Here we are, and it's Sacred Heart Eve. Yesterday's Mass intention was for the repose of the soul of Pat Lewis (+) and today's Mass intention was for Ita Lynch (+). May they rest forever in the embrace of Christ.
Bit of excitement in Derby city this last two days for, after weeks of mostly endless sunshine, the heavens burst forth and its been raining almost continuously. The garden is happy, the birds are still singing, and the roof of the parish centre is not leaking. So, all's well.
At Mass today, we had the introduction to the Lord's Prayer for the Gospel, but a startling warning from Saint Paul in the first reading, to not be deflected away from the Apostolic Church by false prophets. Centuries later, the warning sounds loud again. Here it is:
"If you would only bear with my vanity for a little! Pray be patient with me; after all, my jealousy on your behalf is the jealousy of God himself; I have betrothed you to Christ, so that no other but he should claim you, his bride without spot, and now I am anxious about you. The serpent beguiled Eve with his cunning; what if your minds should be corrupted, and lose that innocence which is yours in Christ? Some newcomer preaches to you a different Christ, not the one we preached to you; he brings you a spirit other than the spirit you had from us, a gospel other than the gospel you received; you would do well, then, to be patient with me. I claim to have done no less than the very greatest of the Apostles. I may be unexperienced in speaking, but I am not so in my knowledge of the truth; everybody knows what we have been in every way to you. Unless perhaps you think I did wrong to honour you by abasing myself, since I preached God’s gospel to you at no charge to yourselves? Why, I impoverished other churches, taking pay from them so as to be at your service. I was penniless when I visited you, but I would not cripple any of you with expenses; the brethren came from Macedonia to relieve my necessities; I would not, and I will not, put any burden on you. As the truth of Christ lives in me, no one in all the country of Achaia shall silence this boast of mine.
The marital language of Catholic communion is very evident here. One of the reasons the Church forbids divorce is because of this understanding of the Church as married to God. The Church teaches that all marital fidelity is an image of that fidelity of God to the Church. That's what Paul means by the jealousy of God for the Church, which causes his priest (here, Paul) to be jealous for the Church on God's behalf. So, every Christian spouse should be jealous for his or her spouse, so that nobody else should claim him or her. But here, Paul is talking about the Corinthian Christians being chased after other preachers claiming to be Christians, but not following the Apostolic line. Serpents, he calls them, trying to beguile God's own bride. Paul is beside himself with jealousy for the people he baptised falling into the arms of false preachers. Be patient with me, he says, I'm nothing less that an Apostle, if only the least of the Apostles, I'm not even a gifted speaker, but, look here, I know what's what, and I haven't even taken money from you, so see here, I'm not in it for the money, like those jackals are.
I think that's lovely, it's a very human statement and makes me think rather fondly of Paul. And that brings me to one of my very favourite online videos. I may have mentioned it previously in these blog-posts. It comes from the end of that nice film that was released recently (was it two years ago?), called Paul Apostle of Christ, which told the story of Paul's final days. The narration in this video is from the second letter of Saint Paul to Saint Timothy, the bishop of Ephesos; this was Paul's last letter, written in prison. In this video, he faces the sword and finds himself in a land of perpetual sunrise, where a crowd of the Christians he once hunted down in Judaea and Syria welcome him with great joy. Then Paul sees the figure he once saw on the road to Damascus, and the film ends.
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