The homilies set out below are from various church services over the years. They were jotted down soon after the event or later the same day. I have used quotation marks to indicate that this is what the priest said, to the best of my recall. I've also copied out a few excerpts from church newsletters, magazines and papers.
Admittedly, they are a random selection, mostly from London churches, and some from Manchester.
I have only included sermons I thought were good, and I have done my best to recall them accurately. I didn’t always name the priest. I did include the name if the priest has since died or retired.
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St James Spanish Place, London
(From Fr Christopher Colven's homily at the 12.30pm mass on 21/07/2010)
Fr Christopher said that both we, the congregation, and he himself, were "being fed at this mass by God's grace. And, repenting our sins, we were being forgiven them. From here we can go out and carry God's grace to other people in society. We might do so in an accidental word or gesture, or in a look we happen to make, or in something we do. We may not know at the time that we are doing this. But our actions or presence or word may carry God's grace into another person's heart or mind - even though she or he may be a stranger to us. There, it may be a seed that grows and changes another person's life. So let us go out and bear God's word into the world."
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From Fr Colven's weekly vicar's letter, St James, Spanish Place, London, for 6th Sunday of Easter, 2012.
"......it seems to me the answer is a much more radical one, and lies where it has always been - in the individual quest for holiness of life. ..... Cliche'd 'solutions' are no substitute for the daily struggle for conversion, for living the life of the virtues, for opening ourselves to the action of Grace. ...."
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From Fr Christopher Colven's "The Rector writes ..." column in the weekly newsletter, St James, Spanish Place. Date (?) 21/05/2019
" ..... There can hardly have been a time in the long history of the Church when its priesthood has been so denigrated or questioned. It would be wrong to look outside to try to explain away what has happened. The weakening of the struggle for personal holiness, combined with a diminishment of pastoral zeal, can be seen as an attempt to identify with the realities of a secular society, but allowing the world to write the Church's agenda is to play a risky game, and as Benedict XVI has recently reminded us, it comes at a high price.
........ I remember a conversation with Cardinal Hulme in which he said that the older he got the more conscious he became of the many individuals he had failed. I can identify with his sentiments. .......... the vocation to priestly ministry is a tremendous gift and privilege - something which although received in frail, earthen vessels still retains the touch of divine authenticity.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen (Patriarch of Constantinople in the 4th century) offers these thoughts: 'we must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others: we must be instructed to be able to instruct; become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring him close to others; be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently. I know whose ministers we are, where we find ourselves and where we strive. I know God's greatness and man's weakness but also his potential .....'
Karl Rahner ..... wrote a reflection, 'The man with the pierced heart', relating the priesthood of Jesus to those whom the Church needs to ordain. 'Tomorrow's priest will be the man with the pierced heart, from which alone he draws strength for his mission. With the pierced heart, pierced through by the godlessness of life, pierced through by the folly of love, pierced through by lack of success, pierced through by experience of his own profound unreliability. I say he is the man with the pierced heart because he is to lead others to the very core of their existence, to their inmost heart,' .......Out of suffering and humiliation come the green shoots of new life. ...."
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Homily at Sunday mass in October 2015, St James Spanish Place
The priest said, "Don't hear the word (at the readings and/or homily) and forget it, and turn aside. Think about what you have heard. Ask God what you should do to fulfil his will for you. Then act. Do what God wants you to do in your life. Ask God to show you what to do."
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St James Spanish Place lunchtime mass
Visiting priest homily, 18/09/2017
(1st reading Tim 2:1-8, entreating us to pray for every kind of person.)
(Gospel Lk 7:1-10. The centurion who had faith that Jesus' word alone would heal his servant)
"When Christ did the work of his ministry and was then crucified, and rose again in the resurrection, his saving power went into all people of goodwill. Christ was the salvation for every person in the world, no matter their creed.
So we should not exclude any person of goodwill because the power of Christ is in them. And anywhere anyone helps another person, does a service for another person, then they are doing God's will.
Sometimes people of other Faiths, or unbelievers, atheists, put Christians to shame, on account of the love and service that they, the unbelievers, show to other people."
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Mass homily at St Anselm's, Lincolns Inn Fields, London,
05/07/2019, Fr David Barnes
"The Gospel reading today tells us Christ came to save sinners, which is good news for us, because we are all sinners, fighting against the power of sin in our lives."
"Christ can heal us of our sins if we open ourselves to him, and let Christ become a greater part of us, and become more like him."
"Last Friday was the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Christ's heart can heal us. Let us spend more time with Christ in prayer and worship."
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St Anselm's Lincolns Inn Fields, Mass homily, (approx) 17/08/2018
Fr John
"If there is a part of our lives inhabited by sin, then God cannot reach us there, and we cannot live fully, nor respond to God fully. We must extirpate sin from all corners of our lives.
I have recently been with people who are gravely ill, at the end of their lives. Sometimes they realise they have been delaying making a decision, and now it is too late. So let us make a plan, make a decision, and work towards that goal. Let us make a decision. Sometimes we leave it and it is too late."
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From 06/01/2013 (epiphany) mass at St Anselm's, Lincolns Inn Fields, London
(Fr David Barnes homily)
"Worship brings us to being more fully human. It is in worship that we find out who we truly are. Worship is necessary for human beings. We are made for it. We should take up worshiping postures. We should do this at home when we pray; not only when we are in church.
You could try the custom of the Religious House our parish Sister comes from. Write out three paper slips with one word on each slip; either 'gold', 'frankincense', or 'myrrh'. Using a 'lucky dip' method, choose a slip.
If you draw 'gold', practice the religious virtue of detachment from material possessions this year; reduce your reliance on them.
If you draw 'frankincense' then give more time to prayer; deepen your relationship with God in prayer.
If you draw 'myrrh', then face up to your aches and pains and the hardships of your life with greater cheerfulness."
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St Francis Church, Stratford, London E15, (the priests here are Franciscans): mass homily by (?) Bro Francis
14/05/2005
"If we praise God, something in us is released. God is not changed, we are.
St Athanasius said we are forgiven our sins when we praise God.
A person stopped me in the street and asked me if I was born again. I said that I am born again every time I go to confession.
Let us be Easter people and praise God. Not just use our prayers to ask him for things, though that is well enough, but praise and thank him for this beautiful world and for our lives."
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St Anselm and St Cecilia, Lincolns Inn, London
(05/02/2017 mass homily)
The mass readings were, Gospel - about being salt and light. First reading - Is 58, about feeding the hungry and helping the poor. Homily as follows:-
"As salt brings out the flavours in food and makes them more enjoyable, we, as salt, should relate to others so as to bring the best out in them."
"If we feed the hungry and help the poor, our light shall shine like the dawn, and we shall be healed."
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St Mary Moorfields, Eldon Street, London 01/09/2016
Thursday 13.10hr mass homily, Fr Francis Wahle
(The gospel was Jesus telling the disciples to go out in their boats and cast their nets, and Peter saying he would, though they have caught nothing all night. They cast their nets and have a big haul of fish.)
Homily:-
"Some say the Petrine view is the way to God. Some say the Pauline way. Some say it doesn't matter, there are many ways. But Paul himself says no man is the way to God, the only way to God is Jesus Christ. Jesus himself says, 'I am the way, the truth and the life.'"
"In secular matters we aim for a good brain to achieve a goal. But with God we must understand our poverty as we approach him. We can bring nothing except our admission of sin and failure, and our need of God. God will fill us then, and help us. So, though in secular things we aim to bring a good brain to bear, in our attempts to know God, only a fail will do."
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St Mary Moorfields, Eldon Street, London, Thursday mass 11/01/2018
Fr Wahle homily
(OT reading - Israel carried the Ark of the Covenant into battle expecting this to bring them victory. But the Pharisees defeated them and captured the Ark.)
(NT reading - about the leper approaching Jesus to be healed.)
"The leper approached Jesus, which was against the Mosaic law. In our translation jesus felt sorry for him, but the Greek says Jesus was angry with him, healed him, and sent him packing with a warning not to speak about it. Again the man disobeyed this instruction, and publicised the cure, which meant that Christ cope no longer go about his mission, and from then on he had enemies against him.
Do both these readings teach us the same lesson? That God does not always want what we consider to be good things to happen to us? He does not always want us to be healed. If we get ill it might be for God to bring a greater good out of it. For God does not do our will, but we must do God's will."
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St Mary Moorfields, Eldon Street, 08.05am mass, 07/10/2014
Fr Peter (parish priest) homily
(Gospel reading - Martha complains of Mary sitting listening to Jesus instead of helping her.)
"We know who God is - Christ the Word made flesh in union with God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, three in one.
In Christ, god shared a human life. We communicate with God by listening & speaking in prayer but the primacy is given to listening. Listen, then we can ask questions afterwards.
Mary chose to sit at Christ's feet and listen, and it was not to be taken from her.
Our Lord's mother's recorded words are, 'Do as he tells you.'
We should listen to God, ask questions if we wish to, a to and fro, then do as he tells us."
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Westminster Cathedral 17.30hr mass homily, 17/02/2019
"A lady tortured in a Nazi concentration camp survived with ruined health. She could not marry, or play music, or walk properly. Before the camp she had played and studied the piano, and had ambitions in that direction. She chose not to be bitter. She prayed for the person who tortured her. He contacted her after 40 years and asked for her forgiveness. She gave it, and she said it freed her also."
"Even now, whatever condition or state we are in, God's Spirit and victory over death is available to us. We can begin to live his life, a life of joy."
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From 18th Feb 2018 Westminster Cathedral newsletter, Fr Michael Donaghy writes:-
"......... Prayer, contemplation and fasting enabled Jesus to recognise and choose the right path in his life. We must do likewise this Lent so as to recognise the Will of God for us and to be able to reject what is temptation in our lives."
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Westminster Cathedral mass from (?)2014.
Fr Archer homily
(The first reading was about Abraham leading the Israelites through the desert, and them complaining.)
"Abraham felt fed-up, burdened by responsibility and criticism. He wished he was dead. Just so we get bored, fed-up, leading our Christian lives, attending mass, saying our prayers.
But God fed the Israelites on manna from heaven and on quails. God feeds us on the Eucharist, and the last Eucharist we take when we are very ill is called the Viaticum, food for our final journey.
God feeds us for our Christian journey with the mass. In the Gospel reading God fed the multitude so well, there were baskets of food left over."
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Sun 5.30pm Westminster Cathedral mass, epiphany 06/01/2019, Asian priest homily.
"St Ignatius of Loreto said when a decision is made in consolation, don't reverse it in subsequent desolation.
You may be granted a glimpse of the truth, but then you must act upon it! It is no good seeing the truth and then doing nothing. Only when you act upon the glimpse of the truth you have been given, are you granted the next stage, the further truth.
The three wise men saw signs of the truth in the stars and acted in faith. They saw their decision through, and were granted a sight of the Messiah. The wise men acted and their first action was to go and do him homage.
Herod recognised the truth, Christ being born, but he didn't act appropriately, and it destroyed him."
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St Mary's Catholic Church. Mulberry St, Manchester (The Hidden Gem) 30/06/2022 mass homily, parish priest
(Gospel Mt 9:1-8 about the paralytic brought by his friends on a bed into the presence of Christ.)
"The friends had the faith to bring the paralysed man before Christ, where Christ might heal him.
Our friends, praying for us, can bring us into the presence of Christ. And we can do this for our friends.
Thus our worship and our relationship with God is not only about ourselves. Others are involved. And if we neglect our relationship with God, or mar it in some way, others are hurt by this. It is harder for them to come to Christ."
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The Solemnity of John the Baptist, on Sunday 26th June 2016, replaced the Sunday liturgy. (I didn't record, and have now forgotten, where the mass took place.)
Homily:-
"Our Lady or John the Baptist or Mother Teresa or John Paul II might be sitting next to you. Coming here means coming into the presence of God, attended both by our Earthly congregation, and the congregation of Saints now in heaven, here also to celebrate the mass at which Christ is made present in the bread and the wine."
(end of homily)
(At the time I added:-)
The priest insisted on the supernatural nature of the occasion. He insisted on the reality that the Communion of Saints are present here and now at the mass on the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary time, 2016.
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Mass homily at Salford Cathedral, 12.10pm, 06/12/2024.
The reading at mass was Mt 9:27-31, about the blind men crying aloud to Jesus to be healed, and following him into the house. The sermon was:-
"Jesus cured the blind men who cried out to him. When did you last cry out to God in prayer? Well guess what? These are the kind of prayers that get answered.
Imagine Jesus is present with you. Besides you as a man all day. So you get up and sit at the table for breakfast, and Jesus is also sitting there. So you certainly don't forget to say grace before eating. And you get into your car, and there is Jesus in the passenger seat. So when you see a car in a side road waiting to get out into the line of traffic, you will let him in. You will be considerate. And so on, throughout the day.
Well guess what? You don't have to imagine. Because Jesus really is with you. In reality he is a part of you. ('The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.' Jn1:9).
And if you remember he is there, and pray and act accordingly, your life will be one of signs and wonders."
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14/02/2025
Salford Cathedral 12.10pm mass homily. The Gospel was Lk 10:1-9, about Christ sending out the 72, with instructions, on a mission to the surrounding areas.
"I had a friend who went on missions abroad. Once, on a visit back to Ireland, he had spent the small amount of money he had on a ticket for the ferry, and he was hungry. He hadn't eaten and he hadn't any money." The priest couldn't help smiling as he remembered his friend. "So he prayed, asking God if he could help him out here. When he got on the ferry he entered one of the lounges and there on a table was a big bowl of pasta. He hovered around waiting to see who would come and claim it. And no-one did. So, he took it as God's answer to his prayer."
"Jesus, in the Gospel today, sent out the seventy-two with instructions to carry no money, no knapsack, no sandals. He stripped them back. This was because it was God's mission. It wasn't their mission. If it was their mission they could have taken as many prayer books or other things as they wanted. But it was God's mission."
"Each of us has a mission today. I don't know what it is. It might only be to your family. But when you leave mass today, and go out into the city, you have a mission to take God to others. Mother Teresa was once approached by a man who wanted to join her and do great things as a missionary to the poor. He was a married man with children. And she told him to go home and to love his family."
"God loves us so much. We don't deserve it. We are guilty of sin and doing the wrong things. But he loves us anyway. If we are to be like God, we must find someone who doesn't deserve our love, and love them anyway."
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23/03/2024 10am mass homily at Salford Cathedral
"Watching this service at home on Zoom is not the same as being here, present in person, at this mass. Why? Because when we are present here, we form the people of God in this place.
God is present in this service in five ways. (1) In the congregation, in the people of God, present here. (2) In the altar. (3) In the priest who represents Christ at the mass. (4) In the readings, the Word of God. (5) In the Eucharist.
When we pray, they aren't our prayers. What we are doing when we pray is joining into the prayer of Christ. His prayer is going on all the time. We are joining in Christ's prayers."
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Salford Cathedral weekday mass homily, 23/04/2025, Easter week.
(The Gospel reading was of Christ accompanying the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.)
"Jesus has just risen from the dead at Easter. So he can do anything. I'll share with you something that happened when I was at Aberdeen Cathedral. There was a man there who had suffered for twenty years with painful feet. His feet had some condition that caused him continuous pain. He had been to doctors, and had been referred to specialists, but nothing had helped. Anyway, he was with me complaining of these pains in his feet. So I said to him, 'Do you believe that Jesus can cure you?' Well, he didn't answer straight away. He had to think about it for a moment. Then he answered me. He said, 'Yes'.
So I said to him, ..... (And here the priest raised his outstretched hand and held it above the suffering man he had conjured up, in our imaginations, before him.) 'In the power of Jesus, be healed'. And the man moved his feet a bit, and considered, and said, 'Father, they do feel better. Not completely, but they do feel easier.' So I said to him, 'Is there anyone you need to forgive?' Because withholding forgiveness can block healing. He said yes, there is someone. So I asked him to forgive the person in his heart. And then I said, 'Let's go again'. (Again the priest raised his open hand as if over the man.) 'In the power of Jesus, be healed.' And the man moved his feet and said they felt pain-free. For the first time. He was so happy. He did a dance there in the aisle of the cathedral.
Jesus has just risen from the dead. He can do anything. I don't know what is in your hearts and minds. But Jesus has gifts for you. Bring your concerns to Christ.
In a few minutes we are going to have the Eucharist. We will take in the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The power of Jesus Christ. He can fill us with joy so we, like the disciples at Emmaus, when they realised Jesus had been with them, can't wait to run out and share the good news with others.
And as with those two disciples, he will uncover the meaning of the Scriptures for us. So as we read them, their meaning will be revealed for us at this time. He will guide us."
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From All Saints Margaret Street September 2017 magazine. A sermon for the Assumption by Fr Richard Peers, Director of Education, Liverpool Diocese.
" ......... We need a theology that exposes the post-Freudian therapeutic world-view as the empty shell that it is; that demonstrates that counselling alone cannot build the Kingdom of God; to show that sin is real, ............. : that when we create a person-centred universe, when we remove God from the heart of things we carve out an emptiness that will be filled with horrors.
The liberal dream of permanent progress has been dying for a century. I know my own tendency to sin, to selfishness. Like driving with the steering off-centre and always needing to compensate, our need for a saviour is, literally, our only hope.
........................................
The Christian vision is not that we will come to some rational post-therapeutic wholeness and intellectual knowledge of God. It is that we will pierce the Cloud of Unknowing, we will ascend the Mountain and find God in the cloud.
We will come, as Milton puts it in his brilliant phrase, to 'darkness visible' {i63}
.............................. It is our imagination that will set us free.
...............................Dear Friends, my urging to you in your prayer is to take the way of imagination, to stir up in your heart a true longing for Jesus. Picture him, imagine him with you, speaking to you, above all listening to you. Tell him the deepest longings of your heart, the smallest struggles of your day.
.............................. If we are to know God we have to use our imaginations to rediscover an authentic spiritual sentiment that is serious, sincere and unembarassed, so we can cry, 'Abba! Father!' (Gal 4:7)
.............................
.................... imagination will take us to Jesus who saves us from where we have fallen.
The Fall, our inability to help ourselves, as the heart of the problem: Jesus as the solution: imagination as our inherent ability to participate in the salvation he brings.
................................................."
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11/03/2025 mass homily at St Anthony's, Wythenshawe, by Canon John Udris, visiting priest.
Gospel reading:- Mt 6:7-11 (where Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord's Prayer)
"I want to speak to you about the first and the last clauses of the Lord's Prayer. 'Hallowed be thy name'. What do we mean by that? 'Hallow' is derived from the Old English word for 'Holy'. So we are praying that the Lord's name be recognised as holy.
I remember once, a woman came to the vicarage door and asked how she could become a 'lapsed Catholic'. She appeared to be genuine. Well, I was surprised and wanted to know more, so I invited her in and sat ther down. She explained that she worked with a woman who she admired greatly. This person seemed gracious and honest, and she wanted to know how she had come by these attractive qualities, so she asked what her religion was? And she answered that she was a lapsed Catholic.
So other people might notice us in our everyday lives. If we are holy this will show in the way we behave. And we become holy by the presence of the Holy Spirit. They might say to themselves, I want to be like that. We become good witnesses for the Church.
The opposite is true. The opposite of 'holy' is 'profane'. If we live in a bad way, people will also notice. they will say to themselves, "I don't want anything to do with their Church if that is how they behave."
Now the last clause of the Lord's Prayer is 'Deliver us from evil'. A year ago, for the first time, I visited the town of Padua in Italy, where St Anthony comes from. I heard the story, there, of a woman who became so depressed she became suicidal. So she made her way down to the river, intent on taking her own life, and ending it all. But on the way there she stopped at a shrine to St Anthony, and said some prayers. whilst praying she fell asleep. When she woke up, there besides her on the ground was a folded piece of paper. She opened it to find a simple Cross drawn there, together with the words of a prayer. The prayer is known as 'St Anthony's Brief'.
The words of the prayer are:-
'Behold the Cross of the Lord!
Begone, all evil powers!
The Lion of the Tribe of Juda,
the Root of David,
has conquered,
Alleluia!'
The woman read out these words, and prayed them, and a remarkable thing happened. She felt her depression lift from her.
In the morning, there are always a lot of things to get on with. There is an inclination to get busy, to tackle what needs to be done. But take a risk. Rest a moment. Before you start, take the time to say your prayers. Take a rest and say prayers, that you may later do your work better later.
In the morning, first thing, I make the sign of the Cross using holy water, and recite St Anthony's Brief."
(homily ends)
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Sermon from mass at Christ Church Moss Side, 16/03/1997, by interim priest
Fr John Smith, re the Cross.
(readings Col 2:8-15; Heb 11 )
"God went through the experience of the crucifixion in the person of Jesus Christ. We take Jesus into ourselves in the Eucharist. So we take into ourselves the experience of the Crucifixion. Therefore the Cross, the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, dwells in us. We were all there when Jesus was Crucified. None of us can get away from the Crucifixion.
Pray about, dwell upon, Christ on the Cross."
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08/06/1997
Final sermon by Fr Smith, interregnum priest, Christ Church Moss Side, Manchester. Service for the guidance of the holy Spirit. (My notes from memory of it, written later that day)
Phil 4:8
"The Founder of Mirfield said that as a curate he had a priest who replied to all his suggestions with, "Better not." Are we like this?
We limit the Holy Spirit with what we think ought to happen. Whereas we should open our hands and arms to the Holy Spirit and be guided, and accept his guidance.
It is when a person dreams a vision of a way ahead and follows that vision that the Holy Spirit brings new things into being, and prayers are answered, and miracles happen. In the Old Testament Joseph's celebrated dream was ridiculed and hated by his brothers, but they lived to see it come true in Egypt.
Think of Whittle dreaming of the jet engine, or John Logie Baird of the television, or, further back, of James Watt seeing the lid of his mother's saucepan lift, and dreaming of using that power for locomotion, and so bringing about the birth of the railways.
We must open our arms to receive the Holy Spirit, to do great things for God in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus took our sins upon himself.
Our eyes - we sin with these, looking at things that are unhelpful. When they crucified Jesus they blindfolded him.
Our mouth - we sin with this in the things we say. They struck his mouth.
Our mind - we sin with our thoughts. They put a crown of thorns on his head.
Our hands - in our selfishness we grasp things for ourselves. They nailed his hands to the cross.
Our hearts - we fail in our compassion and feeling for others. They pierced his heart.
So, his marvellous eyes that noticed things so well, his mouth that spoke such marvellous words, his mind that gave us the parables, his hands that healed people; all these took upon themselves our failings and sins and punishment."
(end of sermon)
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Undated notes of a sermon by Bishop Richard Chartres (? around 2010)
"If we just remain amongst ourselves, a spiritual in-crowd, we shall shrink. We must build bridges outward to others.
It is no good running around ever more frenetically like bluebottles in a jar. We must pray. Everything that lasts comes out of prayer.
Prayer is the enemy of the illusion that we can change the world without changing ourselves. We can't.
God is not a construct we can hold in our intelligence. Prayer is attention to God. If we want to serve at a deep level we must let our service come out of prayer. In prayer we open ourselves to God, and the prayer is ever more simple and ever costlier.
Our opportunities to serve one another are immense. Our opportunities to pray for one another are immense. We must find some way to show the love of God that we receive in prayer, out to the world. We must also serve people with deeds."
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From the Bishop of London's, Bishop Richard Chartres', article on the back page of Link magazine, Easter 2003
".....The impact on the planet, our common home, of the project of growth without limit with no end in view beyond the process itself cannot be ignored any longer.
...the Christian faith promises new life to those who open themselves up to God, who pass through the way of the Cross, emptying themselves, so that they can be filled with life that flows from the Godhead.
....Lent is a time for opening ourselves up to God by reducing the over-stimulation and the daily bombardment of images from which so many of us suffer.
We reduce the stimuli by not reading so much, watching so much or consuming so much in order to attain a transparency through which God's light can shine.
We reduce our intake and throw some ballast over the side so that we can climb more easily into the atmosphere of God.
We live more frugally and simply in order to tighten the drum-skin so that God's beat can be heard more clearly in our lives.
We cultivate emptiness so that we can be filled. We come to God especially in the second half of life by subtraction rather than addition.
...Fasting with prayer is the fresh and ancient discipline of the Church, which is being rediscovered in our own day. Fasting with prayer can make us more profoundly aware of food as a gift from divine love rather than fuel for insatiable craving. Joy and a greater sense of freedom should be among the fruits that follow.
......Lent is the time for fasting and prayer especially on Wednesdays and Fridays, in solidarity with the whole Christian community, living and departed. This communal effort saves us from thinking of our own ascetic heroism.
We also fast not only for ourselves but so that the love and light of God can more profoundly penetrate the world of which we are an infinitesimally yet infinitely precious part."
(ends)
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A sermon by Bishop Richard Chartres at a service for the late Fr Bill Scott
"As Richard Hooker said, the Eucharist properly celebrated is 2performative and not merely illustrative". The Eucharist builds the Church .......... It is the way appointed by Christ in which the world itself is re-membered through the growth of his body.
...................... The Church should be a restorative cell capable of neutralising the cancers that are gnawing at our society but as we know the reality is often so depressingly anaemic. But demolition is no answer.
Jesus said, 'I am the living bread which came down from heaven: .....' ...... We miss [Fr Bill Scott's] presence and friendship but we rejoice in his intercessions for us now and our future communion with him in the life of the world to come ...."
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From an undated notes of a homily by Bishop Richard Chartres, so my recollection of his words:-
"If we just remain amongst ourselves, a spiritual in-crowd, we shall shrink. We must build bridges outwards to others.
It is no good running around ever more frenetically, like bluebottles in a jar. We must pray. Everything that lasts comes out of prayer.
Prayer is the enemy of the illusion that we can change the world without changing ourselves. We can't.
God is not a construct we can hold in our intelligence. Prayer is attention to God. If we want to serve at a deep level we must let our service come out of prayer. In prayer we open ourselves to God, and the prayer is ever more simple and ever costlier.
Our opportunities to serve one another are immense. Our opportunities to pray for one another are immense.
We must find some way to show the love of God that we receive in prayer out to the world. We must also serve people with deeds."
(ends)
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From March 2016 'Westminster Record' newspaper, page 5, about Bishop Richard Chartres ecumenical views
" .......... Speaking about the dialogue between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, bishop Chartres said: 'The way to enter into our common heritage is by humility and a diminution of egotism in the poser of the Holy Spirit who initiates us into the love which passes eternally between the Father and the Beloved Son. In other words we should follow the way of Our Lady herself.'
'Much religious practice in every tradition,' he continued, 'by contrast is a busy matter of making God in our own image ..... Mary was quiet, aware and receptive; she was present enough to be found by the messenger of God and filled with the Holy Spirit.' "
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The Bishop of Stepney's address (Bishop Richard Chartres) May 1992
The new bishop of Stepney, Richard Chartres, gave an address at a service early in his episcopal ministry, that included the exhortation, that if you had wounds, if someone had hurt you, then rejoice. He said this boldly. He explained that it is through your wounds that the Holy Spirit can enter into your life to change and heal you.
And in another sermon (?date) Bishop Richard Chartres said the following:-
"Today, in the world, process is masquerading as an end, progress is masquerading as an end.
...the Church is concerned with depths, not with surfaces. It is concerned with the formation of Christ in us, so that Christ's plan for the world will be brought into being. This is the end we work for.
..We must, by prayer, worship and the Eucharist, and by study of Scriptures and following Christ's teaching, bring about the formation of Christ within us. This has to be a slow and gradual process. By forming Christ within us, we bring into being the future around us.
All the peoples throughout the globe grow in brotherhood and concord as each forms Christ within them.
Christ told us, "I am with you always, even to the end of time." "
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Some time after this I happened to read the novel, "What's Bred in the Bone" by Robertson Davies. On page 12 the following passage, which echoes the highlighted words in Bishop Chartres' sermon.
"....What we call luck is the inner man externalised. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can't be the whole explanation. But it's a considerable part of it."
And the author Ben Okri, in his novel "Songs of Enchantment", is writing out similar ideas in this passage on page 290 :-
"...He saw the hidden realities of our thoughts and actions, and their immediate consequences which lurked besides us, waiting for the confluences of time when they would become real and irrevocable. He saw how we created our lives with our thoughts, how our thoughts created our realities, and how we carry around with us the great invisible weight of all our thoughts and actions and secrets. He saw a world co-existent with ours where all our secret selves were real and visible."
In a 1992 radio interview an octogenarian female traveller (didn't record her name) said, "You become what you think."
In Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' (15/04/2021) Henri Nouwen's "Thinking doesn't make new living; living makes new thinking", was quoted.
Aristotle wrote that the way to make a 'just' man, is to do 'just' acts; and likewise, a 'temperate' man, to do 'temperate' acts.
However, William Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican front line chaplain during the First World War, wrote that, "It is what you worship, rather than what you will, that makes you what you are."
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"Restoring the Anglican Mind" by Arthur Middleton page 91
"Michael Ramsey said that the times call urgently for the Anglican witness to Scripture, tradition and reason, ........ for presenting the faith as at once supernatural and related to contemporary man."
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From an article in the New Directions magazine, Feb 2021, by Arthur Middleton
" ............ As the psalmist keeps reminding us, forgetfulness is one of humankind's greatest spiritual diseases and leads to wandering from God. We are called .... into the future [whilst] always keeping an eye on the past through the festival, and meditations on God's law and acts."
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"Through the year with Michael Ramsey" (June 20th on page 118)
" ........ the fact that we are creatures made by a Creator in his own image, and that worship of a Creator by his creatures is something absolutely fundamental in the meaning of man and of Christianity. The creatures worship the Creator: keep to that and Christianity will not lose its bearings. The other thing is, 'Woe is me for I am undone for I am a man of unclean lips because mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts'. It is the sense of sin, the need for forgiveness, the centrality of the Cross in personal religion and as a key to our understanding of God and the world. Keep to that also, and we shall not lose our way."
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Mass at Mirfield, College of the Resurrection, 30/10/2024.
Readings Eph 6:1-9, Ps 145:10-14, Lk 13:22-30
Gospel reading includes, 'enter by the narrow door'.
As the service began, we were advised that the narrow door that leads to life is the way of penitence for our past sins. We were enjoined to pray for the grace to be able to take this way.
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St Luke's feast day, 18/10/2016 at Westminster Cathedral
(The text below isn't a sermon. It is some notes I made after a visit to the Cathedral.)
'At the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament after the mass the young women, dotted amongst the seats, were kneeling in prayer.'
'We need God as an 'absolute', like a compass needle is drawn towards the magnetic North Pole. So we can orientate ourselves, and so our riot of inner desires and drives, hopes and fears, can fall into place. And so that our yearnings can be heard.'
'We need God to love and to acknowledge, and to worship and to obey, because he brings a limitation, though he himself is limitless, to all that error within us. So it can be dashed to pieces against him. He brings us peace, and an ordering of ourselves, in penitence. He brings us healing and love.'
'We need God.'
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(The below writing isn't a sermon, it is diary entry I made on Easter Day, 01/04/2002)
(I attended Solemn High Mass at St Albans Holborn)
"There was an orchestra. The triumph of the music. Your mind's eye could almost see it, a bramble filling the chancel, with a horn searing an erratic bright path above it. It was almost a palpable energy and it took a moment to dissipate at the cessation of the music.
As I was near the back and a relative stranger to the church, so I didn't have people to greet, at the end of mass I was the first to leave. As I passed through the small courtyard, a man was clutching the feet, which were around head height, of the figure of the Crucified Christ on a small cross there. He was hanging beseechingly from those feet as if he too was being crucified. By what? Desperation? Guilt? Remorse? Sorrow? Loss? Any or all of these? His back was to me.
As I passed him I silently prayed, "Hear his prayers and pray in him, O Lord God. May his prayers please you, O Lord, and please answer them with your great mercy." As I continued out through the archway into the street I experienced a tingling: I proceeded on through the electric air."
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The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis
(i.25)
"Two things in particular help to great amendment, to wit, to pull ourselves violently away from that to which nature is viciously inclined, and to labour zealously for that good which we most want."
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The poet William Wordsworth wrote,
"Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more; ..."
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