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Tag Archives: law

Homily for Candlemas 2017

03 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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canon law, homily, law, sacrifice

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The Presentation of the Lord in the Temple (Saint Mary, Greenville, SC)

Given at a Solemn Mass celebrated according to Divine Worship: The Missal on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas), in thanksgiving for the successful completion of the Doctorate in Canon Law.

We are gathered here this evening to celebrate the great event of the presentation of the Lord in the temple. Christ, the lumen ad revelationem gentium, has come to fulfil the promise of his Father. The narrative of his nativity comes to a close as we ourselves see the purpose of his condescension; his coming into our midst from the glories of heaven to bring salvation to man. That this takes place in the temple is itself a further sign: God continues to reveal himself to man in divine worship—the worship, ultimately, of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, in which we are invited to participate here in earth.

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Homily for Trinity VII

10 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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charity, homily, law, mercy, truth

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Detail from Romsey Abbey, Hampshire, England

In our contemporary society there exists an unhealthy distinction between law and charity. In current political debates we see this in relation to the question of immigration. And even in the Church we have, not least in recent months, seen it in relation to the question of the reception of Holy Communion by those who have been divorced and taken up a second union. Yet at the heart of this morning’s gospel we discover anew the fundamental connection between law and charity, to the end that we can say: when a false distinction is drawn between them, each is reduced in its essential importance and particular value. Indeed, with the Psalmist we affirm: “Mercy and truth and met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 85: 10).

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Homily for Quinquagesima 2016

07 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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homily, law, lent, pre-lent

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Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston TX

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As the Church moves ever closer to the start of the season of Lent, today she pauses on the threshold of the great fast, to provide an opportunity for recollection and final preparation for the coming penance, and a chance for each of us to ensure that our hearts are truly ready to enter into the forty days and forty nights that help to purify us for the celebration of the Paschal feast.

In a most practical way, these Sundays of Pre-Lent, marking as they do seventy, sixty, and fifty days before Easter, act (to use an image of Blessed Pope Paul VI) as the bells of a church tower, calling us to the sacred mysteries some thirty, fifteen, and five minutes before the Mass. Today, the same urgency and anticipation that we experience (please God) each time we come to worship the Lord in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is applied to our spiritual preparation for Lent. We have had three weeks to shift from the comfort of our normal pattern of life—our lukewarmness and our hardness of heart—and to be poised, as an athlete at the starting line, to run the race that is set before us (cf. Heb. 12:1).

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Homily for Sunday III of the Year

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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authority, commandments, homily, law, scripture

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Ten Commandments (Henry Lee Willet, 1965), Saint George, Arlington VA

Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read. (Nehemiah 8: 8)

Four hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ, in the era of the Roman Republic, the two groups of people living in Rome were the Patricians and Plebeians. The Patricians were essentially the aristocratic families of Rome, concerned with the governance and administration of the City, whilst the Plebeians were the common folk, many of whom worked in service for the Patricians, enabling the great City to operate on a daily basis. The Patricians, as the intellectual and educated class, wrote and administered the law of the City, whilst the Plebeians were merely subject to it. It may seem peculiar to us with the benefit of hindsight, but the Plebeians, though bound by the law, were not aware of exactly what the law was or how it was to be kept, and so they  eventually demanded (and won) the chance for the law to be promulgated and explained to them, in order that being aware of it they might abide by it more fairly and conscientiously. The result of this was the publication of the first body of Roman laws, known as the Twelve Tables: great bronze tablets that were displayed in the public space of the Roman Forum, in order that the plebs, that is the people, might be able to see, read, and begin to understand the law under which they were to live their daily lives. Continue reading →

Homily for Saint Thomas Becket

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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canon law, homily, law, virtue

Saint Thomas Becket by Sir Ninian Comper in Saint Mary, Wellingborough

Saint Thomas Becket by Sir Ninian Comper in Saint Mary, Wellingborough

As we continue through the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord, today the Church commemorates Saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr for the faith in 1170. Chief amongst the reasons for the holy bishop’s brutal murder, in his own Cathedral Church, was his resistance to King Henry II’s encroachment of civil power over the life of the Church, and particularly her clergy. For this reason Becket is today the patron of the diocesan clergy of England, and for this reason his cult – which was remarkably strong and widespread in England, as in Norway, and even parts of France and Spain – was particularly targeted during the dark days of the Protestant Reformation, which itself placed the English sovereign as the head of an established or state church.

In today’s gospel we find a paradigm for Saint Thomas Becket’s faith and resolve. Christ, who during the season of Advent the Church names ‘lawgiver’ (cf. O Emmanuel), is himself the fulfilment of the law and, thus, above the law. By his precepts we Christians are called to live, just as by his judgement we are saved. In the confessional it is Christ who judges us through the person of the priest, always handing down a sentence of mercy. And yet, in this scene of his presentation in the temple, Christ submits himself to the law of Moses in order to honour the law, to honour his heavenly Father, and to fulfil the law in letter and spirit. His obedience, an obedience which we will see lead him to the cross, is made manifest in this act of submission, so that by following the law which he comes to fulfil, we too might be made partakers in his heavenly glory.

The law is not, then, an encumbrance to our life in Christ, but an essential element to its success. Christ comes into our earthly realm to restore the order which results from the chaos of our sin; of the fault of Adam and Eve in Eden’s garden paradise. So also he comes to order our lives by applying regulation – regula, religion, rule – in order to keep us on the narrow path which is the way of the Lord. We see this in divine and natural law, as also in those things which allow us to navigate the Christian life and which, by their observance, help us to submit ourselves to the law as did Christ, and so grow in stature and wisdom. May Saint Thomas Becket aid us in this endeavour by his prayers, that we may have the docility and humility of Christ which he embodied. And may we be given the courage and resolve to imitate such virtue in our own lives, whatever the cost, that in following Christ in this life – living in obedience to his law – we may be judged worthy to remain with him in the next.

Homily for Trinity XXVI

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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canon law, catechism, charity, homily, justice, law, mercy

Detail from the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, MO

Detail from the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, MO

Over the past two weeks the news has been understandably filled with the events of the third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, a gathering in Rome to discuss the ‘The pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization’. With intensive media coverage of what this bishop or that cardinal has said, I think it is fair to say that a great deal of confusion has been the result, often through an attempt to speak of complex theological issues in overly simplistic language. However at the heart of the debate there has been (and continues, to some extent, to be) an unparalleled scrutiny of the Church’s teaching and her pastoral practice.

These two areas of the Church’s life are not entirely new to those of us who have entered the full communion of the Catholic Church by means of the personal ordinariates. Nevertheless, the weight given to both doctrine and law in the Catholic Church, and the absolute definition of Church teaching and pastoral practice, is new. As Catholics we rejoice that we can turn to two particular documents to help us understand these important concepts. First, the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is ‘the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the Ordinariate’ (AC I §5), and secondly the Code of Canon Law which is ‘an indispensable instrument to ensure order both in individual and social life, and also in the Church’s activity itself’ (SDL).

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