Thine Own Service

Thine Own Service

Monthly Archives: September 2014

Homily for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

14 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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Tags

cross, homily, liturgy

Saint Mary the Virgin, Wellingborough

Saint Mary the Virgin, Wellingborough

The continuing wave of barbarism in the Middle East, which must be a cause of concern for all people of goodwill, has achieved a new low through the systematic identification and suppression of the ancient Christian communities of that region. Amongst the countless horrific and mindless acts that have been related to us in the news, one of the most sinister is the marking of the homes of Christians with the arabic letter, nun, the first letter of the word ‘Nazarene’. This practice is perhaps particularly shocking to us in the west, who cannot avoid making an unhappy comparison with the plight of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

Despite the unsettling nature of these events, and despite their physical distance from our own homes and places of work, many of us would nevertheless recognize this sign, were we to see it. This is because many Christians, in solidarity with those suffering, and in opposition to those who spread terror and division, have adopted this as something of a badge of honour. Whether on their clothing, or through social media, by this act of defiance the symbol has been removed from its intended purpose of fear-mongering and mockery, and transformed into an icon of resilience; subversively but clearly professing and witnessing to faith in Christ.

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Homily for Sunday XXIII of the Year

07 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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Tags

cross, homily, martyr

Shrine of the Sacred Heart, Washington, D.C.

Shrine of the Sacred Heart, Washington, D.C.

There is a modern tendency to believe that the single greatest obstacle to the Church’s mission is her teaching. How much simpler would it be, we might ask, if the Church conformed her beliefs on (say) sexual morality, to that of contemporary culture? Would it not be easier to bring people to the Church, we might be tempted to think, if she was more approving of things that are now accepted, even encouraged, in the twenty-first century west? Hasn’t the Church freed herself from all the rules and regulations of the past? Why should we be bound by doctrines and dogmas that are no longer ‘relevant’? We may have heard such views from the media and those in the public square, even from fellow Catholics; we may have thought to hold such views ourselves. Either way, it is necessary to recognize why such a position is, at best, faulty, and to remedy it with an authentic Christian view, one that leads us closer to Christ.

First, we must acknowledge that the Church is, as Saint Paul puts it, to ‘proclaim Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1: 23). As we heard last Sunday, the Lord told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mt. 16: 24). This means that the Church is mandated by the Lord to proclaim something which, in the Lord’s own words, is ‘a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (1 Cor: 23). The message of the cross has always stood in stark contrast to the way of the world; that message is the reason that Christ himself was rejected. That cross is imprinted in our lives through baptism, and so we must expect to be misunderstood, even reviled, for proclaiming it as the way to happiness, the way to salvation.

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