Corpus Christi Homily Fr. Mark

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Eucharistic Procession

Sent: Sunday, 2 June 2013.
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Corpus Christi Homily

Homily for Body and Blood of Christ, 2013,                                               Year C

An angler sat on the grassy bank with the salmon he had just caught lying beside him. He was waiting for the young family he had befriended.  The salmon was to be his parting gift to them at the end of their holiday.  Their car arrived.  Greetings were exchanged and the gift was handed over.  ‘We have a long journey ahead’, they said. ‘Well, then, their friend rejoined, ‘Let you be driving and driving!’ These were words of blessing.  He was saying to them:  The road may be long, but may you go safely all the way to your destination.  In the years to come, as that family grew up, these words were often used in blessing whenever they parted from each other.

It was a word of blessing and a gift of bread and wine that Abraham received when he returned from battle.  He had gone to rescue his kinsman, who had been taken captive. On his return the priest-king Melchizedek blessed Abraham for his courage and blessed God for guarding him.  This ancient story of blessing belongs to a time two thousand years before Christ, but its meaning points forward to the great blessing that will come upon the world in him.  The blessing given to Abraham will be fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

St Paul explains this blessing to the early Christians of Corinth, by telling them the story of the Last Supper.  It was a final parting of friends, and Jesus wanted to give them a gift as he left them.  As we know so well, he took bread and wine, blessed them and said, ‘This is my body.  This is my blood.  Do this as a memorial of me.’

In the parting of friends, the separation is overcome by the giving of gifts and the words of blessing.  ‘Goodbye’ means ‘God be with you’.  In the gift that Jesus gives, he truly is with us always.  He has given us a gift for the journey of life.  It is a personal gift and one for the whole community.  In fact, it is a gift that makes community: we share Christ as we share the bread and wine.   

This feast of Corpus Christi celebrates the fact that we are the Body of Christ.  The gift that we receive, the sacrament that we celebrate in the Mass, transforms us from a crowd of people into a family of faith; from separate individuals into the brothers and sisters of Christ; from a wandering mass of people into the people of God; from an aimless group into a journeying people.  We have a destination and we are travelling together into a Promised Land.

In a way our procession through the cloisters and back into the Church is a symbol of our lives.  We are on a journey and we follow the one who alone can lead us to our true destination.  And we are blessed on our way and fed by God’s own life.  We must do the same for the great crowd of hungry people who seek to have their hunger satisfied and who are looking for direction in their own lives.

Homily for Ascension - Abbot Mark

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From: Abbot Mark Sent: Thursday 9th May 2013
Subject: Homily for Ascension

Fr Mark

Homily for Ascension,  2013                                   

The Holy Spirit was with Jesus from the very beginning of his public ministry in the River Jordan.  The Spirit was never far from him as he went about preaching among the people.  It is not surprising then that Jesus told his disciples that they would be given the Holy Spirit as their guide and would bring to mind all that he had been telling them.  The Spirit would lead them into all truth and make clear to them what they should do and say.  Like all disciples, they heard what Jesus had told them but did not always understand or even remember everything he had said to them. 

As with all good teachers, Jesus had to pass on and leave these pupils of his to put into practice what they had been taught.  Only in this way would they show if they had really learnt what they had received from Jesus.  It’s all very well to show people the sea and to even encourage them to dip their feet in it by the shore.  But, until they themselves plucked up the courage and plunged into the deep, they would not learn how to swim.

That is the teacher’s role: to show his pupils how to swim.  His job was to hand on what he knew and then to move on, leaving them enough space to develop on their own.  A good teacher lives on in the deeds and appreciation of those he has taught.  The Spirit that guided him would be passed on to them.  And Jesus, our Good Teacher, leaves us to fend for ourselves but always with the guidance and inspiration of his own Holy Spirit.  Our Lord tells us as much himself.  He had to leave them or the Holy Spirit will not come and be their Spirit. 

Jesus returned to where he had come from.  His place now is with the Father.  And now that he has taken his own proper place in heaven, his disciples had to take up his mantle and themselves teach about the kingdom of God by their lives and words.

What Jesus was to the disciples he remains the same for us today.  The Holy Spirit is the bond between the Lord risen the dead and those who are now his disciples. Unless we realise that, something is lacking in our understanding of our Christian faith.  The figure Christ’s remains present in the world for us but only through the Holy Spirit.  If we don’t grasp that then we have yet to learn from the teaching of the Gospel.

Jesus ascended into heaven in order to prepare the disciples mentally for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  This same Spirit who was present in Jesus’ life and came down on the apostles at the first Pentecost now comes to be with us.  As Jesus told his disciples, the kingdom of God is very near.  What they experienced remains a reality for us.  We may not see the wonderful works that we read of in the Scriptures.  But we will meet with unusual things happening in peoples’ lives though prayer and trust in God.  To believe in the power of Christ we need to pray with confidence that the Holy Spirit will indeed be present in the Church and in us.  The Spirit will indeed make all things new in our lives.  For that to happen we have to keep listening to Christ who continues to teach us through his word in the scriptures. 

If we live by that word we will be doing something new.  Miracles will happen in us.  We will become a more transformed people through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Annunciation of the Lord 25 March, 2011

Annunciation - Solemnity 2011

Community Chapter - Sermon by Fr. Mark

In the early sixties, on a visit to Nunraw, Dom Jean Leclercq remarked that monks make bad librarians. That was because, he said, their minds were attuned to seeing the connections that any subject had with many others. So, for example, a number of books by Newman may be classified variously under the title Scripture, Theology, Patrology, Pastoral, Spirituality, and so on, depending on how you care to think about it. It is good to be able see all the possible connections but that can give headaches to a professional librarian.

When we come to celebrate the major feasts and solemnities of the liturgy, it is helpful to try and see the connections and to avoid the ‘Classification’ instinct. Today’s Solemnity of the ‘Annunciation of the Lord’ is a case in point. Many of us have been used to think of today’s celebration as a feast of our Lady. It is of course! But it is also about our Lord.

The whole purpose of the Annunciation is to tell of the imminent coming of the Lord in the flesh. So the feast is of our Lady but it is much more about the Christ, about the One who was to come and save his people. Mary appears in the foreground of the play; Jesus, her son, waits in the wings. Jean Leclercq’s monk would want to go further and to include those of us who are watching the play and who want to see what it means for us.

The angel Gabriel and our Lady have the main speaking parts. We move closer to them to learn what they have to tell us about our Lord and Saviour. What each says to the other tells us much about the graciousness of God who is now fulfilling what has been only hinted at from the beginning of time. Mary’s response as the story of God’s message unfolds and her acceptance of her part in the process is also our learning process. We learn from her how to be open to God as he reveals himself to us.

Each of our vocations is a kind of parallel image of Mary’s at the moment the annunciation was made by the angel Gabriel. What she did then, because it was a heartfelt response and an acceptance of God into her life, has become a kind of template of what our lives should be. No one of course can have an identical life to any other person, but we can see how she left herself open to God’s word. We can learn how she quietly and undramatically followed that Word. She lived on earth before her son was born in the fullness of time. But it was she who followed after him as the first disciple. We who come later in time, after both mother and divine Son, can enter into that mystery, learn from it and renew our appreciation of what we have been given.

It is obvious from the story of the Annunciation that Mary had in her earlier years been well coached in the life of the Spirit. She would hardly have been so prompt in accepting this revelation and its consequences if she had not been. That inner sensitivity could only have helped her deal with the awkward position in which she found herself when she became pregnant of the Holy Spirit. Just imagine what interior anguish she must have felt about Joseph’s reactions to her condition. How was she going to tell him about her vision of the angel? Would he believe her? Would he happily go along with a situation he did not himself fully understand? Would he now feel unwanted as a father and a husband? All, or some, of these feelings must have passed through his mind. Both he and Mary were human like us. But they did not rush into major decisions when caught up in these uncertainties. Such precipitous actions can alter lives sometimes with long-lasting effects. So, these two important figures in Jesus’ life show us that, even in extraordinary events as these, we can learn to live quietly through what we cannot easily understand at first. In God’s hands, our problems will be resolved and our lives strengthened, given time.