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Tag Archives: passion

Homily for Friday of Lent V

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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christ, homily, lent, our lady, passion, passiontide, stabat mater

The pieta in the Anglican parish of Saint Silas, Kentish Town, London

The pieta in the Anglican parish of Saint Silas, Kentish Town, London

As today’s collect reflects, by tradition the Friday before Holy Week is kept in honour of the seven sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These are seven ways, described in sacred scripture, in which Our Lady comes to share in the sufferings of her beloved son. Depictions of Our Lady of Sorrows (see above) often show seven swords piercing her heart, recalling the words of the prophet Simeon in the temple, ‘A sword shall pierce your own heart’ (Lk. 2:35).

This revelation of Simeon to Our Lady is the first sorrow, followed by the flight into Egypt (Mt. 2:13-14) and the finding of the Lord in the temple (Lk. 3:43-45). In these three moments, Our Lady suffers with and through her divine son because of her unflinching obedience to God’s will. The four remaining scenes: the meeting of Our Lord and the women of Jerusalem on the road to Calvary (usually understood to include Our Lady), the crucifixion, the deposition (from which we get the beautiful image of the pieta), and the burial of the Lord, each show a more obvious tie with the events of the passion itself.

As Our Lady stood by the cross of her son, so the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows now (in the ordinary form) follows that of the Holy Cross, in September. And yet, we are right to reflect in these days before Holy Week on these sufferings of the Mother of the Lord, because by them we are taught how our own lives can more closely reflect Christ’s passion, filled as they often are with disappointment, with anxiety, and with unpleasantness at the hands of others. It is for this reason that we make the Church’s hymn, Stabat Mater, our own today: ‘O thou Mother! fount of love! touch my spirit from above, make my heart with thine accord: make me feel as thou hast felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ my Lord’.

O God, who in this season
give your Church the grace
to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary
in contemplating the Passion of Christ,
grant, we pray, through her intercession,
that we may cling more firmly each day
to your Only Begotten Son
and come at last to the fullness of his grace.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

Alternative collect in the 2002 Missale Romanum.

Homily for Good Friday 2013

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

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good friday, homily, hope, passion, sacrifice

Given at Our Lady of the Assumption & Saint Gregory, Warwick Street:

In a few moments we will participate in what, to the world, must seem to be a ritual which is at best peculiar, and at worst perverse. In solemn procession, the very instrument by which our Lord and Saviour was executed will be carried aloft through the body of the church, to be adored and venerated. We will kneel and we will kiss the wood of the cross to which, because of our sins, our Lord was nailed. It is a sign of extreme contradiction, calling the cross the Crux fidelis inter omnes – the ‘faithful cross above all other’, the ‘one and only noble tree’.

This contradiction, though, shouldn’t surprise us: the Christian life is full of such juxtapositions. Today we ‘sing the praise of him who died’; tomorrow we rejoice at the felix culpa, the ‘happy fault’ of Adam’s sin, and at the paschal waters of the baptismal font we even talk about dying in order to live. Such contradictions not only speak clearly of the truths of our religion – the way we understand the fundamental nature of the life we share in Christ – but they are the source of our hope. In the face of inevitable earthly death, we Christians are given the hope of eternal life, and so we look gladly towards that moment when this life will be changed into the life offered to us in Christ. In the face of every human fear and anxiety, we are presented with joy and hope because, in the action of Christ on the cross – the very thing we celebrate today – death has been put to death, and in his resurrection we can join with Mary Magdalene in the beautiful Sequence for Easter Day, as we say, Surrexit Christus spes mea – Christ my hope is arisen.

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