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sunday reflections On a liturgical note The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus falls this year on Friday 19 June. This liturgical feast celebrates the heart that loves us so much – but it is a heart crowned with thorns, a side pierced with a lance, hands which have washed the feet of the apostles, and feet which have walked the dusty tracks of Galilee and the polished marble of the Temple of Jerusalem. In other words, the heart of Jesus celebrates that humanity of Jesus who loves the rich young man, weeps over Lazarus his friend and over Jerusalem which had failed to grasp the fullness of the gift that was being offered to it. The heart is a sign and a symbol. It stands for the humanity of the incarnate Christ Jesus and it is also a pointer to the fullness and perfection of love which we can only strive to imitate and mirror. It is not a love which we have to merit, or attain, or grasp – it is a free gift and what we need to do is learn to receive graciously (as we do with any love, human or divine) but then also to recognise that this love never leaves us where we are, but always seeks to perfect and to ‘bring us on’ to achieve the best we can, to be the best we can. This is because love in its purest and fullest reality ennobles us, it makes us realise our true dignity and worth.
Sunday thoughts I write this during the anniversary of VE Day. Comparisons are being made between the pandemic and the Second World War. The war lasted six years but there’s a touch of ‘war-time spirit’ in the air. A sense of shared danger, restrictions and uncertainty can bring out the best in us. Many have felt a deeper sense of our common humanity and the vulnerability that goes with it. The Church’s experience behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet era, and in repressive regimes such as North Korea today, have something in common with our experience of practising the faith during the lockdown. In the ‘Church of Silence’, Christians practised their religion underground, deprived of public celebration of the Mass in open church buildings. Some were imprisoned for their beliefs. Yet many moved beyond the public rituals they were denied into a fresh ownership of their faith and an appreciation of the
Canon Philip Gillespie
We heard it from the mouth of Pope Leo the Great at Christmas (Office of Readings): ‘O Christian, be aware of your nobility – it is God's own nature that you share: do not then, by an ignoble life, fall back into your former baseness. Think of the Head, think of the Body of which you are a member. Recall that you have been rescued from the power of darkness, and have been transferred to the light of God, the kingdom of God.’ In the preface of the Eucharistic Prayer for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart we give thanks that ‘Christ poured out blood and water from his pierced side, the wellspring of the Church’s Sacraments.’ In this time when the physical celebration of the Sacraments is not possible in many of our communities, it is perhaps good to reflect on where all of the Sacraments find their origin, their purpose and their fulfillment – it is the pierced side of Christ, the self-giving love of Christ, the invitation of Christ to ‘Come, follow me’. Having been thirsting for these Sacramental gifts for the past weeks, may we soon return to them with a deeper understanding and a greater love and devotion. Mgr John Devine OBE
presence of God deep within them. In spite of isolation, Christians experienced a sense of solidarity with other believers, even though they couldn’t meet together. Similarly, during the time of the Reformation, whenever news was passed that a priest was staying in the vicinity, many risked their lives to attend Mass. People and priests ran the risk of imprisonment, torture and brutal execution. The early Christian writer Tertullian wrote that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. Our weeks of lockdown hardly match the suffering of persecuted Christians but there is a sense that the faith we may have taken for granted grows in times of hardship. These weeks can inform recommendations we make on the shape of the Church in the future. They give fresh impetus to our Synod 2020 preparations.
Weekly Reflections are on the Archdiocesan website at www.liverpoolcatholicresources.com 20
Catholic Pictorial
The power of unity In 1977 I met a community in Liverpool that consisted of two nuns from different orders, a priest, and two families who were from a Free Church background but who all lived together in peace and harmony. That community was the basis of the Kirkby Christian Fellowship and those who led and still lead it became lifelong friends. What has united us over the years is a common experience of the spirit and a belief that the spirit is calling us towards what Pope Francis calls ‘unity in diversity.’ We have just celebrated Pentecost and surely the greatest gift of the spirit is unity. With the dawn of the Second Vatican Council, documents were produced that seemed to stretch out the hand of friendship to people of other traditions. We were allowed to pray with others of different understandings. We gathered in each other’s churches to pray for Christian unity. That was the was the work of the spirit. There was hope and enthusiasm among the Church traditions that had never been felt before. It wasn’t a negating of Catholicism, as some thought, but an awareness of what the spirit was doing across the churches and a moving with that spirit. For me, one of the greatest scandals in the Church is disunity; not difference but disunity. We can do things differently and still be united but too often suspicion and fingerpointing rear their ugly head. Too often a mix of power struggles, jockeying for position and wanting our own way acts to destroy the simple call to be united in love. I’m sure that’s why Jesus in John’s Gospel prays for unity. We can’t go it alone. It’s together that we make a difference The early Church knew the power of unity and knew that unity would be its greatest sign to the world of a God who had brought people together and kept them together in the face of opposition and persecution, people who were willing to stand for love at all costs. It takes the power of the spirit to make that happen and so Jesus prays ‘that they may all be one’. The greatest witness we have today is unity. What will convince the world of the presence of God is certainly not moralising or dogmatic statements but people who come together in love to share love with one another and the world, people who know how to stand with those in need, people who know how to celebrate love and life together. My prayer for Pentecost, therefore, would be for the spirit of God to sweep across this country and free us from all that would stop us being united. Fr Chris Thomas
