Now, you need some context to this outburst.

My cousin Thomas had just kicked our grandmother on the shin, and she was clearly in some pain.

To be frank she could have been a lot more trenchant in what she said to him.

But instead, she said the line that became a family saying, ‘Thomas ‘I love you, but sometimes I really don’t like you.’

My grandmother wouldn’t have realised that she was echoing St Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of what love is, which is not an emotional or sentimental reaction or feeling to someone or something, but an act of human will.

So, for St Thomas, to love is to will the good of another.

We do that after the example and teaching of Christ, not because of what we can get from them or how they make us feel, but simply that we will their good, and in willing their good we act accordingly.

My grandmother continued to will the good of my cousin Thomas, even though her emotional response to him, in that moment, was one of dislike, pain and, no doubt, some anger.

The emotion-based word is ‘like’, not ‘love’.

I don’t like you, at the moment, but I can still will your good: I can say I love you, because what I will for you is the good.

That’s what makes it possible to love our enemies.

We need to will their good, even if we loathe what they do and even who they are.

And in willing their good we begin to find that we cannot hate them anymore.

This command to love our neighbour has a social impact amongst those with whom we share our lives.

That's why the Law repeatedly commands protection of the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

Love is never merely a feeling; it is expressed in concrete care for the vulnerable.

When it comes to loving God there is a different dynamic.

You can’t will God’s good, because God is love.

So what does love of God look like?

Again, Thomas Aquinas can help us here.

To love God perfectly does not mean thinking about him every moment of every day.

Rather, it means giving ourselves completely to God, trusting his word, following his ways, and allowing his love to shape all that we do.

Even as we go about ordinary life, our whole lives can be offered to him.

Such love calls us to put God first above everything else, making him the true centre of our faith, obedience and joy, from which all our actions flow.

And this life is lived in response to God’s love for us.

Everything depends on this, and our response to God’s love.

Everything of the scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, depends, says Jesus, on this love, love for God and love for neighbour.

The Greek text of this verse uses the word κρέμαται (krematai) which means ‘to hang’ or suspend’: so love is the hook on which all the promises of God are suspended.

Without that hook, we lose our grasp of God's promises and our faith, hope and love plummets.

Jesus hangs on the cross: there is love at its deepest.

That is the measure of love, love until the end, love that is steadfast, love that is sacrificial.

Just being told in a word that we’re loved is never enough, yes, we want to hear we’re loved, but we want to see love, feel love, taste love: to know that we are precious, to know even that we are liked: so love is made visible in the Word made Flesh.

The way of the cross is the way of love: love of God and love of neighbour.

Still, we human beings misuse and misdirect love.

In the Gospel today the Pharisees and Sadducees were not seeking edification from him but to test him.

In fact, to say ‘test’ him understates the power of the word, which in Greek is πειράζων (peirazon) meaning ‘tempt’: it’s the word used of Satan in the wilderness, the tempter.

Human love, or what we call love, all too often becomes entangled in tests and temptations.

A good guide to what love looks like is found in 1 Corinthians 13: there’s some good reading on a stormy afternoon like today, and ask: does my love measure up to that? How can I redirect my affection and desires so that they are truly loving?

And on your knees hold before you the picture of Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ who looked upon a sinner and ‘loved him’; who, out of love, washed the feet of disciples; whose heart of love was pierced as he opened his arms on the Cross; who has commanded us to love one another.

There’s the challenge: who is the person whose good you need to will this week - even if you still don’t like them much – and what will that look like practically?

Love God with every fibre of your being; love your neighbour as you yourself are loved: it’s all there, rising above human fickleness.

Our beginning and our end is love: God’s love that brought the creation to be; love that sustains; love that redeems; love that fulfils all things.

God’s love is pure, holy and life-giving, offered without conditions and not subject to change or partiality.

It is the vision into which we are led, as St Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, prays on his knees before the Father:

¹⁷ [May] Christ… dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3.17-19)

Whose likeness and likeness is this?

Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 ‘I have grasped the right hand of Cyrus to subdue nations before him.’

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b ‘Remembering your faith, love and hope.’

Matthew 22:15-21 ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

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The fundamental Christian assumption of what it means to be human is that:

God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.27)

This is what we can call Christian anthropology: we are made in the image and likeness of God.

Each human being is always made in God’s image, even if most of the time we fail to bear his likeness, through our own sins.

From this we derive the inviolable dignity of the human person and the call to inhabit and become the persons God made us to be.

And the way we are restored in the true image and likeness of God is through life in Jesus Christ.

It is with the foundation of that belief, about who we are made to be and that we are redeemed, that we hear today’s gospel reading.

Jesus’s scheming, nit-picking critics, want to catch him out and try it using the perennially touchy subject of taxation and money.

Only a lawful authority can enforce taxation, otherwise it is racketeering or demanding money with menaces.

So, should good Jews pay taxes to the Romans?

Say ‘no, they shouldn’t’ and Jesus is in trouble with the Romans; say ‘yes, they should’ and Jesus is denounced as a collaborator with the pagan occupier.  

Jesus both answers and frames the question in a much deeper reality.

In his answer he sets an important principle for how Christians navigate being earthly citizens and citizens of heaven at the same time, picked up in St Paul’s teaching on honouring the emperor and always knowing a higher authority, from whom their power is derived.

Human power is always derivative: as Jesus says to Caesar’s representative, Pontius Pilate, at his trial:

You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above (John 19.11)

Even Cyrus, a pagan emperor who did not know the God of Israel, is called God's anointed instrument in today's first reading.

Political rulers often imagine themselves to be masters of history, but Scripture reminds us that God remains Lord of history.

So, give to earthly powers what is theirs on earth; give to God what is his eternally.

And Jesus takes us deeper by asking ‘whose likeness and inscription is this?

It’s not just about the coin, it is about who we are as human beings, made in the image and likeness of God.

The word ‘likeness’ is a translation of the Greek word eikon (εἰκὼν).

We know that word as a rich word that speaks of the likeness, the image, that points beyond the surface to the reality.

The word ‘inscription’ is a translation of the Greek word epigraphē (ἐπιγραφή), from where we get the word ‘epigraph’, meaning some words that sum up the subject and that are written down in an enduring way.

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

Jesus is asking to whom you belong: whose image do you bear, what is inscribed on your heart?

What is inscribed on our hearts? Is it the pursuit of status? Anxiety about wealth? Political loyalties? Resentments we refuse to surrender? Or is it Christ?

Beneath all these questions lies the deeper one: who is your maker?

Is it God or is it you?

We are all tempted to imagine that we are self-made people, authors of our own story, accountable only to ourselves.

As was once said of a vain, self-satisfied person, "he is a self-made man, and worships his creator".

That’s nothing new, but it is certainly the spirit of the age.

This is what Bishop Robert Barron describes as the ‘ego drama’, when we place ourselves at the heart of things, the production in which I am the writer, the director and the star.

The ego drama never features God.

That is the ‘theodrama’, living in a world where God is author, director and centre.

The ‘theodrama’ is far more real than our own petty preoccupations and schemes, because in the drama of God we recover the marred image, and inhabit the true likeness of our Creator, to whom we owe life and allegiance.

Made in the image and likeness of God, human beings are image bearers.

The Blessed Virgin had the joy of being the bearer of Christ ‘the image of the invisible God’.

Inscribed in her heart is the willing and active ‘yes’ to God’s purposes and God’s will.

St Paul’s words to us all apply first and foremost to her:

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3.3)

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

The saints are the image bearers par excellence, because God’s image and likeness is seen most transparently in them, his word is most clearly inscribed in their lives.

We are all God’s saints, with a lower case ‘s’, restored in God’s image by baptism and called to be Saints, with an upper case ‘S’.

We will be counted truly amongst the Saints when we bear God’s image and likeness, when goodness, beauty and truth shine out of us, when God’s commandments are inscribed on our hearts and when we render unto Him all worship, praise and adoration.

Then we will have risen above the petty schemes, manipulations and machinations of the rulers of this world and will know ‘that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’ (Romans 8.21).

 

Blessed are those who are invited

Isaiah 25:6-10a ‘The Lord will make a feast, and he will wipe away tears from all faces.’

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20 ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’

Matthew 22:1-14 ‘Invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’

 

You have prepared a table before me

in the sight of my foes.

My head you have anointed with oil;

my cup is overflowing.

 

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‘You have spread a table before me’ says the psalmist.

A veil is lifted says Isaiah, a banquet prepared.

The gospel invites us to a wedding feast.

Today’s reading are rich and deep indeed.

And they all lead to the unveiling of Jesus Christ in the Mass.

In the Mass the veil of heaven is pulled back as the Lord spreads a table before us anticipating the banquet of heaven and, as we eat and drink here and now, we receive Christ’s true, full and real presence into our lives.

We dwell in Him and he in us: we become one flesh with Him.

It is the vision of a banquet that Isaiah paints for us, pointing us to the mystical banquet of the Lamb, beautifully revealed in the vision of the Revelation to John.

Isaiah’s vision speaks of ‘the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.’

This covering, this veil, is, in effect, a funeral pall, the large cloth that is spread over a coffin.

Palls are traditionally dark and heavy, and they are appropriate because they speak of the grief of death and the pain of loss.

But, Isaiah says, this pall will be lifted because death itself will be consumed.

The other time we think of a veil being lifted is at a wedding.

The bride is presented to the groom and her veil lifted.

Now she can be seen by the bridegroom, and she can clearly see him.

The lifting of that veil means that bridegroom and bride can see each other clearly, face to face: the beatific vision.

The Scriptures have an overarching sweep of nuptial imagery, in other words it’s put in terms of a courtship and marriage, the coming together of bridegroom and bride.

Everything sweeps from the Fall, when a pall of separation between God and man descends.

Repeatedly lack of human faithfulness thwarts the chance of union with God.

Of course, man glimpses God on and off, but even Moses cannot bear to see God unveiled; sight of Him would be too overwhelming.

The prophets call for faithfulness so that daughter Israel can be the bride, but, as shown in the prophet Hosea, Israel is unfaithful.

The parable narrates all this as the invited guests don’t show up, and other guests kill those bringing the invitation.

But the story doesn’t end there.

John the Baptist, who describes himself as ‘the friend of the bridegroom’ (John 3.29), proclaims that the Lamb of God, the Bridegroom, is coming, indeed is now here:

‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. (John 1.29)

Behold him, see him: he is unveiled.

Throughout the Gospels unveilings happen and Christ’s glory is made manifest: at the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan; in the proclamation of the Kingdom; the Transfiguration of the Lord; the Institution of the Eucharist; and, very obviously in relation to today’s readings, his glory is revealed at the wedding feast at Cana.

It’s no accident that Christ’s presence and first miracle takes place at a wedding banquet, a sign of the coming of the Bridegroom.

So the King invites guests to the royal wedding.

The guest list of Isaiah’s vision and the guest list of the parable, is all people, all nations, literally, all faces.

These are faces unveiled in the presence of Jesus Christ.

The culmination of the scriptures is a book whose Greek name, the Apocalypse, literally means ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing’: it’s the book we also know as Revelation.

And what is being unveiled is a marriage:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21.1-2)

And in Revelation who is present at the marriage banquet of the Lamb? It is people, ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’. (Revelation 7.9).

The Lamb is unveiled, and Revelation echoes Isaiah:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21.4)

What Isaiah prophesies and Revelation reveals is that the veil of death is lifted by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus cries out from the Cross, ‘it is finished’, rendered in Latin, consummatum est, ‘it is consummated’ (a marriage image if ever there was one.)

When all is consummated the veil in the Temple is torn in two, and then at the Resurrection the folded grave clothes unveil Christ’s resurrected body.

The invitation of the Mass is to come to the marriage banquet of the Lamb:

You are invited to the banquet of God’s love; you are the honoured guest, you, we, the Church, are the bride.

It is a wedding feast, Christ the Bridegroom united to his Bride, the Church, as one flesh.

That is why it is beautiful when religious sisters wear a veil: it should remind us all of the Church’s call to be the Bride of Christ!

But yet, there is one nagging puzzle from the parable.

There is one guest at the wedding who is thrown out of the banquet because he is not wearing a wedding garment.

Why?

It raises the question of worthiness and humility.

The wedding garment was given to guests to wear; it wasn’t that the man just didn’t have one.

He chose not to wear it.

Again, Revelation gives the answer, which the Church Fathers loved:

Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure” -

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. (Revelation 19.7-8)

We have come to a royal wedding, the marriage banquet of the Son of God, we need to dress appropriately.

So, as his Bride, let us clothe ourselves in faithfulness to Christ, keeping the way of his commandments and honouring him in all that we think and speak and do, doing everything to the greater glory of God.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelation 19.9a)

The Song of the Vineyard

Isaiah 5:1-7 ‘The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.’

Philippians 4:6-9 ‘Practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you.’

Matthew 21:33-43 ‘He will let out the vineyard to other tenants.’

 

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Today is the last of three Sundays of which the Gospel reading concerns a vineyard.

Two Sundays ago it was the parable of the labourers being hired to work in the vineyard, last Sunday it was the two sons asked by their father to work in the vineyard and this week it is the parable of the wicked tenants.

All speak of men and women called to the vineyard of God’s love and life.

To get the most from this parable we need to go to our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

We’ve noted that the vineyard signifies Israel, God’s first called people, it signifies the Church, and it signifies the human soul.

But something else Jesus’ first hearers would have been very well aware of is that the vineyard also signified the bride.

Take for example The Song of Songs, in which the vineyard is the setting for the wooing of the bride:

let us go out early to the vineyards
    and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
    and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love. (Song of Songs 7.12)

This is about a love affair of the bridegroom seeking his bride; and that, St Paul reminds us in Ephesians, is the mystery of Christ and his Church, and we’ll see more of that Matthew’s gospel in the coming weeks.

The Church is the Bride of Christ; Christ the bridegroom.

He seeks out and woos his Bride in the vineyard.

The vineyard, then, should be flourishing, a place of love, love that generates new life and abundance.

So, Isaiah’s song starts well:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love song concerning his vineyard:

This vineyard has rich soil, is planted with the very best grapes.

The vineyard is fertile, arid stones are cleared away, everything is full of promise and of hope.

A wine vat is placed at its heart ready for the sweet juice to flow and become a foretaste of the kingdom of God.

With everything in place the bridegroom looked for it to yield grapes.

There’s a great big ‘but’ hovering there.

… but it yielded wild grapes.

The promise is unfulfilled: instead of the rich fruit it should produce there is only inedible, sour grapes, nothing will flow from them, except perhaps vinegar.

Isaiah is telling the people of Israel and men of Judah something about themselves.

They are the bride who is unfaithful, they disappoint the trust and hope the bridegroom places in them: the lavish care and love given is rendered infertile, barren and fruitless.

Hearing Jesus’ parable of the tenants of the vineyard echoes and amplifies the prophetic message of Isaiah.

In the parable the master of a house plants a vineyard, just as in Isaiah.

And just as the bridegroom in Isaiah, the master puts a fence around it, puts in a tower and digs a wine press in it.

And he entrusts it to others to care for.

In Isaiah it is Israel and Judah; in the parable it is tenants.

Now the parable is told first to the chief priests and elders of the people.

Jesus clearly identifies them as the tenants, and at the end of the parable, if you read on, the evangelist is quite clear about that: the chief priests and elders of the people ‘perceived that Jesus was speaking about them’ (Matthew 21.45).

So Jesus identifies the chief priests and elders of the people as the tenants who beat the servants of the master and killed others: are these not the prophets who were killed, like Zechariah, son of Jehoiada the priest (2 Chronicles 24:20-21), Uriah (Jeremiah 26:20-23), Isaiah and Jeremiah, John the Baptist, all killed for telling Israel to be faithful as a bride to the bridegroom and lover of their soul?

And the connection is explicit, for us who are marked with the sign of the cross in baptism, the son and heir comes to the vineyard to bring it back to the master, for the heir is as good as the master in Hebrew thought.

That son is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, indeed God himself, the bridegroom.

On hearing this parable, the chief priests and elders of the people wanted to arrest Jesus, but now was not their moment, that was to come, when, as Jesus quotes from the psalm:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22)

 

He is rejected by the builders of Israel and yet becomes the cornerstone and foundation of the Church.

He is the heir to the vineyard, who is beaten and killed.

He is the bridegroom who is rejected by his bride.

So he declares:

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.’

So the Kingdom is entrusted to other servants, the Church.

Make no mistake, God remains faithful to his ancient people the Jews, for whom we pray on Good Friday each year, that they may be faithful to the Covenant; and, at the same time, the Church becomes his Bride, in the marriage banquet of the Lamb consummated on the Cross.

The death of the Son is not the last word.

Now the cornerstone he becomes the New Temple, the meeting point of heaven and earth, the place of encounter with the Living God.

What does this all mean for us today?

First, we are not entitled to hear the parable and identify the Jewish people as the ones who killed the Son.

Humanity killed Jesus Christ.

On Good Friday it is we, the Church, who are convicted by the words of the Reproaches, as the Lord says to us:

O my people what have I done to thee? Or how have I offended you?’

And one of the verses says:

What more ought I to have done for thee, that I have not done?

I planted thee, indeed, my most beautiful vineyard:

and thou hast become exceeding bitter to me:

for in my thirst thou gavest me vinegar to drink:

and with a spear thou hast pierced the side of thy Saviour.

This speaks to all the times when we reject Christ the Bridegroom, when we are unfaithful as Christians and as a Church.

This parable is a call not to project onto others but to be faithful, fruitful tenants of the Father’s vineyard.

Christ is given vinegar to drink on the Cross: that is the produce of the corrupted vineyard.

Yet as the Passiontide hymn puts it:

Abel’s blood for vengeance

Pleaded to the skies;

But the blood of Jesus

For our pardon cries.

We are given Christ’s own blood to drink, the abundant wine of the Kingdom, our participation and grafting into the Vine of Life, Jesus himself.

The wine of Cana, at Our Lady’s prompting, raised spirits and manifested Christ’s glory, but it was just wine.

The wine of the Last Supper infused the veins of the disciples and gave life because it is not just wine, it is Christ’s own blood shed of the life of the world.

We tenants of the vineyard today receive his lifeblood, his very presence, his promise.

May we be found faithful.

You will see heaven opened - Michael, Gabriel & Raphael

 Revelation 12:7-12a ‘Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.’

John 1:47-51 ‘You will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’

‘You will see heaven opened’

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Walking along Church Street to the church last week I was beginning to muse on what I might say for this homily.

As I walked I realised that this year I hadn’t seen any Michaelmas daisies, a simple but pretty flower at this time of year.

As I thought that I looked to my right, in the field that is often flooded, and there lining the verge were, none other than, Michaelmas daises.

I must have walked past them a number of times in the preceding days but not noticed them.

Were they a message? An angelic message?

I had totally missed something that was hiding in plain sight.

There is something about the angels in that: always bringing the messages of the God of Heaven and earth who sends them, often ignored or unnoticed by we mortals, unless we tune in to them.

This time of year, late September and into October, is good for us because it reminds us to tune into things angelic.

At risk of sounding like the General Synod of the Church of England, this is the Season of Angels, Angeltide, with today’s feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and Friday’s feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

That said, tuning into things angelic is not restricted to a time or season, rather, angelic activity pervades our worship, the scriptures, and the Christian Year.

In our worship we unite with the angels all that we offer in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

As the Book of Common Prayer 1662 magnificently retained (thank goodness):

Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory: Glory be to thee, O Lord most High.

And of course, the Sanctus is an angelic hymn using texts from Isaiah and Revelation.

This is a theme much loved by the seventeenth century Anglican Divine, Jeremy Taylor.

He says that ‘the holy table’ on earth is a copy ‘of the celestial altar’.

His Eucharistic theology is well articulated by the Roman Canon which connects the earthly and heavenly sacrifice through angelic means:

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God:

command that these gifts be borne

by the hands of your holy Angel

to your altar on high

in the sight of your divine majesty,

so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar

receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son,

may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.

And from the scriptures we could reference the cherubim, those angelic cousins, guarding Eden after the expulsion of our first parents; the angel who warns the disregarding Balaam, but is only seen by his donkey; the angelic visitors who receive hospitality from Abraham and Sarah - the list goes on.

Angels are there in the psalms: ‘In the presence of the angels I praise you, O Lord.’

An unnamed angel comes to Joseph, and surely the most joyous task of the angelic host is to proclaim the birth of the Messiah and singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest’.

But their activity doesn’t stop there: angels minister to Christ following his baptism; they are with him in Gethsemane; they attend the tomb at his Resurrection; they surround his Ascension into heaven; they lead apostles from prison; Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch and guide Cornelius to Peter.

Angelic activity rightly pervades our worship, our scripture and the every day because they are messengers of the Most High.

The angels still connect heaven and earth, as with the ladder stretching from Jacob’s pillow to heaven, an angelic sign pointing to Christ himself, which unfolds in the dialogue with Nathaniel in our gospel reading:

‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’.

So at this time of year we glory in the angels in their ministry: you will see heaven opened.

Today we focus upon three of them: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

Those who have prayed the Office of Readings today will be familiar with Saint Gregory the Great’s homily that speaks of these three.

He reminds us that the word ‘angel’ is an office not a nature.

Although an angelos - the Greek word for ‘messenger’ - an angel is defined by the message they bear, not the messenger they are.

Yet the message can’t be unravelled from the messenger.

These three are messengers of salvation in its most powerful forms.

To the great Gabriel is given the highest task in preparation for the Saviour.

He goes first to Zechariah to announce the message of the conception of John and then to the Blessed Virgin to deliver what Saint Gregory calls, ‘the greatest message of all’, the Annunciation, so dear to us in Walsingham and at the heart of the charism of this holy place.

In that Holy House of Nazareth Mary joyfully responds to Gabriel, ‘Be it unto me according to thy word’.

Snubbed by Zechariah, heard by Mary, Gabriel takes back the ‘fiat’ of the Virgin to the Most High, the assent that the Word will be made flesh.

Gabriel’s message is salvation through the birth of the Saviour and the one who prepares His way.

Raphael brings salvation in the healing power of God that is manifest in Christ’s earthly ministry.

Raphael, St Gregory tells us, ‘wiped away the shadows of blindness from Tobit when he touched his eyes to cure him’.

Salve is healing; salvation is the healing remedy for the sickness of our mortal condition.

That healing, communicated by Raphael, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospels.

And when Christ heals today, through the intercession of Mary and the saints, Raphael delivers that healing, restoration and salvation to us.

Finally, Michael, of whom we heard in the first reading, is an angel of salvation because he is engaged in manifesting the triumph of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ over the powers evil and darkness.

Michael’s name means ‘Who is like God’ and Michael’s primary task is to tell the ancient enemy, that fallen angel, that it is not him.

Satan is the adversary of God and nothing like him, even if human heads are turned by his wiles.

So as we celebrate the archangels today, and all things angelic on Friday, we’re left with a question.

We’re in an era when more messages fly around the globe than ever before.

‘To message’ has become a verb when once it was a noun, but perhaps in the spirit of St Gregory it always was.

In a message-soaked age – 24 hour news, social media, WhatsApp and email pinging - when angelic messages sit in the spiritual inbox unopened, or don’t get through the firewall of our vanity and deafness, or bounce back as celestial spam: what are we missing?

The angels are indefatigable because they are messages and messengers of the Most High.

I missed the Michaelmas daisies for days before looking out for them and being open to the possibility of their presence.

Let’s be ever more alert to the holy messengers of God, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and all the heavenly host, to lift our hearts and minds to the One who sends them.

‘You will see heaven opened’