When I was lecturing at a Teacher Education College long ago, I took a group of students on a field course to the Yorkshire Dales. We were based in a converted Victorian school building. It had been a Church of England school and was alongside the parish church in the midst of fields across which the children of Lowood School (Jane Eyre) were said to have walked to the church. 

One evening the students came across a bible in the field centre and, knowing I was Catholic, asked me to choose a story and read it to them. All of them were enthusiastic with the idea and settled down to listen ... except one. She was evidently very jumpy about it. She didn't want to be left out, nor did she want to stay. When I saw the state of anxiety she was exhibiting I said that anyone who didn't want to stay was free to choose. She was relieved and decided to stay, though she remained on edge. I didn't choose a story, but rather the section of St John's First Letter on Love.

Later I talked to her quietly about what her difficulty was and she told me that she had been brought up as a Catholic and was no longer practising. She felt guilty about this. How many Catholics are in this position! Some would like to return but are afraid of going through the church door, though we would welcome them.

Others are like those of whom Jesus spoke in today's Gospel (Matt 13:1-23). They have listened and listened again, but not understood, and are fearful that they might be drawn back. It is often not their fault, but that of the culture in which we now live. We need courage to believe, to go against the ideas and ideologies of our society, to do what Mary did when she said yes to God and changed the world.
As St Catherine of Siena said, "Be what you should be and you can set fire to the world."

St Catherine of Siena, whose feast day is today, Saturday 29th April, experienced a mystical discussion with God the Father which is known as The Dialogue of Divine Providence.  In this Dialogue the Father instructs her about prayer.

He speaks first of those who pray only vocally, that is, only in using words. These, he says, do nothing except completing psalms and saying many paternosters (the Lord’s Prayer). Once finished they think of nothing further. Mere recitation of the words of prayers bears little fruit. “which pleases Me,” says God, “but little.” This kind of prayer is, however, a necessary starting point. 

Vocal prayer should be joined to mental prayer in which we should consider our own defects, consider the sacrifice that Jesus made for us with his blood, and raise our minds to God in love.

When, in the Dialogue, she speaks to the Father, she asks that she should never wander from the path of the truth that God has revealed to us. She does not ask for herself alone, but for the whole world and the Church. This is sometimes converted to a misquote: ’Jesus save me … but wouldn’t it be better if you saved everyone else too?’ It may be a missquote, but it is true to her thought and is a very useful short prayer.

Prayer, then, is a dialogue with God: we pray with words, we engage in mental prayer in which we listen to God and seek to understand the meaning for us of the prayers we use, and in all prayer we try to express our love of God

For a brief life of Catherine see : ​https://catholicexchange.com/how-to-imitate-saint-catherine-of-siena/

​In his poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost tells of a ride in a wood where two roads diverge. The narrator had to choose which one to travel. Both attracted him, but after long deliberation he took that which looked more grassy and less worn. He told himself he would keep the other for another day, yet doubted that he ever would return. He concludes the poem with a sigh:
 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 
The ride in the wood and the choice of roads to follow may just be an image of a choice he had to make in life. We all face these choices, often many times in a long life. What subjects do we choose at GCSE? Do we go into the 6th form, pursue an apprenticeship, join the RAF? Do we want to marry, have children? Should we stay in our job or seek to change for a different challenge, go on working or retire early, take our elderly parent into our home or pay for care? These are all critical life choices which could “make all the difference.”
 
But as Catholics – and I embrace both those who were so-called ‘cradle Catholics’ and those who have taken the route of becoming Catholic – we are constantly faced with the choice of becoming a better, more knowledgeable and committed Catholics, remaining as we are, or leaving the Church as so many have done in recent times. To remain as  Catholic without conversion to a better life, which is called metanoia, is to refuse to seek God’s face, to avoid making the choice. When we are given the gift of faith, we must develop it and share it. 
 
The choice to become a better Catholic should be easy, but the attractions of the world, the material goods we possess, the opportunities for entertainment, the scorn for religion in our society make leaving even easier. We are all inclined to go for the simple way, pursuing wealth, pleasure and an easy life. However, the better road, though harder and not so well trodden, is the road of love, the road of fullness of life: life in the world and also in the spirit. 
 
When I was in school a poem was written by one of the older boys who had clearly read Robert Frost’s poem. I can’t remember all of it, but the first lines read, the second only partial:
 
There are two and choosing to be done, / choose quick….
 
By quick the young poet meant two things: choose your road quickly but also choose life. Jesus told us to be ready now as we do not know when we will be called. We can ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ or choose life and the salvation which Jesus promised to those who follow him. The choice will make all the difference to our lives now and beyond this world. 
 

At Christmastime we all seek to show our love for others, often in expensive fashion, sometimes just in the messages we send in our cards or, in growing fashion, in emails. But we can show it at all times in all sorts of apparently small and insignificant ways.

“Whatever you do, do it with love,” St Paul tells us (1 Cor 16:14). St Therese of Lisieux founded her life as a nun on this saying and developed it into a way of perfection that all of us can follow. In her Autobiography she wrote:

“The only way I have of proving my love is to strew flowers before Thee--that is to say, I will let no tiny sacrifice pass, no look, no word. I wish to profit by the smallest actions, and to do them for Love. I wish to suffer for Love's sake, and for Love's sake even to rejoice: thus shall I strew flowers.”
It is the simplest of philosophies, of ways of living the Christian life: every little thing we do for others, think of others, everything we do as a matter of living our daily lives we can do for love. St Paul, elsewhere in I Corinthians (10:31) says: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.”

All we have to do is to do anything with love. But that is difficult. It is easy to do these “smallest actions”, but hard to remember that we should do them for love. Love for whom or what? Love for God who gave us our being, for the other person for whom we act or even for the one who slights us and we welcome that in love. St Therese tells the story of how, when she worked in the laundry in her nunnery, an elderly cranky nun used to repeatedly splash her with dirty water. After reacting at first as most of us would, she came not just to put up with it but even to welcome it as a tiny sacrifice of love.

These small actions are to be found significant also in Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed … Above  Tintern Abbey when he speaks of:

“… that best portion of a good man’s life, / His little, nameless, unremembered, acts / Of kindness and of love.”

Let us all scatter flowers with St Therese and not only at Christmas!

A little while ago, I came across a poem by a French writer, Charles Péguy. No! I’d never heard of him either. The poem has the title “The Portal of the Mystery of the Second Virtue.” A long title for a long poem but that virtue has a short name, Hope. It is the second of the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. St Paul tells us frequently in his letters that it is faith that will save us and that the greatest of the three is charity. Hope is a little more difficult to separate in those letters as it is bound up with other themes of justification, righteousness, and the final triumph of Jesus over sin at his second coming.
 
Charles Péguy compares the way we see Hope to a little girl being pulled along by her two grown up sisters, Faith and Charity. They are the virtues on which our attention is most focused, the virtues which  open heaven to us now that we have been redeemed by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. The little girl we know and like, but she hasn’t the maturity or power to save us. She holds on to her big sisters. But Charles opens his poem with this line:
 
“The virtue which I love most of all,” says God, “is hope.”
 
Faith, God says, doesn’t surprise me. I show myself in my creation: in the sun, the moon and the stars, in all my creatures, in the voices of children and the calm of valleys, in the sacrifice of the Mass, in life and in death. Nor does Charity surprise me. You would have to have a heart of stone not to be charitable to the poor unfortunate creatures we see, or to refuse charity to your brothers.
 
But Hope, God says, astonishes me. I am astonished that these poor children see all that is happening and believe that everything will be better tomorrow. This little hope which seems to be nothing at all.
 
The Christian people see only the two big sisters and not the little girl, but…
 
It is she (Hope), this little one who drives,
For Faith sees only what is
And she, she sees what will be
Charity loves only what is.
And she, she loves what will be.
 
Faith sees what is
In time and in Eternity
Hope sees what will be
In time and in eternity
That is, the future of eternity itself
 
Charity loves what is
In Time and in Eternity
God and neighbour;
As Faith sees
God and creation.
But Hope loves what will be
In time and eternity.
 
That is, in the future of eternity
 
Hope sees what is not yet and what will be
She loves what is not yet and what will be.
 
In the future of time and of eternity.
 
 
Advent is the time of Hope when we anticipate the coming of our Saviour, the who will redeem us from our sins and lead us to our future with God in eternity. Our hope is for grace in this life and to come to share in the glory of God in the next. As Christians, we are a people of hope, a hope that gives our faith and charity a direction. And it also gives us peace: as Psalm 4 says:
 
“In peace shall I sleep, Lord, in peace shall I rest
  firm in the hope you have given me.”
 
 

​A recent survey in the United States revealed that 70% of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  They saw it merely as symbolic. If that survey were to be repeated in the UK would it find a similar proportion of Catholics who would report the same. The Real Presence is what I want to explore in this post.
In recent weeks weeks, the parish newsletter has carried a reminder of how we should be receiving Holy Communion at Mass. It said:
       When you approach to receive Holy Communion the Priest or Minister holds up the Sacred Host in front of you and says “Body of Christ”. You respond by saying “Amen”. The Sacred Host is then placed in your hand or on your tongue. If you receive the Sacred Host in your hand, place the Sacred Host in your mouth before moving away from the Priest or Minister. Under no circumstances should you carry the Sacred Host away from the Sanctuary in your hand.

“Why does the Church have such precise instructions? Is just a matter of respect, politeness for receiving a gift, tradition?”

Yes it’s all of these, but it would be the same in any Christian church which has a form of Eucharistic service. In the Catholic Church, there is something infinitely more and that is why we say “Amen” when the priest or minister presents the host to us.

“But it’s just a wafer of bread, isn’t it? Something that reminds us of the Last Supper.”

Well, that is partly right: it does remind us of the Last Supper and in its taste, colour, texture, even its nutritious qualities – as it appears to us – it is bread in all of its physical properties just as the wine remains wine in its properties.

At the consecration the priest calls on God to send the Holy Spirit to come down on the bread and wine so that they may become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

“Isn’t that just a symbol? It’s not really the body and blood of Jesus, is it?”

As an American writer replied bluntly to that question, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” She later added: “… it is the centre of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”
I am not going to explain what theologians have said over the last 2000 years about the Eucharist. I am only going to recall what Jesus said himself. At the Last Supper, he did not say “This is symbolic of my body … of my blood.” He was quite forthright in saying what he says again at Mass through the priest:
Take this, all of you, and eat of it,
            for this is my Body,
            which will be given up for you.
 
            Take this, all of you, and drink from it,
            for this is the Chalice of my Blood…
Jesus is clear in his words: This is my Body. This is my Blood.

“Was this just for the Apostles and what happens at Mass is just a memorial of that meal?”

He said “Do this in memory of me,” that is ‘do the same as I have just done.’ But to understand better we must look at what he said to the Jews in St John’s Gospel.

In Chapter 6 of the Gospel, Jesus says:
                  “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
                   Anyone who eats this bread will live forever;
                   and the bread that I shall give is my flesh.”
When challenged by the Jews about how he could give them his flesh to eat, he replied:
                  “If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man
                   and drink his blood,
                   you will not have life in you….
                   For my flesh is real food
                   and my blood is real drink.
                   He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
                   lives in me and I live in him.”
When Jesus blessed and broke the bread and blessed the wine at the Last Supper, they became one with his body and blood, not in appearance, but in their inner reality, their substance. Jesus is really present in the sacrament of the altar. We must believe that we eat the flesh and blood of Jesus or the Eucharist has little meaning.
 
“Why can’t other Christians receive Communion in the Catholic Church?”

When the bread of the host is presented to us with the words “The Body of Christ,” we say “Amen” so confirming that we accept and believe that we are eating his flesh and blood. That is why we only receive the Eucharist when we are Catholics fully received into the Church and, amongst other doctrines, assenting to its doctrine of the Real Presence.

“Why, apart from the time of Covid, do we not normally receive both bread and wine? Jesus said ‘unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life in you’?

A good question. At the consecration, the bread and wine are separately blessed as the body and blood of Jesus as they were separated on the Cross. However, before we acclaim Jesus in the prayer, “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world…”, the priest breaks the host and mingles a small piece with the wine so restoring the body and blood as one flesh as happened in the Resurrection. Even under one kind we receive both body and blood.

“So all Catholics should believe in the Real Presence?”

Yes. As St Paul said (1 Cor 10:16): “The cup of blessing that we bless is a sharing (communion) with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a sharing in the body of Christ.”

If we do not accept the words of Jesus when he says, ‘this is my body,’ do we not deny him, substituting our own will, our materialism, and lack of understanding, for his truth and love? He was and is God and, when he chose to give us his body and blood in the form of bread and wine, he spoke, and still speaks through the priest, with all the power of God for whom nothing is impossible.

This is why, in the end, we observe the Church’s rules about how we should receive Holy Communion in reverence, respect, and with belief in the grace which it gives to us.

Fortunately, we do not have to crawl over glass to get to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, but we do have to have the faith which would make us do that if need be.