Mothering Sunday & Our Lady of Sorrows

 4th Sunday of Lent - Mothering Sunday. Readings: Exodus 2.1-10; Psalm 127; 2 Corinthians 1.3-7; John 19.25b-27

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Today, the fourth Sunday of Lent, has three additional titles!

 

The second is Laetare Sunday, which takes its name from the Latin introit, the opening text, of the Mass of today: ‘Laetare, Ieruslem’ It means ‘be joyful, Jerusalem, and all who love her!’ That infuses some joy into the Lenten fast, and is why today rose coloured vestments are worn.

 

This theme of taking the edge off Lent – strong purple giving way for a day to gentler rose  – gives us the third title: ‘Refreshment Sunday’. The forty days of Lent are a long slog, and Refreshment Sunday helps us to ease off the Lenten rigours ready for the remaining days of Lent and the coming Holy Week.

 

Finally, the fourth Sunday of Lent is also known as ‘Mothering Sunday’. Very happily it usually falls around the time of the feast of the Annunciation of the Lord, the day recalling the Archangel Gabriel coming to Mary to announce that she would be the Mother of the Lord. We celebrated that day last Friday, 25^th March.

 

Mothering Sunday has become a very ambiguous day. The original Mothering Sunday concept - about Mother Church, Mary, the Mother of the Lord and the maternal nurture of the Faith - has changed, out of all recognition, at the hands of the greetings card, confectionary and florist industries amongst others.

 

Mothering Sunday has mutated into ‘Mother’s Day’ and, in the process, has put huge pressures on women, both those who are mothers – labouring under the ‘Best Mum in the World’ title - those women who might yearn for a child and not have one, those women whose child has died. Mother’s Day reveals that rawness and its sensitivity.

 

That said, the tradition of Mothering Sunday has always taken the pains and trials of motherhood seriously, not glossing over them.

 

Meditation on the place of Mary in the life of the Church cannot help but lead us there. As the hymn puts it:

 

Sing we, too of Mary’s sorrows,

Of the sword that pierced her through,

When beneath the cross of Jesus

She his weight of suffering knew,

Looked upon her Son and saviour

Reigning high on Calvary’s tree,

Saw the price of man’s redemption

Paid to set the sinner free.

 

On 15^th September each year is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. The feast flourished in the Middle Ages, a time of high infant mortality, plague, internecine war and unremitting misery. There is a huge contemporary resonance.

 

The feast touches on the pain of motherhood, it evokes texts such as from the prophet Jeremiah:

 

A voice is heard in Ramah,

lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children

for they are no more. (Jeremiah 31.15)

 

That text is used on the feast of the Holy Innocents, when Herod killed the children under two years old, and it is a text that echoes through the ages, not least when we consider Ukraine today.

 

We see the mothers and grandmothers of Ukraine seeking refuge for their children; women bearing the pain of war, sharing the pain of war with husbands, brothers and sons. Consider too the pain of the mother who child has died in knife crime, gang violence or drugs: that is all too local. ‘Best mum in the world’ seems a cheap slogan in the face of those realities. Our Lady of Sorrows helps us face the pain and know that we all, men, women and children, receive the maternal love of the Mother of the Lord and Mother of his Body, the Church.

 

On Friday, Lady Day, Pope Francis consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the immaculate heart of Mary. This language may be unfamiliar to many Anglicans, but it is of deep value.

 

The Blessed Mother’s heart was indeed pierced with pain at the Crucifixion of her Son, as Simeon had prophesied. The hymn composed for Our Lady of Sorrows, Stabat Mater, puts it like this:

 

At the Cross her station keeping,

Stood the mournful Mother weeping,

Close to Jesus to the last:

 

Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,

All his bitter anguish bearing,

now at length the sword has pass'd.

 

By consecrating Russia and Ukraine to the heart of Mary, Pope Francis is saying that, as Jesus is in the midst of the suffering of Ukraine, so too his Mother is close at hand, with the compassion and love of a mother who has known the sight of pain.

 

Russia and Ukraine are bound by deep Christian traditions, especially veneration of the Mother of God. One of those threads is the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, a copy of which we have in church.

 

The original icon was painted (technically icons are ‘written’ for they are images [in Greek ikon] of the Word of God) in Constantinople, before being taken to Kyiv, from where it was given to the Assumption Cathedral in the city of Vladimir. It is a dreadful parody of the point of the icon that the one waging war against Kyiv and Ukraine today is himself named after that holy icon: Vladimir.

 

The Son of God suffers today for those people, and his Mother, as she always does, stands close by gazing with eyes of compassion and love.

After the Eucharist today, go and pause before the icon: see the intimacy of Mary and Jesus, cheek to cheek; see her heavy, knowing eyes gazing at you as she presents the Saviour, who is nestled in her arms, to you and all the world. Light a candle for the mothers, grandmothers and all the people of Russia and Ukraine. And pray.

 

Eternal Father, in the maternal heart of the Virgin Mary you give us an image of perfect compassion with your Son’s saving sacrifice; grant us a heart like hers, and let the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, at her intercession, be blessed in justice with your peace, which is not of this world. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

'We are the Body of Christ' A Meditation before the Blessed Sacrament

 

‘We are the body of Christ’

 

Jesus, we honour your body, incarnate, risen and glorified, your Body present with us now in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

 

By baptism and grace, we, your Church, are your Body on earth, bound together, as limbs and members, by the one Spirit who you breathed upon your disciples in the Upper Room.

 

That same Holy Spirit overshadowed your mother, Mary, who said ‘let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1.38b).

 

You took flesh in the body of Mary. As St Augustine reminds us, your blessed Mother  ‘conceived [you] in her heart before she conceived [you] in her womb’.

 

Jesus, may you be conceived in our minds, and fill our bodies with your life.

 

From Mary’s body you were born in time and place, in Bethlehem, a town whose name means ‘House of Bread’.

 

In this church, this House of Bread, the Bread of Your Presence, we feed on your Body to become your body.

 

In your Incarnation, becoming human, you hallow matter and our bodies: our bodies matter to you.

 

We pray this night for the wounded, hungry, thirsty and abused bodies of men, women and children in Ukraine, Afghanistan, of Tigray and Ethiopia and in this country and community.

 

Jesus, in your body we find healing of our bodies, our minds, our spirits. Be to us the food for our journey.

 

May all your people find their souls satisfied and may we be led to the banquet of heaven.

 

Jesus, by your grace we are your body; help us each to grow into the full stature of your love.

 

Silence

 

Blessed be God.

Blessed be his holy name.

Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

Blessed be the name of Jesus.

Blessed be his most Sacred Heart.

Blessed be his most Precious Blood.

Blessed be Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.

Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.

Blessed be her holy and immaculate Conception.

Blessed be her glorious assumption.

Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.

Blessed be St Joseph, her spouse most chaste.

Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

 

The Lord is my light and salvation: A Sermon

Preached a sermon at the Sung Eucharist at Croydon Minster on the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3.17-4.1; Luke 13.31-end.

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This morning, as at every Eucharist, a psalm has been recited.

 

This morning it has been sung. This is right and proper because psalms, when first composed some two and a half to three thousand years ago, were written to be sung. The word psalm means ‘song’.

 

The origins of the psalms are for use in the worship of the Temple in Jerusalem, and in the liturgical life of Israel. By tradition the author of the psalms is King David.

 

The psalms are an integral element in the Liturgy of the Word, that part of the Liturgy which contains the readings from the Old and New Testaments and the Gospels . After all, Jesus himself says, ‘everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled’ (Luke 24.44).

 

Psalms are from the Old Testament and have always been a feature of Christian worship from the earliest days, because they represent the fulfilment of God’s promises in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

 

It’s also the case that of all the books of Old Testament that Jesus quotes, the psalms are quoted most frequently. At the end of the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn, which we could assume to be a psalm, and headed to the Mount of Olives where Jesus would go to Gethsemane to pray. Jesus’ dying words on the Cross – ‘my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ – are from the Book of Psalms; they’re the opening words of Psalm 22.

 

The psalms are the backbone of the Divine Office, what we know as Matins and Evensong, the Church’s prayer in the morning and evening.

 

Psalms lead us through times of exultation and praise: ‘O praise God in his holiness, praise him in the firmament of his power!’ (Psalm 150)

 

they go with us to the very depths of human experience; ‘O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee : O let my prayer enter into thy presence, incline thine ear unto my calling. For my soul is full of trouble : and my life draweth nigh unto hell’. (Psalm 88.1,2)

 

they express deep questioning; ‘Nevertheless, my feet were almost gone : my treadings had well-nigh slipt. And why? I was grieved at the wicked : I do also see the ungodly in such prosperity’. (Psalm 74.2,3)

 

and they articulate the most profound words of trust and assurance. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing’ (Psalm 23.1); ‘I will sing forever of the steadfast love of the LORD forever (Psalm 89.1)

 

We don’t need always to be searching for words of our own composing; what we can do is turn to the book of psalms for their words are given to us.

 

Today’s psalm is a psalm that I first became familiar with through the most simple of chants from the community of brothers at Taizé, in France: ‘The Lord is my light, my light and salvation, in him I trust, in him I trust.’

 

At times of danger, or fear or when I am uncertain, they have been words on my lips. Psalm 27 became a song to feed my heart.

 

The custom in Jesus’ day was to quote the first verse of a psalm which was an indicator of the whole psalm. So Psalm 22, ‘my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ triggers to the hearer a psalm that is not just saying that God has forsaken the speaker, but actually becomes a song of praise of what God has done in raising up the afflicted from rock bottom.

 

Likewise, ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation whom then shall I fear?’ opens up a wider story.

 

The Ukrainian Catholic Church have quoted this psalm many times over the last two weeks. It is not a casual or unthinking expression of hope in God when everything is going wrong, but a deep expression of trust in God:

 

Though a host encamp against me,

my heart shall not be afraid,

and though there rise up war against me,

yet will I put my trust in him. (verse 3)

 

The psalm concludes with words that could almost be written by a Ukrainian today:

 

Deliver me not into the will of my adversaries, 

for false witnesses have risen up against me,

and those who breathe out violence.

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord

in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;

be strong and he shall comfort your heart;

wait patiently for the Lord. (verses 15-17)

 

The words of the psalm are directly from someone in a situation of being attacked, when people are out to kill him. Indeed that echoes David’s own situation when he was being pursued by King Saul. The words ring true for Ukrainians today and attacked people throughout the ages. They are true as well for Jesus as his enemies encircled him, as the Pharisees told him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ (Luke 13.31).

 

Jesus walks into the darkness of his impending death, not shying from the Cross, as threat encircled him. In so doing he walks with you and me into the darkness we face, such that we are not alone and can still sing, ‘The LORD is my light, my light and salvation, in him I trust, in him I trust’.

 

The psalmist seeks to worship God in God’s holy temple and seeks the face of the LORD. Jesus inhabits and fulfils this psalm.

 

Jesus is the New Temple, the place of sacrifice and reconciliation. This is accomplished on the cross, and the bitter irony is that this takes place in Jerusalem. Jerusalem means ‘city of peace’; yet is a parody of peace. The temple of Jerusalem is supposed to be the place of encounter with the Living God, yet the Living God, made flesh and given a face in Jesus Christ, is rejected and killed.

 

The face of the LORD is not in vengeance and destruction, but seen in the face of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

 

Seeking the face of Jesus enables us to see in the darkness, and leads us deep into the heart of God, the heart and wellspring of life and light. Celebrating the sacraments and receiving their grace, personal prayer and devotion, feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting for the sick and imprisoned are the ways we seek to see the Lord’s face.

 

The psalm revels in seeking ‘to behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek his will in his temple’ (Psalm 27.5) and to ‘offer in his dwelling an oblation with great gladness’ (27.9). Offering that oblation is what we do now in the Eucharist.

 

As we seek Christ’s face in the temple and in his world so we will know the power of the final words of the gospel reading today, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’ (Luke 13.35b), words we know as the Benedictus and, believe it or not, they are words from a Psalm too (118.26).  

 

We come now in the name of the Lord, seeking blessing and entrusting ourselves to the Lord, our light and salvation.

I am the Bread of Life: A meditation before the Blessed Sacrament

 

‘I am the Bread of Life’

 

Jesus, in the gospel of St John you tell us that you are the bread of life, and that whoever comes to you will not hunger, and who believes in you shall never thirst. (John 6.35)

 

Lord, we come to you hungry to follow in your way, to know your truth and to receive your life. You alone can satisfy; our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand - Croydon Minster
'I am the bread of life...'

 

‘I am the Bread of Life’. You spoke those words to the crowd of Five Thousand, for whom you multiplied the gift of the child, five loaves and two fish.

 

Take the meagre offerings of our prayer and devotion, and multiply them. May the grain of our lives yield thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold.

 

May we cast our ‘bread upon the waters’ (Ecclesiastes 11.1) and be people who know the lavish generosity of your life and love, receive it and share it with others.

 

Your generous love is given when you are broken. Your body broken on the cross, your lifeblood poured out for the life of the world. We see you broken in the sacrament of the altar to bring completion to our lives, feed us with your presence and lead us to the Father.

 

Lord Jesus Christ, Bread of Life, feed us, your people, in our earthly pilgrimage.

 

You are the Bread of Life, yet not everyone feeds on you, may all who seek to be fed in their body and spirit find their satisfaction in you.

 

Bread of Life, we pray tonight for all who hunger for bread.

 

We pray this night for the people who are beginning to go hungry in Ukraine, the starving of Afghanistan, of Tigray and Ethiopia and all in food poverty in this country.

 

Jesus, in your body we find healing of our bodies, our minds, our spirits. Bread of Life, be to us the food for our journey.

 

May all your people find their souls satisfied and may we be led to the banquet of heaven.

 

Silence

 

Blessed be God.

Blessed be his holy name.

Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

Blessed be the name of Jesus.

Blessed be his most Sacred Heart.

Blessed be his most Precious Blood.

Blessed be Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.

Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.

Blessed be her holy and immaculate Conception.

Blessed be her glorious assumption.

Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.

Blessed be St Joseph, her spouse most chaste.

Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

We do not live by bread alone: A Meditation before the Blessed Sacrament

Meditation before the Blessed Sacrament at Sung Compline & Benediction, 3rd March, first Thursday in Lent

‘We do not live by bread alone’

 

Jesus, bread of life, in the gospel of St Luke we read that you, ‘full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and were led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days you were tempted by the devil. You ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, you were famished. The devil said to you, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ You answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” (Luke 4.1-4)

 

Lord, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from your mouth.

 

May we savour your words as the bread of life.

 

‘How sweet are your words on my tongue,

They are sweeter than honey to my mouth.’ (Psalm 119.103)

 

We consume you in the sacrament of the altar, may you consume our lives and fill them with your light, glory and presence.

 

May we taste and see that you are gracious;

trusting in you, may we be blessed (cf Psalm 34.8).

 

Lord Jesus Christ, Bread of Life, feed us, your people, in our earthly pilgrimage.

 

We do not live by bread alone, but many go hungry in our world.

 

We pray tonight for all who hunger for bread.

We pray this night for the people who are beginning to go hungry in Ukraine, the starving of Afghanistan, of Tigray and Ethiopia and all in food poverty in this country.

 

Jesus, in your body we find healing of our bodies, our minds, our spirits. Be to us the food for our journey.

 

May all your people find their souls satisfied and may we be led to the banquet of heaven.

 

‘We do not live by bread alone’

 

Silence

 

Blessed be God.

Blessed be his holy name.

Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

Blessed be the name of Jesus.

Blessed be his most Sacred Heart.

Blessed be his most Precious Blood.

Blessed be Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.

Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.

Blessed be her holy and immaculate Conception.

Blessed be her glorious assumption.

Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.

Blessed be St Joseph, her spouse most chaste.

Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

 

 

The Movement of the Heart: An Ash Wednesday sermon

 Ash Wednesday 2022. Readings: 2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10; Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21

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The gospel of Ash Wednesday really sets our bearings for this coming season of Lent.

 

It does so in setting out the priorities of our demeanour in public worship, our almsgiving, prayer, fasting and orientation of heart.

 

The movement of the heart towards God is the essence of Lent. The practices of worship, almsgiving, prayer and fasting are the points on the compass that sets the direction for our hearts to turn afresh to the Lord.

 

So these practices are significant. They embody our intention; literally put our intentions into practice, expressed by our bodies.

 

This is not about what we say we will do, but about what we do, do.

 

Jesus condemns the hypocrites for shouting about, trumpeting, what they will do and never doing it or just making a show of their piety. As such there can be no movement of their hearts. They’ve had their reward. The reward they sought was to make showy displays; and they got it.

 

The mystery is that the reward is not measurable or eye-catching, such that we can say with St Paul, ‘I have nothing, yet possess everything’.

 

The ‘reward’ - if reward is even the right word - the reward of Lent is a changed heart, in Ezekiel’s words, ‘a heart of flesh and not a heart of stone’.

 

The season of Lent has a penitential character, in other words, it is about a change of heart through a thoroughgoing and honest acknowledgment of who we are and how we are. It reminds us that we have nothing yet possess everything, and it does so in a blunt way at the Imposition of Ash:

 

‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’.

 

Lent, though, is not a time to be beaten up, but a time to be built up. And that is what penance is about, what it is for.

That's why to make personal confession in Lent is of deepest value.

 

Built up not beaten up. There’s a motto for Lent.

 

But if you’re still of the miserabilist approach to Lent, be reminded that, in Jesus’ own words:

 

‘God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (John 3.17)

 

Lent, then, is a time to allow the deep movement of God in our lives, where we find deep reward.

 

Re-read tonight's Gospel reading. Essentially it asks, ‘where do you find your reward... truly?’

 

If adulation is the reward you seek, or the approval of others then you need spiritually to reassess, big time.

 

If the reward you seek is having nothing yet possessing everything then there is plenty to work with.

 

Either way, use this Lent as the compass to set the direction in your Christian life, that God make create and make in us new and contrite hearts.

 

 

'Seek ye my face' A sermon on the Sunday before Lent

Preached at Croydon Minster on the Sunday before Lent. Readings: Exodus 34.29-end; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2; Luke 9.28-36

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

O hide not thou thy face from me : nor cast thy servant away in displeasure. (Psalm 27.9-10)

 

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The human face tells many a story.

 

The face of the baby speaks of openness, wonder and delight.

 

The face of the older person, with wrinkles and lines, tells the story of times of trial, of highs and lows, of experience.

 

In recent days we have seen faces that testify to deep suffering and pain. Those are the faces of the people of Ukraine. They’re faces we recognise from Syria, Afghanistan and countless places around the world.

 

And on the other side we see in the face of Vladimir Putin calculated rage, grievance and an abusive sense of power that unleashes violence in the selfish pursuit of gain.

 

The countenance of the human face can tell us many things.

 

Something we have learnt from the pandemic is that a covered face impedes those subtle ways of communication, when we see that the words we are hearing don’t quite tally with the look on the face of the other.  We say we can read someone’s face.

 

So we talk about someone having a poker face: a face that disconnects internal feelings – excitement, nervousness and such like - from what everyone sees in their face.

 

The most beautiful person is the one whose external countenance reflects the inner life. It’s transparency of life. In other words, when you see their face you see their soul. That is beauty.

 

And that takes us to this morning’s readings and in particular the gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which are captured in the verse of Psalm 27 that I quoted a few moments ago:

 

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

O hide not thou thy face from me : nor cast thy servant away in displeasure. (Psalm 27.9-10)

 

The Christian life is about seeking the face of Christ, and having the face of Christ, so that what is seen in our face is who we are, without dissembling or cloaking. For in seeing the face of Christ, we see the face of the Living God.

 

Of course, we are often fearful of ‘showing our faces’. We mistake physical appearance for true beauty and attractiveness.

 

Truly showing our faces is about our spiritual beauty and that is what our readings are pointing us to.

 

In Exodus Moses encounters God in the holy place. The holiness of God so fills Moses’ life that his face shines. As it said,

 

whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. Exodus 34.34-35

 

Moses’ encounters with God so filled him with God’s presence, that his face quite literally shone. It begs a question. In church, in personal prayer, in serving your neighbour – does your face shine? Does your face shine from a deep encounter with the Living God, or is there actually no encounter, and therefore no shining face? Does your face shine after receiving Christ in Holy Communion: do you allow your face to shine with his presence in your life?

 

St Paul writing to the Corinthians, as we heard in our second reading, develops the theme of the veiling of faces, suggesting that to be veiled is to distort our chance of seeing God face to face. The veil does not just stop others seeing us, but us seeing others, and more particularly the face of the Lord. The reading ended before the climax that comes a few verses later, where St Paul writes, beautifully:

 

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4.6)

 

And that’s the point! We seek the face of Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of humanity and his face reveals who he is.

 

We see this most clearly in his Transfiguration, this wondrous revelation of his divinity shining through his face, and actually infusing his whole body.

 

The face of Christ is utterly authentic as human and divine: True God and True Man. Who he is shines forth from his face, and this is revealed on that Holy Mountain: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him’ (Luke 9.35)

 

The Transfiguration is represented in the East Window of this Minster Church, centrally below the crucifixion. The mystery of Christianity is that in the face of the Crucified One we see the glory and beauty of God who empties himself of his love poured upon us that we might have the capacity to live his life and ourselves shine out with the divine presence.

 

This is Christian spirituality at its deepest. And that is seeking the face of the Lord and seeing his face incarnate, crucified and risen, and seeing him and recognising him in the breaking of bread.

 

This is where we seek and find the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.