The Priesthood of Young Believers

Homily to theASCENT participants at Worth Abbey for the Saturday of the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Year 1.

Before there were many Catholic priests throughout the world, there were the Twelve Apostles.

Before Jesus called Apostles to himself, there were Levitical priests offering sacrifice in the Jewish Temple.

Before there was a Temple, Moses anointed Aaron and his sons to be the high priestly family of all Israel.

But before Aaron was chosen, it was the young people of Israel who were chosen for the priestly duty of making sacrifice to God.

Now, I’ve been a Catholic priest for 14 years. I’m very happy with what I do – each day I stand at the altar and open a time portal, connecting our lives here and now with what Jesus did once and for all on the Hill of Calvary. He was the Lamb of God, the only sacrifice powerful enough to forgive our sins and open the gates of heaven. Last night, Fin preached about the importance of obedience to God – and in the last two thousand years, hundreds of millions of times, Catholic priests have obeyed Jesus’ command to “do this in memory of me”. The Mass is a sacrifice, but not a new sacrifice – it is the one and eternal sacrifice. At least, it’s not a new or repeated sacrifice for God.

But it is for me!

I once saw a friend wearing a wonderful T-shirt: “The problem with living sacrifices is that they try to crawl off the altar.”

We are each called to be a living sacrifice, making a daily decision to place God at the centre of our lives. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail. In fact, each one of us is a field where wheat and weeds grow together. Some of our bad habits are so entwined with our personalities that we can’t see how to stop the bad patterns in our lives without harming something good about who we are. God doesn’t seem to be a in hurry – he has given each one of us a lifetime to try to deal with the problem of sin in our lives. But each day we have to make a fresh decision not only to walk away from temptations to do things which are selfish – we also have to make a daily decision to place Jesus at the centre. Do you call him Lord? A Lord is not a special advisor. If you want to take some of his advice and reject the rest, by all means sing songs in honour of Jesus Christ your Counsellor, but don’t go further than that! Like an Army Commander, a Lord gets the last word, or you’re out of the ranks!

Now, what about these young Israelites who were called to offer sacrifice? They had to do three things. First, they received the live animals which the people of Israel brought. Then they slaughtered the creatures as sacrifices. Third, they brought the blood to Moses so he could sprinkle it on the people!

Remember that in those days, the people of Israel were nomads. They travelled from place to place in a barren desert. You can’t grow crops when you don’t stay in one place all year round. They took sheep and goats and cattle to graze on the plants which grew wild – the animals were their security. To give away an animal was to give away true wealth – no more milk, no more lambs or calves, no meat from that creature. For an Israelite to entrust you with one of their precious livestock must have been a truly humbling moment!

Now don’t worry – no living creatures were or will be harmed in the making of this sermon! We are not in the business of sacrificing animals; we don’t need to, because now we know God was pointing forward to the only Lamb that ever needed to be sacrificed, Jesus Christ Himself. We might, indeed, be asked to make the sacrifice of eating less meat in our lives, for the sake of our planet. But as young people called to God’s Royal Priesthood, which comes as part of our baptism, when do other people bring us things to sacrifice?

Sometimes, others bring us their bad behaviour. We will feel tempted to react emotionally and give as good as we get. But as mediators of peace, we can ask for God’s help to suck it up, turn the other cheek, and channel into prayer our frustrations about what we can’t change in other people. Jesus instructed us to love, bless and pray for our enemies – and that goes for the friends who annoy us, too!

Sometimes, others bring us their burdens. We need to listen to a friend in distress. We might feel humbled by their trust, and powerless in the face of their problems. But we are mediators between our friend and the greatest Power in the universe! It’s hardly ever inappropriate to tell your friend that you’re going to pray for them. And take a risk – usually it’s OK to offer to pray WITH them. Just say you believe in a God who can help and you’re wondering if it’s OK to say a prayer with them right now. When they say YES, wait to see what God does in their lives!

The young people of Israel RECEIVED the sacrifices. You will receive the bad behaviour and the burdens which others bring you.

The young people of Israel OFFERED the sacrifices. You are invited to make a daily decision to be a living sacrifice, to help your friends bear their burdens, to turn the other cheek to your enemies. Stay on the altar – don’t crawl away.

The young people of Israel BROUGHT the blood to Moses. You are not on your own – as God’s priestly people, you are called to pray for your enemies and your friends. You are mediators between them and Jesus Christ. A hundred years ago, God spoke to the world twice to remind us of this. At Fatima, an angel taught the visionary children to offer to the Holy Trinity, “the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world”. In Poland, St Faustina Kowalska was by Jesus Himself taught to pray the Chaplet of Mercy for those in need – “For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” As an ordained priest, I get to stand at an altar and make present the Sacrifice of Jesus in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. As baptised priests, you get to stand in the world and invoke the power of the blood of Jesus on your friends and upon your enemies.

Before there were Catholic priests, there were the Twelve Apostles.

Before the High Priestly line of Aaron, there were the young people of Israel.

You are God’s first choice to offer sacrifice, to be priests for the people in your lives, people who don’t even know they need someone to plead for them before the throne of God.

Don’t worry about the weeds in your lives. God will deal with those in good time. Look after the wheat. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Lift up your friends before God and pour out upon them the power of the Blood of Jesus. God has chosen you to do this – all you have to do is stay at the altar!

Keep On Running

Homily at the Sion Community D Weekend “Keep On Running” for the 14^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B.

I don’t watch athletics much, just when the Olympics are on – and the moments I remember are not the world-beating performances but the heart-warming actions.

We’ve just seen the moment when Jonny Brownlee got into trouble near the end of the 2016 World Triathlon race; his brother Alistair not only helped Jonny to the finish line but made sure Jonny crossed it before he did! The following year Ariana Luterman did something similar at the Dallas Marathon, to help race leader Chandler Self. (watch)

St Paul often used images from sport. When he wrote to Christians in Philippi, Galatia and Corinth, he spoke about running well, not running in vain, and that only one athlete can claim the prize! He also spoke about training like a boxer! In the second letter to Timothy, written years later, we find the declaration “I have finished the race!” Well, I hope making it into heaven isn’t quite like first prize in a race – otherwise, if St Paul won the prize then I’m out of the running! But don’t worry, Paul himself says the prize is not only for himself but for all who long for Jesus to return.

What happens when an athlete is helped across the line? Should their time be recorded, or the competitor disqualified? Neither Self nor Brownlee were disqualified – because the help came from another runner, and they weren’t racing for prize money.

In fact, we’re all like Jonny Brownlee and Chandler Self on a bad day… we don’t have the power within us to make it all the way on our own. None of us can win the prize of heaven by our own efforts, even if most of the time we behave really well! We need Jesus to help us across the line. Indeed, that’s why Jesus came from heaven, to live as another runner in the human race, to help us cross the line without being disqualified!

The world we live in today finds this message hard to accept. Jesus as a wise teacher who says great things about loving one another and not judging one another? Very popular! Jesus as the one who says “I am the way… no-one enters heaven except through me…” or “Unless you eat my bread and drink my blood you have no life within you?” Not popular at all! But there’s nothing new in Jesus being unpopular. We’ve heard what happened when he preached in his home town. “Who does this guy think he is?” said the people – “We know his family!”

By the way, you might have noticed that in this reading Jesus has four named brothers and at least two unnamed sisters. In Bible days it was common to use the words “brother” and “sister” to include half-siblings and cousins, and our Catholic understanding is that Mary had no other children after Jesus. But you can’t prove that from within the Bible, so be careful not to get into an argument with other Christians about what the Bible says, only about what it means!

Back to St Paul, who was also very skeptical about Jesus being Son of God or even a true prophet, until the day Jesus appeared to him in a blinding light on the Road to Damascus. But Paul devoted the rest of his life to preaching about Jesus and inviting thousands upon thousands of people to follow him. Not all of St Paul’s missions were successful – it might have seemed like a clever trick to say “You have an altar to an Unknown God – let me help you know Jesus!” But it didn’t make many converts and Paul quickly moved on from Athens. In other towns he was beaten and left for dead! Yet Paul never gave up. When he succeeded in planting churches and making converts, that was one kind of victory. When he suffered for the sake of Jesus, that was another!

There’s something in our broken human nature which doesn’t want to say that Jesus is Lord. That same brokenness stopped many of the ancient Hebrews from living according to God’s Law. The Prophet Ezekiel was given a hard task – “Tell those people that they are rebelling against My Law,” said God, “even though they won’t listen to you!” And that same brokenness in us keeps whispering: “You can do it on your own! You don’t need help! You are better than everyone else! You need to win this argument, because if you don’t, you’re a weakling.”

That voice is strong – but that voice is wrong. It takes real strength to do what Ariana Luterman and Alistair Brownlee did. There is a higher victory which is more than winning a sporting event. There is an inner strength which looks at a human dispute and says, “I choose to let you win.” When that’s your true choice, that’s a true victory.

The Danish Poet, Piet Hein, once wrote something like this:

The noble art of losing face may some day save the human race
and turn to an eternal prize* what weaker minds would call disgrace.

We are called to a special kind of weakness. The kind which lets others win because we are strong enough to do so. The kind which lets Jesus be Lord, because we recognise who he is. The kind which will eventually qualify us to enter heaven. If you wish to gain the only prize worth gaining for eternity, and if you are weak enough to be helped across the line, keep on running!

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* Piet Hein actually wrote “turn into eternal merit” – I have taken the liberty of adjusting the scansion and prize focus for didactic reasons. I trust that if this causes the poet to lose face, it will be at the price of eternal grace!