A couple of people have asked for a copy of Sunday’s homily which focused on the theme of prayer. Here it is:
Today’s Gospel reading takes the form of a prayer. That is fitting in this period between Ascension and Pentecost given that the disciples retreated from the world specifically to pray for the coming gift of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer: it is vital to authentic holy life. Why then do we find it so difficult? Is the problem rooted in ignorance? Do we fail to understand its enriching quality in the life of faith? No most Christians do accept, at least intellectually, that prayer is central to faith. The problem then is that we often fail despite knowing prayer is vital. And this points us to the real problem- our self-destructive fallen nature. We humans don’t naturally lean towards God but have a perverse desire to pull away from him though it leads to spiritual death. And once we are separated from God we don’t always miss him. Only grace enables souls to hunger for God again. Only grace brings us home.
We Catholics must therefore be on our guard against that which throttles our reception of grace. Namely sin. And sin, I have learnt, comes in two distinct forms. One is easy to deal with the other much harder.
The easy sin to deal with is acknowledged sin. The ones we admit to. Easy because having named them, and being aware of them, we can deal with them via the sacrament of confession. We have a well trod path and means of mercy. So long as we are penitent and confess our sins we can approach God’s throne afresh, seeking a new life in him. And God, who is love, rewards us with forgiveness. That is straightforward even if our fallen nature means we often drag our feet and put it off.
The much harder problem is unacknowledged sin, the ones we do not admit sometime even to our self. Here is the root cause of rancid prayer lives and, it must be said, of suffering in the world. C. S. Lewis pointed out that a tyrant is less menacing than a lunatic zealot. Because the tyrant at least understands he is hurting you and might, in moments of compassion, give it a rest now and then. But the powerful zealot thinks he is helping you and will force his will no matter what. The most dangerous people in history have been those who were powerful but ultimately wrong in their thinking. Those too proud to admit their fault. A salutatory warning for us in these days when the State is again flexing muscle, in the name of helping us, but of course, with little consideration of our divinely given freedoms and rights. Does a virus which most survive really justify totalitarianism; the government telling me when I can and cannot hug my parents and children? When I may or may not go to Church?
Unacknowledged sin. It festers in the human soul and clouds judgment. Conscience is always hardened by it. The channel to God always choked off. Soon our capacity to love of God and our neighbour diminishes. That is the painful truth. If we do not tackle unacknowledged sin the life of grace dies within us. And in time we lose sight of goodness, we begin to imagine virtue is unattainable and we come to love and value our sins more than God. They become part of our narrative, we them cherish them, because they are ours not God’s.
Lives are then lived at distance from God. We hide from him as did Adam and Eve in the garden. Clutching anger or hurt or pride or worldly thinking like an addict clutching at his needles. A society that abandons God soon treats religion as a private periphary matter not as something central to life that should inform us; God ever pushed to the margins. That sneering attitude so widespread today that would suggest Christianity is outdated and unhelpful. We see it not only in those who abandoned God with integrity, the atheists and secularists, but also, in those whose abandonment is less honest. Consider bishops who only talk of environmentalism and causes instead of salvation and sin. Or myriad vanilla clergy who lead souls astray by refusing to preach repentance or who, as we have seen in Germany this month, scandalously seek to bless things scripture itself condemns.
When prayer is stale. When Christ is absent. We must ask God to reveal ‘what am I holding back?’ ‘What am I failing to confront and acknowledge?’ Pride is almost always the answer. I want God…but on my terms. I want faith but one that reflects my personal politics. I want a religion but one that demands no change in me. I want the crown but not the cross! Fine you can have that but with one caveat. Grace will be withdrawn. For then we worship self not God. We project our own desires and dreams and faces onto the throne of God and make a golden calf of them.
We begin to see the connection between a widespread decline in confessions and the erosion of public morality. Between a fracturing Church in scandal and crisis and the low number of priests actually preaching repentance. Between a church watering down faith to accommodate society and people failing to believe in it. In the 21stCentury people are abandoning the God of scripture and unless we turn back I predict an even gloomier pagan future than the dystopian culture we are currently building. As Dostoevsky said- without God we can neither flourish nor be free.
Today too many go to Church but do not embrace authentic Christian life. Too many practice only a hollow faith in which sins are rarely acknowledged let alone dealt with. And that is WHY ‘middle classed values’ now eclipse the Gospel. When sin is not confronted the church becomes nice and safe instead of dangerous and exciting. A cult of the zeitgeist replaces the countercultural message of God. How then do we save a church and culture trapped, as it is, by the ineffectual beige heresies of woke modernism? By putting Jesus back at the centre and submitting to him alone. Which is to say it must start on our knees and in authentic devotion. We must pray authentically and better. Learning afresh to value the Catholic faith of the ages above all things.
Better prayer begins with better liturgy. Just behaving as if Jesus is actually present, which he is, changes faith and worship. We no longer approach the altars casually but with deep reverence. Kneeling to receive not standing immediately teaches us humility, enables us to realise our need for God. As we worship with reverence it opens our eyes to spiritual reality- to the presence of God dwelling here amongst us. Ultimately we are what we pray so our priority as Christians is to pray well – especially in this period between Ascension and Pentecost. So will you approach the altar rails today with reverence and humility or will you kneel half thinking about the Sunday roast? Will you start living the faith with integrity or just go through the motions? It is time for all to decide. Are we for Jesus or the world?
