Live Below the Line

Message from Hana Tsuruhara: This week, members and friends of Lincoln College CU are going to live on just £1 a day for 5 days – the UK equivalent of the extreme poverty line. 1.4 billion people live on less than this a day. We are looking for sponsorship in this challenge, to go to a variety of charities, mainly Malaria No More and UNICEF. To find out more, visit http://www.facebook.com/events/284328191657064 or go straight to sponsor Hana personally on https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/hana or to the Lincoln team at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/team/lincoln-cu. The team will also be joining the Cathsoc meal on Thursday this week so d! o come and join us in sharing our lovingly prepared dinner for 40p per head! Thank you very much for your generosity in advance.

5th Sunday of Easter – Year B (May 6th)

5th Sunday of Easter – Year B (May 6th)
Readings: Acts 9: 26-31
Psalm 22: 26-28, 30-32
1 John 3: 18-24
John 15: 1-8
Doing what it is that God wants us to do is the very best thing that we can be about; but it is not always comfortable. In the first reading for next Sunday, Paul has encountered Jesus, and realised that it was true, after all, what these Christians had been saying about Resurrection; he also, in the same breath, discovered that his task was to preach the message to non-Jews. So he comes to Jerusalem and tries to join the Christians. Not surprisingly, they are not particularly impressed, since not long before Paul had been trying to exterminate them. “They were afraid of him – they didn’t believe he was a disciple”. So Barnabas, who is in good standing among the Jerusalem Christians, has to vouch for him; and eventually Paul is freely able to do in Jerusalem what he had done in Damascus. Then another group takes a dislike to him, “the Greek-speaking Jews – and they tried to kill him”. So Paul has to be smuggled out to the port-city of Caesarea, and then to his birth-place at Tarsus. All a bit grim, you may think; but God is in charge. And notice what happens next: “so the Church had peace throughout the whole of Judaea and Galilee and Samaria. It was built up and progressing in the fear of the Lord, and it increased, in the comfort of the Holy Spirit”.
The same alternation of light and shade is there also in the psalm for next Sunday, although you need to know that it is the end of that terrible lament that Jesus utters on the Cross: “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” By this time the psalmist has gained great confidence: “the oppressed shall eat and have their fill…they shall come and proclaim to a people yet unborn, that God has done it”.
The second reading for next Sunday is more aware of the light, but also knows that we can get it wrong: “children, let us not love just in word or on our tongues, but in word and in truth”. And there is comfort even if we get it wrong: “God is bigger than our hearts, and knows everything”. And there is one word that emphasises both the risk and the reassurance, namely “confidence”: “we have confidence with regard to God…because we keep God’s commandments, and do what is pleasing before him”. There are two criteria we have to meet: first, “that we should believe the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ”. Second, that “we should love each other, just has he gave us a commandment”. If that happens, then we “remain in him, and he in” us.
That is the point of the lovely image that Jesus presents in the gospel for next Sunday. He is addressing his worried disciples in the Supper Room, as the darkness gathers outside, and the imminence of his death dawns increasingly on them. Over the whole scene hovers the “sad question” (our question quite as much as theirs): “how can we survive without Jesus?” And the answer is simple if uncomfortable. As in the last lines of the second reading, we have to dwell in him”. “I am the Vine”, says Jesus, “and my Father is the Vinedresser”. And we, it turns out, are “the branches”. But that imposes a responsibility, because “every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every one that bears fruit he prunes, to make it bear more fruit”. “Remaining in” Jesus is a matter of staying with the Vine, therefore. But the threat is a serious one: “if anyone doesn’t remain in me, they are thrown out like a branch and dried up, and gathered and thrown into the fire and burnt”. We shiver at the prospect, and are immediately reassured: “if you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will come to you”. So it is not just a message of impending doom that is addressed to us here, but a vision of a life full of possibilities: “in this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and become disciples for me”. Uncomfortable thought it might be, this is an offer we cannot refuse.

Ceilidh!

Friday 4th May-8pm, Cathsoc Termly Ceilidh, only £5 on the door. All Welcome.

Cathsoc Pasta

Thursday 3rd May- Holy Hour 6pm-7pm, Cathsoc Pasta from 7pm plus “Living in the Spirit”, Sr. Gemma Simmonds CJ (Heythrop College), 8pm, Blue Room, All Welcome.

After Jesus, What Next?

‘After Jesus, What Next? Reading the Acts of the Apostles.’ A series of talks by Fr. Peter Edmonds SJ, every Wednesday at 8pm, Meeting Room.

4th Sunday of Easter – Year B (April 29th)

4th Sunday of Easter – Year B (April 29th)
Readings: Acts 4: 8-12
Psalm 118: 8-9, 21-23, 26, 28-29
1 John 3: 1-2
John 10: 11-18
What, in the light of Easter, is to be our relationship with God, with each other, and with Jesus? This is the question raised in next Sunday’s readings. In the first reading, Peter has been hauled before the “rulers of the people and elders”, because of his having cured the lame man. Luke describes him as “filled with the Holy Spirit”, so we know that he is in touch with God and with Jesus. What is striking here is Peter’s sheer courage and authority, a feature of all his interventions in Acts, and a profound contrast with his fearful lies when Jesus had been on trial. Now he radiates confidence: “let it be known to all of you that it is in the Name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene (whom you people crucified, and whom God raised from the dead) that this person is in our presence today, and in good health”. The gauntlet is thrown down; the religious authorities are charged with Jesus’ death, and are explicitly told that they are working against God. And he affirms roundly, “there is no other name under heaven…by which we must be saved”.

As part of his diatribe against the authorities, Peter quotes from next Sunday’s responsorial psalm, when he speaks of Jesus as “the stone, despised by you, the builders, which turned into the corner-stone”. This psalm of thanksgiving was what they had sung as they accompanied Jesus on his donkey-ride to the Temple: “give thanks to YHWH for he is good, for his love is for ever”; then the singer turns to God and says, “I shall thank you, for you have answered me – you have become my salvation”. There is a profound sense here of relating to God, given renewed emphasis by the line that Peter quoted in the first reading: “the stone the builders rejected turned into the head of the corner”. There is absolute trust in the Lord: “this was from YHWH; this is a marvel in our eyes”. Then comes a cry that Christians, along with those who accompanied Jesus down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, have echoed: “blessed is the one who comes in YHWH’s name”. There is total trust here in God, and in those whom God sends.

The second reading for next Sunday is very short; but, once again, it is all about our relationship to God (“how much love the Father has given us!”), and that “we should be called God’s children”. The idea is then repeated: “beloved – now we are God’s children; and it has not yet been revealed what we will turn out to be”. We shall however look like God: “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is”.
In the gospel for next Sunday the relationship is beautifully expressed in terms of shepherds and sheep: “I am the Good Shepherd”, says Jesus, “the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep”. This profound and utterly unselfish relationship is contrasted with “those who work for money”, who “see the wolf coming, and abandon the flock and run away”. This is because of the very different relationship that exists between the paid shepherd and the Good Shepherd: “they work for money, and do not care about the sheep”. The Good Shepherd, by contrast, can say “I know mine and mine know me”. This is a mutual and loving relationship; but it is grounded in another relationship that already exists: “as the Father knows me and I know the Father”. And the relationship has consequences: “I lay down my life for the sheep”. It is not, however, a closed relationship: “I must lead them, and they will hear my voice, and they shall become one flesh, one shepherd”. Finally (and unless you understand about the relationship, you may think it odd to be talking about death at Eastertime) we are once more reminded “I lay down my life” – and it is all based on a relationship: “this is the command I received from my Father”.

Novena

Today, Friday 27 April, we are starting to pray a novena (nine days of special prayer), for those who will be Baptised, Confirmed and Received into the Church on the 6th May.

Novena to the Holy Spirit.
Easter 2012.Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they will be created,
And you will renew the face of the earth.

Father, pour out your Spirit upon us,
upon Amy, Dalal, Daniel, Fiona, Lucy, Rachael, Sarah and the whole community.
Grant us a new vision of your glory,
a new experience of your power,
a new faithfulness to your Word,
and a new consecration to your service,
That your love may grow among us
And your kingdom come:
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Week Ahead: Week 2

Sun 29th Apr Fourth Sunday of Easter
(Good Shepherd Sunday) Special Day of Prayer
for vocations to priesthood and religious life
11am Fr Simon Bishop SJ (Chaplain)
12.15pm Buffet Lunch
7pm Taizé Prayer
Mon 30th Apr 6pm Jesus College Mass
Wed 2nd May 8pm Fr Peter Edmonds SJ After Jesus, What?
Reading the Acts Of The Apostles 2. How did Peter
present Jesus to his world? Meeting Room
Thu 3rd May 5-6pm Tanzania group, Blue Room
Thu 3rd May 6-7pm Holy Hour & Adoration
7pm CathSoc pasta
8pm Sr Gemma Simmonds CJ (Heythrop College)
‘Living in the Spirit’ Blue Room
Fri 4th May 6.30pm Prayer for the Curious
8pm CathSoc termly Ceilidh & Bar Night

Resurrection Means Completion

WE CAN SENSE the wonder of the Risen Christ in the gospels. They strike us with inconsistencies and puzzles which, at first sight make them seem implausible as hard evidence. But how do you speak about something that is utterly new? How do you think and react to something which you could not have experienced before, or trust your senses and your judgment when everything says ‘this is impossible’?
Of course no two people tell the same story in the same way. There are differences of detail and emphasis which reflect the concerns and styles of the different gospels, but there is also a surprising transparency: they do not disguise the fear and even disbelief.
All accounts show Jesus is alive, in the total integrity of his body and soul. He bears the marks of his suffering and crucifixion, he can be touched, he can eat, he speaks and consoles, very much alive. Yet he is strange, his body inhabits time and space but is not bound by them; in some sense it is ‘physical’ but it seems to have properties which we had never before experienced or seen
However we try to comprehend the accounts of the appearances, they represent attempts to understand and to express the mystery of the finite transposed in the glory of God’s life: it is a vision of life not only beyond death but beyond life.
We have no category into which these accounts will fit, they are their own category. They stand always within the power of God who, in raising him from the dead, witnesses that Jesus is truly human and divine, whose sacrificial self-gift has been accepted. The Resurrection is the Father’s testimony that in Christ we are saved, finding the fullness of life beginning here and now. We can’t avoid him, ignore him, by-pass him. He stands among us, mysteriously no longer subject to our conditions; which is why his Resurrection is both liberating and startling:

we see that this life is not the whole story.
As did the first disciples, we slowly adjust to a new way of seeing and of understanding, to a new way of being. The Risen Christ has to teach us and go on re-teaching us, not only because we resist or are slow learners, but simply because of the mystery which we encounter – we can’t hold it all at once or for very long.
The Resurrection is a call, the giving of a mission to follow Christ now risen. When we grasp that the Resurrection on Easter morning is one event with the Ascension and Pentecost as well, we can see that this ‘moment’ expands through time.
It carries the power of the saving love of God in Christ, continuously given in the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit – the love which urges us on – reaching every generation and every moment in history. In this sense, the Resurrection is a dynamic, immanent future which impels us towards our fulfillment. In the Resurrection of his Son, God reveals the whole reason for creation and our gift of life.
The Resurrection requires no suspension of reason; it is reason’s healing and restoration. It means that we can see and know clearly now not only that God Himself is our reason, the end to which all things move and in whom they find their meaning, but that this reason is Love in person that comes in search of us: ‘the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.’
The future that abides with us in the Resurrection is the presence of the Risen Lord. It is a future which, in some sense, we already live now by the gift of grace. We not only witness to Christ but we live ‘in him, though him, with him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit’ – a reality that is with us every day in the celebration of the sacraments.
Resurrection means completion of our life in heaven, but also that we are beginning this completion here and now in everyday life, by the way we think, the way we speak the way we live. ‘ I came’ said Jesus, ‘that you may have life to the full.’ John 10.10 27/4/12

Third Sunday of Easter – Year B (April 22nd)

Third Sunday of Easter – Year B (April 22nd)
Readings: Acts 3: 13-15, 17-19
Psalm 4: 2, 4, 7, 9
1 John 2: 1-5
Luke 24: 25-48
Easter (and next Sunday is already the third week of our celebration) is not something that we can watch in a detached way. The invitation, as next Sunday’s readings make clear, is either to engage ourselves with the mystery of Jesus’ victory or to turn our backs on it.

In the first reading next Sunday, Peter is addressing the crowds, who are reeling in astonishment at the cure of the lame man who had been begging at the “Beautiful Gate”. Peter explains where the cure came from: from God, and from Jesus. And at this point, the crowd is invited to recognise its own part in the story, for Peter speaks of “Jesus, whom you betrayed and you denied, in the presence of Pilate, when Pilate wanted to let him go”. And the sentences come thick and fast: “you people denied the Holy and Just One. You asked for the present of a murderer! You killed the Prince of Life. But – and we are witnesses of it – God raised him from the dead”. Peter offers them an excuse: “it was out of ignorance that you did it, and also your rulers”. Then comes the invitation (to us as well as to them): “repent and turn back, to have your sins wiped away”. The invitation is ours to accept or to reject.

The psalm too has a note of urgency, though here the invitation comes from the psalmist to God, not the other way about: “when I call, answer me, O God of my justice…be gracious to me, and hear my prayer”. There is also confidence in the relationship, however: “the Lord heard me when I called upon him”, and a peaceful, trusting tailpiece: “for you alone, YHWH, make me sleep in safety”. We need to note the intimacy of this prayer, and to make it our own.

The second reading is likewise intensely personal in tone: the author addresses his hearers as “children, and is anxious that we should not sin, but at the same time confident: “we have a Paraclete to the Father, Jesus Christ, the Just One”. And Jesus, he says, is the “offering for our sins”. So, once again, we cannot duck the invitation. It is ours to accept or refuse, but we may not pretend that it does not exist. And if we want to be on the right side, then we have to “keep his commands”, otherwise “Truth is not” in us. “If a person keeps [Jesus’] word, God’s love is made perfect in that person”. So it is all about love.

The gospel for next Sunday is almost the final passage of Luke’s gospel. This incident takes place immediately after the story of the encounter at Emmaus, and has the two who had been there breathlessly telling their story. At precisely that moment “he himself stood in the middle of them, and says to them, ‘Peace be with you’.” Their reaction is a pardonable terror: “they thought they were looking at a spirit!” So Jesus offers them proof: “look at my hands and my feet – it’s really me: touch, and see. A spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have”. They still do not believe, however (“from joy”, as Luke charitably remarks), and they “wonder”. So a further proof is offered: “do you have something to eat?” They obediently give this terrifying apparition “a piece of grilled fish – and he took it and ate it before their eyes!” We should be listening and watching open-mouthed at this astonishing spectacle. Then we have to listen attentively as Jesus explains “all the things written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms”, and he indicates to them the inevitability “that the Messiah should suffer and rise from the dead on the third day”. But it is not just an astonishing event that we observe at Easter; we also have to do something about it: “repentance to be preached for the forgiveness of sins, to all the nations, starting from Jerusalem”. And the gospel ends, turning to us, as well as to the dumbfounded apostles: “you are witnesses of these things”. Without us, Resurrection does not get proclaimed.

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