Daily Masses - the fifth Sunday of Easter

Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Moira Edwards (+), may she be forever blessed; and then later on, for the people of the parish. Our first reading today was all about the concern of the first Christian priests - the Apostles. They were struggling with the their new responsibilities, and found that the works of mercy of the Church were taking up a lot of time, and they felt they should spend themselves on prayer and on preaching and teaching. Here then, we find the origins of the Order of the deacons of the Church (Acts of the Apostles, chapter 6), one of the three traditional hierarchical levels of the Catholic clergy. When we were in seminary, it was clear that the priests ascended past this level, so that all priests were at one point deacons and remain deacons afterwards. Just as every bishop remains both a priest and a deacon. The Apostles did not give up the works of charity; they simply deputised worthy men to carry them out in their stead. 

Reading through these early histories of the Church, we discover the our own origins and the origins of our mission and so, who we are. The priority of prayer and preaching for the early priests tells us what was important for them. While there is a real separation between the priests and the people, we do have common goals - the prayer and the preaching, and the works of mercy - but these are divided in various proportions between us all. In the end, as Saint Peter tells us in the second reading, we work together as one, we are living stones built into a spiritual house. We are a consecrated nation of priests offering the spiritual sacrifices of our hearts to the God who made us, and this sacrifice is made acceptable to God because of Christ, who is the cornerstone on which we are built. The Church is certainly not a set of bishops and priests in Rome, or in Westminster, or in Nottingham. The Church is all of us together, parts of a whole, working together in our various ways, a single body of whom Christ is the head.

When we think of Christ as a stepping-stone to help us cross the great abyss between us and God, we begin to understand much of this, and today's gospel reading as well. If the Church is the body of Christ, the extension of Christ in this world, then we too must be a bridge between the world and God. For Christ is the way, the truth and the life, the only way to get to God. We understand God when we have understood Christ. The request of the Apostle Philip's (John, chapter 14) occurs to us all the time today: if only we could see God. People will say to us, Show us your God and we will believe in him. And Christ's reply is the same: if you would see God, look at me. If only we could say to the world, if you would see Christ, look at us.