June 2016 Letter from the Provost

Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological curiosity which describes a condition in which victims of oppression find themselves experiencing feelings of sympathy and even affection for their persecutors. It takes its name from a hostage situation in the capital of Sweden in 1973, when bank employees were held at gunpoint for six days. During this time they developed emotional attachments to their captors, declined to co-operate with attempts to release them and even kissed and hugged the hostage-takers when the siege ended, before going on to defend them during the trial. This sort of phenomenon is also known more broadly in the world of psychologists as “capture-bonding” and “traumatic bonding”. Apparently victims come to mistake any lack of abuse by their captors/tormentors as positive kindness. Captivity gives them an irrational sense of security and belonging, and they dread liberation into the wide world.

         Stockholm Syndrome is one of the more baffling vagaries of human nature, and it is as old as original sin. The serpent promised Eve that if she took the forbidden fruit she would be like God and would never die. Flattered by the attention, silly old Eve immediately forgot that she had already been created in the image and likeness of God and bestowed with the gift of immortality. In sinning, Adam and Eve subjected mankind to the tyranny of Satan. With our intellects clouded and the original harmony that existed between our mind, will and passions disrupted, we are easily convinced that imprisonment in vice is more fulfilling than the freedom that comes with virtue. The devil is the architect of a “Project Fear” which he uses to persuade us that slavery and darkness are preferable to freedom and light.

         We can detect an early manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome in those Jews who were reluctant to allow Moses to lead them from bondage in Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey and who, after their release, pined for the three square meals a day with plenty of onions that they had enjoyed in captivity. In the New Testament Our Lord declares: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The Jews, oppressed by the pagan Roman invaders on one side and the tyranny of religious leaders who have turned the law into a crushing burden on the other, reply: “We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to anyone.” Our Lord has to explain: “Everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin.” It is significant that it is within this context that He makes the explosive revelation: “Before Abraham was, I am”, recalling God’s revelation of His own Name (“I Am Who Am”) when He commissioned Moses to deliver His people from bondage in Egypt.

         Spiritual Stockholm Syndrome can afflict us in many ways. In an era in which there are so many stimulants within easy reach, there are numberless addictions which can have us enslaved before we know it. The Internet offers resources which, if used prudently, can enrich our spiritual lives. At the same time, if meditation on the Gospel is substituted with the devouring of every morsel of Catholic “news”, then our hearts can soon become dungeons of despondency, cluttered with the dead bones of ecclesiastical political intrigue. We need to allow ourselves to be freed from this if we are to flourish into that for which we have been created. If we have made idols of our anxieties and fears, then we need to pray for the grace to smash them so that unfettered we can proceed in hope and joy.

         The Holy Door of this Jubilee Year of Mercy is a potent symbol of the liberation offered by the Gospel. Unburdened of the guilt of sins and refreshed with Sanctifying Grace in the Sacrament of Penance, we may also be freed from all temporal punishment due to sin by means of the indulgences attached to the Holy Door by the Sovereign Pontiff. The conditions are Confession, Holy Communion and prayers for the Pope, and we also need to pray for the grace of detachment from all sin if we are to gain a “plenary” or complete indulgence for ourselves or for a Holy Soul in Purgatory. If we have not yet taken advantage of this blessing, we should do so. Holy Doors have been erected all across the country to make it as easy as possible.

         Imaginative readers might be wondering if considerations of Stockholm Syndrome are relevant to this month’s referendum on our future relations with the E.U. The Provost would not dream of inflicting his antediluvian political views on the Catholic public. The Bishops of England and Wales have encouraged us to pray to the Holy Ghost for guidance, and have proposed a good prayer for us to use as we prepare to cast our votes:

         “Lord, grant us wisdom that we may walk with integrity, guarding the path of justice, and knowing the protection of your loving care for all. Amen”.

Fr Julian Large

May 2016 Letter from the Provost

Open our Bibles at the opening verses of Genesis, and there we find the spirit of God hovering over the very beginning of creation. Some versions of Scripture refer to this spirit as a roaring wind, others as “the power of God”. In Monsignor Ronald Knox’s 1950 translation of the Old Testament this spirit is described in evocative terms of “the breath of God” stirring over the waters of the deep.

         This image of the “breath of God” recurs in Scripture. A little further on in Genesis we are told: “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” And in the Gospels we encounter this creative power of the breath of God in action once again, when Our Risen Lord breathes on His Apostles and says to them: “Peace be to you.... Receive my spirit.” (Jn 20:19-22)

         He breathes His Spirit on them and into them to restore them and to build them up. The Apostles had abandoned Him in His hour of greatest need, but now He brings them the peace which comes with knowing that our sins are forgiven and we are loved by God. Easter morning was brimming over with the freshness and the power of that same breath of God which hovered over the waters of the deep at the beginning of creation – a restorative, life-giving breath that brings life and courage to the soul. It is very much present and active in the world today, despite all attempts to suffocate it.

         When Our Lord breathed His spirit into the Apostles, He instructed them that He was ordaining them with a very specific mission: “Whosoever sins you remit, they are remitted. And whosoever sins you retain, they are retained.” (Jn 20:23) In this moment, we witness the institution of the Sacrament of Penance. Our Lord breathes His spirit into the Apostles so that they, the same sinners who abandoned Him during His Passion, might not only be made whole themselves, but that they might breathe the healing balm of forgiveness into the hearts of all sinners who repent and confess.

         That spirit of healing is breathed into all priests, in every generation, when they are ordained in the Sacrament of Holy Order. To sinners is given the power to forgive sins, to lift the anxiety and sense of isolation that accompanies guilt and to build up the Church. Serving in a church in the centre of a great city means that the Oratory fathers have the privilege of giving absolution to many people who might not have used the Sacrament of Penance for many years or decades. In the confessional we experience the wondrous power of God’s grace in action at close quarters, on a daily basis. Every time a penitent opens his or her heart in the Sacrament of Penance and asks for God’s forgiveness, all of the freshness of that first Easter morning is breathed into a soul, bringing health and wholeness.

         Of course, we priests go to confession ourselves, and so we realise how difficult it can be to articulate our own sins in all honesty, humility and frankness. But it is worth it, each time, to receive not only forgiveness, but to be refreshed and strengthened by the touch of the breath of God. The same breath of God is active in all of its creativeness and power in the other Sacraments. During the Holy Mass, when the priest utters the words of consecration, the stillness of the Church is filled with God’s Presence as Christ comes to the altar in His Living Body and Blood to feed us.

         In our Baptism we were each clothed with a white garment. In ancient times this robe was worn for a whole week before being taken off on the Saturday following Easter, after which the new Christians were sent out into the world in civilian dress to spread the Gospel. As the Baptismal robe of cloth was laid aside, they were admonished to treasure and guard the white robe of Sanctifying Grace with which their souls had been invested. If this white robe of grace which we receive in Baptism is cast off through mortal sin, then it is extremely urgent that it should be restored to us in the Sacrament of Penance. Without this, we cannot receive Holy Communion and we face everlasting separation from God in hell. If our sins are venial, the robe of grace remains intact, but loses its lustre. This is why all of us can benefit from immersion in the fuller’s soap that is offered in the Sacrament of Confession.

         If it is perhaps a while since we went to confession, we should resolve to do so soon, and allow the breath of God to restore us to that dazzling condition to which we were elevated in Baptism.

Fr Julian Large

April 2016 Letter from the Provost

Not long ago His Holiness Pope Francis became the first successor of St Peter ever to visit a Waldensian Temple, during a gita to Turin. On behalf of the Catholic Church, the Sovereign Pontiff requested forgiveness from the Waldensian community, descendants of a proto-Protestant movement condemned for heresy in 1215. The pontifical apology was “for the non-Christian and even inhuman attitudes and behaviour that we have showed you.” On hearing this Eugenio Bernadini, the pastor of the Waldensian community in Turin, looked pleased as Punch, and the Italian press reported with enthusiasm on the conviviality of the get-together. Some weeks later the Waldensians convened a synod at which they discussed what to make of the Pope’s gracious overture. After deliberation, the Synod replied to the Holy Father in no uncertain terms: “Dear Brother in Christ Jesus, the Synod of the Evangelical Waldensian Church accepts with deep respect and not without emotion your apology … but this new situation does not allow us to step in the place of those who testified with their blood or the other Protestants suffering for their faith, and to forgive you.”

         This withholding of forgiveness in response to the Holy Father's apology was interpreted by some Catholic commentators as churlish. However, rather than adding pressure to already bruised feelings by calling the Waldensians monumental party-poopers, perhaps we should see in their sober response a recognition of significant differences between the Catholic understanding of ‘the Church’ and non-Catholic views on ‘church’ – differences which might make it possible and meaningful for the Catholic Church to apologise for events that happened many centuries ago, but which probably make it unthinkable for denominations such as the Waldensians to offer forgiveness for inconveniences endured by their own spiritual ancestors.

         The Catholic Church identifies Herself as the Mystical Body of Christ. Enlivened by the Holy Ghost, and united on earth in every generation under the successor of St Peter, She is an organic whole in a similar way to that in which a human being is a single living unity. All of Her members who are in a state of grace are animated by the same supernatural life force infused in Baptism, and Christ is the Head of this Mystical Body. During a lifetime it is possible that all of the cells of a human body will die and be replaced several times, while we retain a continuity of memory and identity from cradle to grave, which means that we remain the same person. This explains why it is possible to prosecute and punish someone for a crime committed decades before. Cell regeneration never seems to have been accepted as a mitigating factor in a court of law. Similarly, in the Church, generations are born and die, to be replaced by new members, but the Church retains Her own memory and sense of identity because of the supernatural life that animates Her and binds Her members on earth, in Heaven and in Purgatory into a living whole. This also makes it possible for the Church to acknowledge some responsibility for the actions and words of Her members in times past.

         This understanding of the Church explains a significant difference between the act of Faith for a Catholic and for a Protestant. An old-fashioned Protestant of the best sort will tell you that he believes in Pentecost, for example, because it is recorded in the Bible. The Catholic Church, however, teaches us about Pentecost because She was there when it happened. It was her own birthday, and the festivity of it all is still fresh in Her memory, as is the fact that at the time She told Herself to make a note of it in the Scriptures that She was then in the process of writing. She teaches Our Lady’s Assumption with equal conviction. For some reason She did not get around to writing any explicit account of that event, but She remembers it and rejoices in it as if it happened yesterday.

         Leaving aside any questions about the merits of the abundance of apologies that has been proffered in recent decades, we can at least see how it is possible for a pope to apologise for actions or attitudes of certain Catholics in past centuries. One can only imagine that, in centuries to come, the appalling abuses and betrayals that have sullied the wedding garments of the Bride of Christ so nastily in our own time will furnish future popes with plenty of material for apologising. The Provost knows next to nothing about Waldensian ecclesiology, but assuming that these particular separated brethren do not share our ‘high’ understanding of the Church as Mystical Body of Christ united on earth under the successor of St Peter, we should also understand why they might feel unable to accept any apology on behalf of deceased predecessors. Rather than being ungracious, it seems that the Waldensians were just being honest, God bless them.

Fr Julian Large

March 2016 Letter from the Provost

The emotive force of the Church’s liturgy is at its most potent during the Easter Vigil. Before Mass, the atmosphere of desolation evoked by the commemoration of Our Lord’s death and burial on Good Friday still shrouds the church in pitch darkness. The kindling of the Easter fire at the entrance gives the first hint that something has stirred in the Tomb. The congregation then follows the flickering light of the Paschal candle into the church, where an awed silence is punctuated by the deacon’s threefold chant of Lumen Christi, which elicits a resounding Deo Gratias. 

         Meanwhile, the candles of the faithful are lit from the Paschal flame, so that light gradually spreads in every direction, carrying with it the news that Good Friday was not the end of the story. Arriving in the sanctuary, the Paschal candle is enthroned on its candelabrum, and the deacon addresses to it the ancient hymn of praise known as the Exsultet. This traces the history of God’s salvific interactions with His people, from the fall of Adam up to this “truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and the hour when Christ rose from the underworld”. Like the disciples whose hearts burned within them on the road to Emmaus while our Risen Lord “interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself”, we are then led lesson-by-lesson through the salient events of the Old Testament under the illumination of the Pascal candle. With these readings completed, the intonation of the Gloria in Excelsis triggers an explosion of bells, the air swells with the thundering of the organ and the building is flooded in an ocean of light. The Church can contain her joy no longer: Christ is risen; death has been conquered.

         Mindful of the transformative effect of the Resurrection on the disciples, the Church’s aim is that, through her liturgy, each of us should be brought to a personal encounter with our Risen Lord. On Good Friday we see the Apostles and many of the disciples dispersing in terror as the religious and political authorities combine forces to destroy the Messiah. St Mark is so desperate to flee the Garden of Gethsemane when the soldiers arrive that he leaves behind his clothes and disappears naked into the night. Enheartened and grace-filled after the Resurrection, however, St Mark would go on to found the Church in Alexandria, where according to tradition he so rattled the pagans with his fearless preaching that they put a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he was dead. There is no record of him trying to run away on that occasion. Meanwhile, St Peter, who in the Gospels is so often found trying to deflect Our Lord from the way of the Cross, would open wide his own arms to be crucified in Rome.

         When self-doubt troubles us, we might be tempted to tell ourselves that these disciples enjoyed the obvious benefit of the physical presence of our Risen Lord, while all we have to go on is testimony, which is not the same. This is to underestimate the nature and the power of the Church’s sacramental life. The purpose of the liturgy is not merely to stir up emotions using the drama of finely choreographed theatre. The baptismal water blessed at the Vigil has been invested with the power to transform us just as radically as the experience of the Resurrection changed the disciples. At the font we are truly united with Our Lord’s death and burial, so that we emerge overflowing with His Risen Life. In the Sacrament of Penance we are raised up from the death of sins committed since baptism, and restored to the freshness of life eternal. In the Holy Mass we offer ourselves with the sacrificial gifts of bread and wine, so that when they are in turn transformed into His Body and Blood, we are united mystically with His self-oblation on Calvary. It is then in Holy Communion that we are given the most sublime and transformative encounter with the Resurrection, when He feeds us with His risen living body.

         Challenged by secularisation and other menaces within our society, it can be a temptation for Catholics to retreat from engagement with the world, and to live the faith ever more privately, in the hope of being left in peace. The example of the disciples after the Resurrection should save us from such defeatism. The Apostles who had previously huddled behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews” walked voluntarily back into the lion’s den, preaching the Gospel daily in the Temple, gaining many converts, and accepting the consequences in the knowledge that life in Christ has the last word over persecution and death. Transformed by our own encounters with our Risen Lord in this Easter’s liturgy, may we be similarly emboldened.

Fr Julian Large

February 2016 Letter from the Provost

In The Great Divorce, a short allegorical short novel dealing with the soul’s entry into eternity, C. S. Lewis describes an extraordinary scene. Approaching in a procession, a woman is preceded by luminous spirits who scatter flowers, and she is surrounded by boys and girls. The narrator explains that if only he could write down the notes of the musical setting that accompany their song, “no man who ever read that score would ever grow sick or old.” As the woman comes closer, he realizes that she seems to be clothed “in the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces […] the illusion of a great and shining train that accompanied her across the happy grass.” Dazzled by her “unbearable beauty”, and awe-struck by the thousand liveried angels who accompany her, the narrator asks his guide: “Is it? … is it?”

         Reading thus far the Provost assumed, perhaps with the narrator, that this magnificent woman could surely only be one person: the Queen of Heaven. But the response that the narrator receives from his guide reveals an even more wonderful truth: on earth, this regal figure was in fact one Sarah Smith, who lived in Golders Green. Extraordinary in Heaven, her earthly life could not have been more ordinary, at least as far as outward appearances went. The young men and women who accompany her are the children whose lives were enhanced by her kindness, including the butcher’s boy who carried meat to her back door. She had become a mother to them in such a way that “they went back to their natural parents loving them more.” Taking in the scene, the narrator is then taken aback when he realizes the retinue includes scores of animals. “Did she keep a sort of zoo?” he asks. The answer: “Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them […] there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe to life.”

         Lewis illustrates a truth which provides rich material for meditation: that behind the veneer of everyday appearances, there exists the vast and extraordinary universe of the spiritual and the supernatural. Because this realm remains invisible to the naked eye, it is quite possible that our vision never extends beyond the world of shadows and semi-blindness that presents itself to our senses. To penetrate the surface and to begin to see reality in its fullness, we need Faith.

         As part of His sacred mission to redeem mankind, Our Lord laid aside His glory. He did this so successfully that many thought that the carpenter’s son from Nazareth must be mad to believe that anyone would accept Him as the Son of God. On the Gospel appointed for the Second Sunday of Lent, however, we see how He revealed a glimpse of His true glory to Peter, James and John, in His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. This vision of the Messiah radiating brilliant light and talking with Moses and Elias while the Father’s voice declares from Heaven “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye Him” (Mt 17:5), was perhaps given to encourage and sustain these three chosen disciples through the terrible trials that will follow during in His Passion. It also serves the purpose of sustaining us in Lent, reminding us that the end of our Lenten observances is glory – both in beholding the glory of the Beatific Vision in Heaven, and in participating in that glory now.

         The season of Lent provides us with the practical means to readjust our vision. In fasting, we temper the tyranny of our appetites, which so easily blind us to the spiritual realities that lie beyond the reach of our senses. In self-denial, we unite ourselves with Our Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross, and we die to ourselves, so that the supernatural life of the Resurrection which was poured into us in Baptism might take ever greater possession of our hearts and souls. In almsgiving and works of charity, we remind ourselves that our neighbour bears the image of God on his soul, so that in ministering to the needy we pay great honour to God Himself. In deepening our prayer life, we widen the channels of communication, so that God is able to communicate His Divine Life to us in abundance.

         If we are not careful, our vision can become permanently fixed on what is happening in front of us, so that the more significant background becomes so blurred that it disappears, and we end up living in a world of unreality or half-reality. Lent is the perfect opportunity to adjust the focus. If we make the most of this holy season then, with God’s grace, we shall be able to participate in a marvellous way in the glory of Our Lord’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Fr Julian Large

January 2016 Letter from the Provost

On the Feast of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, the Sovereign Pontiff opened the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica. The unsealing of the Holy Door is a potent symbol of the opening of a Year of Jubilee, when God’s mercy flows in torrents in the form of Holy Indulgences and graces merited from pilgrimages to the Holy City and any of the great number of churches around the world which have been granted a Holy Door of their own. This Jubilee Year has actually been designated as a "Year of Mercy". At an official press conference in Rome, Archbishop Rino Fisichella outlined the purpose of 800 "Missionaries of Mercy", who have been granted extraordinary faculties to forgive sins which are normally reserved to the Holy See. As Archbishop Fisichella listed these ‘reserved sins’, it was sobering to note that most of the most heinous crimes in the book are specifically clerical offenses: they consist of priests absolving accomplices in sins against the Sixth Commandment, bishops consecrating new bishops without papal mandate, and priests breaking the seal of the Sacrament of Penance, as well as profanation of the Blessed Sacrament and physical violence against the Roman Pontiff. Meanwhile, the Holy Father gave an interview in which he promised that he will himself engage in a concrete “work of mercy” initiative on one Friday each month for the next year. One deed already accomplished has been his personal decree allowing priests of the Society of Pius X to grant absolution in Confession.

         We might ask why a "Year of Mercy" should be necessary. After all, any Catholic with a half decent knowledge of history knows that, despite the disinformation nurtured by centuries of anti-Catholic propaganda, the Church has been a witness to and a dispenser of God’s mercy for two millennia. Recent experience of themed years in the Church’s calendar might also have left us feeling less than enthusiastic. A Year of Faith was proclaimed with great promise in October 2012, and then flopped like a failed soufflé a few months later when the oven door was opened during the baking process and Pope Benedict XVI announced his abdication.

         If this is how we been feeling, then we should pray to the Holy Ghost that such negative sentiments be banished far from our hearts and replaced with some evangelical zeal. We have entered a brutal period of history, when the world is groaning for healing. There is a sense of hopelessness abroad, and there are signs of a growing acknowledgment of the fact that our society has lost its way. In these increasingly desperate circumstances, the Church’s Gospel of charity and mercy is a good brand. It has potential to capture the imagination of people who are bewildered and anxious. Besides this, the Gospels convey a sense that, as long as we keep in mind that sin is the greatest of evils, mercy really cannot be emphasized too much. Those who provoked Our Lord’s wrath were the unmerciful, and especially those of the unmerciful who held office in the religious hierarchy.

         Of course, every Holy Year is really a year of mercy. The word ‘Jubilee’ is believed to have its root in the Hebrew jobel, denoting the ram’s horn whose sounding summoned the ancient Israelites to a holy year in which debts would be remitted, slaves liberated and prisoners released.

         The fact that a major aspect of a Christian Jubilee Year is the promotion of the Plenary Indulgence which can be gained every day of the year reminds us that we are able to act as instruments of God’s mercy to the Holy Souls in Purgatory, who are liberated from the suffering of Purgatory by means of our prayers and sacrifices. For the current Jubilee the Holy Father has decreed that the Plenary Indulgence is attached to prison chapels, and has exhorted prisoners to raise their hearts and minds to God every time they cross the threshold of their cells because the mercy of God “is also able to transform bars into an experience of freedom”. The housebound, sick and elderly may obtain the Indulgence through uniting themselves with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on television or radio.

         To understand what is meant by mercy, we need to have some grasp of the nature of sin. The primary aspect of sin is that it is an offense against God’s majesty, and in justice it deserves punishment. A secondary aspect of sin is the damaging effect that it has on the soul. Many modern people have difficulty in reconciling the first aspect with their belief in a loving God, while the second aspect seems more accessible as an idea. We can take heart in the realization that, while the Pharisees were fixated on the first aspect and were all too eager to participate in the application of punishment, Our Lord showed Himself to be more concerned with the second. In the accounts of his dealings with sinners in the Gospels, He treats sin as an obstacle to be removed so that the image of God in a person’s soul may be burnished into a gleaming supernatural likeness. Thus liberated and enlivened, a person will soon come to see for himself the evil of sin, without anyone having constantly to make it the major topic of conversation.

         In this Holy Year of Mercy, we should be merciful with ourselves by making good use of the Sacrament of Penance, so that filled to overflowing with the Sanctifying Grace that was first infused into us in Baptism, we are re-energised in our mission to build the Kingdom of Heaven on this earth. Share the Gospel of Divine Love with our family and acquaintances, by talking with them about the blessings on offer in this extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Maybe ask a lapsed Catholic friend to accompany us on a pilgrimage to a church with a Holy Door in our local diocese, and on arrival gently encourage our companion to join us in the line for Confession. May God’s mercy abound in our lives in 2016 and beyond.

Fr Julian Large

December 2015 Letter from the Provost

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 must have seemed to its inhabitants like the end of the world. And, in a very real sense, it did mark the end of a world. Jews who survived the massive slaughter were enslaved and dispersed, and the razing of the Temple meant that Judaism as a religion that offered sacrifice came to an end. The priestly caste of the Sadducees ceased to exist.

History is littered with the ashes of cultures that have ended in ruin. As St Augustine lay on his deathbed in 430, his diocesan see of Hippo was under siege by the Vandals as the Roman Empire crumbled. The fall of Constantinople a thousand years year marked the end of Byzantium. In Western Europe, the French Revolution and the Great War were different stages in the death of an Ancien Régime.

On all of these occasions it must have seemed to those caught in the eye of the storm that the world was ending. And, in reality, each of these events did mark the end of a world order. The truth is that cultures and civilisations rise and fall. Perhaps the greatest sign of hubris in any society is the presumption of invincibility. However mighty and magnificent any merely human civilisation might appear, its foundations are always shot through with the fault lines of human frailty. When we lose our sense of the reality of Original Sin, and we begin to ignore or even deny our need for God, then the results can only be calamitous.

The Gospels record Our Lord’s own prophecy of the end of the world. This does not relate merely to the fall of a civilization or world order, but to the end of time itself, when the Messiah Whose Nativity in a stable we celebrate at Christmas returns in Glory and Judgment. In an instant all of those questions which generate so much gas in interfaith dialogue workshops will receive an answer. Whether we are Christian, heathen or atheist, no-one will be able to deny that Jesus Christ is God the Son, and King of all Creation. On that day of reckoning, justice will be seen to be done on a universal scale, and the bodies of the dead will be reunited to join their souls in Heaven on in Hell. The Church Militant on earth, along with the Church Suffering in Purgatory, will be subsumed, purified and glorified in the Church Triumphant in Eternity.

Is the Second Coming imminent? Actually we entered the End Times when Our Lord Ascended into Heaven, and at every Mass we anticipate His return in glory when, united in facing to the East from whence His presence will appear and fill the skies, we pray “Thy Kingdom Come.” But the exact time of the Second Coming has not been revealed to us. Yes, the world is particularly unstable and violent at the moment. Yes, in theory, man now has the technological capacity to destroy this planet several times over; and yes, our current leaders seem to be especially feeble and platitudinous in the face of the dangers that threaten us. But for all we know, the human race might have just left the starting post of its history, with many millennia to come.

What we can probably say, with a little more confidence, is that the prognosis for our own society is not looking so healthy. In recent decades our culture has been busy hollowing itself out from the inside, with laws appearing on the statute books that contravene the Commandments that God gave to Moses amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai. Holy Scripture teaches, and the Church repeats in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that there are sins that cry to Heaven for punishment. The fact that our Parliament has been discussing the legalisation of “euthanasia” is a sign that that we live in a culture that is contemplating moral suicide. When sins that cry to Heaven become enshrined in the legislation of the land, then perhaps it is time to fasten our seat belts and brace ourselves for chastisement.

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have reminded us of the fragility and the vulnerability of our own society. God never wills evil to happen. That would go against His very nature. But He does sometimes permit evil. And when He permits it, we can be sure that He is sending us a message. In those events in Paris, and in all of the other terrible things that are happening around the globe today, He is surely calling us to our senses. He is calling the world back to Him. As hatred, violence fear and confusion threaten to engulf humanity, He is calling us to look up to the arms of Our Lord Jesus Christ outstretched in love on the Cross. It is on the Cross, and in the Crucifix, that we find the solution to everything that is happening around us. That Cross is the Throne of the Prince of Peace. And it is only through taking up the Cross in our lives that we shall conquer evil and establish peace. The Cross is the threshold we must traverse to arrive at the Resurrection. The Cross is the invincible banner that ensures Christian victory.

In our Baptism, the priest traces the sign of the Holy Cross over our hearts, and we are filled with Sanctifying Grace. In our Confirmation, we are anointed with oil and commissioned as officers in the war against evil. This is a war in which there are no civilians. St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that this is not just a war against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places.

It is a sobering reality of life in Europe today that we live alongside people who are plotting to maim and kill us. The constant threat of terrorism reminds us that the thread that connects our bodies to our souls is delicate and could be severed at any moment. So what can we do to protect ourselves? Well, the one thing that matters ultimately – whether we die in our own beds or at the hands of a religious maniac- is that when our time comes we are in a state of grace. So the first thing we should do if we are conscious of any mortal sin on our soul is to go to Confession. Then we can go back out into that dangerous world without fear, with the Cross of Christ emblazoned on our hearts, and Our Lord enthroned in our souls.

Every significant occasion now has its hashtag and its logo. There was a tragic pathos about the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan that was the response to the terrorist attacks in Paris in January. After the more recent attacks, the logo that appeared all over social media was “Pray for Paris.” Is this is a small sign that people are coming to their senses? At the Oratory we prayed for Paris. Holy Mass was offered for the souls of those murdered, and for the recovery of the injured. This Christmas, Masses will be offered for the well-being of our own realm and the safety of our loved ones. May the reign of the Prince of Peace be established universally in this wounded and dangerous world. May Our Lady of Victories intercede for us.

Fr Julian Large

November 2015 Letter from the Provost

Catholics wondering how honest they have to be when filling in their tax returns receive a clear answer in the Gospel. A delegation sent by Pharisees and Herodians once asked Our Lord if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Their intention was to push Him between a rock and a hard place. Were He to say no, then they could denounce Him to the Roman authorities for sedition. If He answered yes, the result would be hysteria from the puritanical Jewish zealots.  Our Lord pulled the rug from under all of them by requesting a coin and asking: “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They could only answer “Caesar’s”, to which He replied: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mt 22:15-22, Mk 12:13-17, Lk 20:21-26)

However much we might mistrust the government, and even if some of us might question the morality of income tax in principle, as law-abiding subjects we have to pay our dues like everyone else. On the dreadful Day of Judgment it will be the emperors of this world who will have to answer for how these revenues have been spent.

The truth is that Our Lord was not particularly interested in that coin, or in the image that was engraved on it. What interests Him is the image that every human being, including Caesar, carries on his soul. “Let us make man in our image”, says God in the first chapter of Genesis. This image of God lies in our immortal soul, and is to be found in our capacity to know and to love. It is this divine image that makes every innocent human life inviolable and sacred to God, from conception into eternity.

When we lose sight of this wondrous reality, the results can only be dire. The human race in ‘the West’ seems to have been going through an identity crisis for some decades. That weird and not so wonderful creature whom twentieth-century theologians categorised as ‘Modern Man’ has been conditioned to think of himself as nothing more than a developed ape, with the consequence that the animal part of human nature – the emotions – often trumps over reason. In this climate, we should learn to recognize and to welcome any signs that the prevailing cult of sentimentalism has not yet become a fully-ensconced tyranny. The recent defeat of the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons is one such indication. Many self-appointed policy-formers, in collusion with much of the media, have been successful in creating the impression that legalized ‘mercy killing’ is an inevitability in a modern secular society. The fact that there are still enough people in our elected Parliament who recognize the intrinsic difference between a suffering animal and a terminally ill human being to block such a bill has given heart to those who care about the sanctity of human life.

This wondrous image of God in the human soul which is a part of human nature and therefore common to all, has of course been disfigured by sin. In coming to redeem us, Our Lord intends to restore it to perfection. In addition to the image of God which belongs to our nature, He also comes to elevate us to His supernatural likeness. We receive this in the Sacrament of Baptism, when Sanctifying Grace is infused into our hearts and we are raised up to a participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity.

The greatest treasures in the hoard of a coin collector are those issues which are rare and beautiful. A dedicated connoisseur will sacrifice much to acquire a prize that is unique. To God, each and every human soul is unique and infinitely precious. Our Lord was willing to give every drop of His Precious Blood on the Cross, not just for the human race as a whole, but for each one of us individually. In so redeeming us, He takes possession of us, elevating us to that Divine Likeness which is a share in His own life.

Most of us probably pay our taxes without much enthusiasm. We render to the Inland Revenue what we are required to by law. Heaven forbid that we should ever become so begrudging in the tribute that we render to God. If our spiritual lives are reduced to avoiding mortal sin and grudgingly obeying commandments and rules (“Father, which parts of the Mass do I have to be present for to fulfil my obligation?” is a classic instance of treating-God-like-the-taxman) then we end up spiritually impoverished. The benefits which earthly governments provide in return for taxation are sometimes of dubious value. In return for our hearts and souls, Almighty God promises us untold riches and everlasting happiness with Him in Heaven. Let us render ourselves to Him generously and without reserve.

Fr Julian Large

October 2015 Letter from the Provost

Deo gratias, there is always a steady stream of couples arriving at the Oratory to make enquiries about marriage preparation. London universities and the employment provided by local shops and hospitals ensure that these enquirers come from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds. However, one factor that many do seem to have in common is that, by the time they have decided to be married, they are already living together. It would serve no purpose to be seen to become hot under the clerical collar about this. That which according to the Gospel is clearly gravely sinful has, in the view of most of our contemporaries (including many of those who have been through the Catholic school system), become the norm.

The priest has the responsibility of informing such a couple that his role is to help them to prepare as thoroughly as possible for the wondrous blessings that God will rain down on them in the Sacrament of Matrimony. He probably needs to explain from scratch the nature of a Sacrament – how each Sacrament has been instituted by Our Lord Himself as an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, and how the sign actually brings about the grace that it signifies. In exchanging marriage vows, a couple will become one flesh in a covenant overflowing with divine grace. And it is in the “marital act”, when husband and wife unite physically as one body, that this bond is consummated and made indissoluble. This covenant provides the context of faithful commitment and stability that God desires for the procreation and nurturing of children.

Most young people who care to have anything at all to do with the Church today are looking for authenticity. Nowadays there is little social pressure to have a religious wedding, so if a couple does turn up seeking marriage in a Catholic church, then we should assume that they are open to exploring and living according to the Catholic understanding of marriage.  Once they realize that, if the vows they will exchange on the big day are to have the “feel” of authenticity, it is essential that they are not already living as if they are “one flesh”, then they are usually willing to make the required adjustments in their life. The considerable inconvenience that this often involves on a practical level helps to focus their minds on the momentousness of the decision they have made to marry in the Church, and brings home the supernatural character of Holy Matrimony. To benefit from the life of grace, they first of all need to be in the State of Grace. Once they understand how Holy Matrimony as a state of life is nourished and supported by the other Sacraments, then, with the help of Confession and Holy Communion, they are able to make the most of what the Church has to offer spiritually as they lay the foundation for a new life in the months leading up to their marriage.

The appetite for authenticity on the part of young couples thus provides priests with an invaluable opportunity. But it also presents a challenge. Gross scandals involving abuse of status and betrayal of trust in recent decades have made many sensible and good people understandably reluctant to take the ecclesiastical hierarchy seriously as a voice of moral authority. In these circumstances, priests can hardly be surprised if, when extolling the beauty of virginity and holy purity, or explaining the sinfulness of cohabitation and contraception, the response from the audience is the glazed expression that denotes disconnection.

This is when that weird and wonderful phenomenon that Teutonic theologians love to call “the lived experience of the people of God” can really come into its own. If we are gullible enough to believe what is communicated through much of the media, then we might feel compelled to concede that supporting traditional Catholic wisdom on marriage means committing ourselves to a lost cause. The actuality on the ground, however, is that the Oratory parish (and the same must be true of many Catholic parishes) contains a good number of young Catholic couples and families who are actually making a very serious effort to do things the “Catholic way”, and who have embraced the Church”s doctrine on chastity and marriage. Once sceptical newcomers are introduced to the “lived reality” of this priceless human resource, they find a culture which they probably assumed had gone the way of the Dodo in the 1960s. And when they see the fruits that come through the sacrifice and virtue involved in the authentically “Catholic way” of marriage and family life, they find themselves hard-pushed to deny its attractiveness.

Of course, that wider family that is the Catholic parish will also include members who have not been called to marriage, and those whose lives have been blighted by the hardship of break-ups and other complications. The Church on earth is not an “elect” of the righteous who have attained perfection. We are all of us sinners, and the Church is a field hospital in which we each come to receive healing and to assist in the binding each other’s wounds. A healthy parish is one in which kindness, humility and friendship attract sinners to repentance and onto the gold-paved road to sanctification. But it is still the young families with children who will always be the most precious jewels, on the human level, in a parish’s crown. The “lived reality” of their witness is more eloquent to the beauty of the family than any sermon. Their existence proves that it is possible to build and sustain a Catholic culture in today’s world.

Proclaiming the viability of the Christian family and Christian married life with credibility and resonance is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the Synod of the Family which takes place in Rome this October. Much supernatural assistance is required. During this month of the Rosary, let us offer many prayers to Our Lady Queen of the Family with this intention.

Fr Julian Large

September 2015 Letter From the Provost

Whenever we say the Apostles' Creed, we profess our belief in the Communion of Saints. This should evoke an image of a great society of mutual assistance, in which the saints in Heaven intercede for us, while we help the Holy Souls in Purgatory with our prayers and by the indulgences we are able to gain for them. This dynamic of charity is a reflection of the Divine Charity which characterizes the Life of the Blessed Trinity, and is a practical expression of the theological virtue of Charity, which is infused into our souls in Baptism.

In The Creed in Slow Motion Monsignor Ronald Knox reminds us of a more prosaic meaning. He says that if you were to have asked St Paul what he meant by ‘the Communion of Saints" he would have said that “when one set of Christians is hard up another set of Christians, in a different part of the world, sends round the hat and takes up a collection for them.”

This is what we need to do, quite urgently, for Christians in the Middle East, where whole Christian communities have been obliterated and continue to be eradicated in places like Iraq, Syria and Libya. Christian men, women and children are being tortured and slaughtered. Countless thousands of the survivors have been driven from their homes and are currently living in abject poverty in refugee camps, in fear for their future.

One of the terrible sufferings these poor people have to endure is the dreadful sense of having been forgotten. Four hundred Christians are murdered on one day, and one hundred and fifty Christians kidnapped on another day, and we hear very little, if anything, about it. Most of the media takes very little interest in the plight of persecuted Christians, and the leaders of the world have other priorities.

The Oratory Fathers recently invited Aid to the Church in Need to make an appeal in our church on behalf of the persecuted. This appeal has so far raised around twenty five thousand pounds. As this persecution is an ongoing crisis, it is hoped that we shall continue to raise funds for those Christians who need our help and will continue to need all the assistance we can give for a long time to come.

As well as giving materially, we also need to pray. The extinction of the Christian presence in great swathes of the Middle East is arguably one of the greatest calamities that civilisation has ever faced. Previously, when western Europe was threatened by the Turks, Pope St Pius V, in addition to calling on Christendom to raise an army, instructed all Catholics to pray the Rosary. It is no exaggeration to say that the victory of the Christian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto on 7th October 1571 saved western Christendom from enslavement. The Feast of the Most Holy Rosary was established in thanksgiving for Our Lady’s intervention.

The plight of Christians in the Middle East is desperate. But even on the natural level there is perhaps a glimmer of hope. In the person of Pope Francis, the Church on earth has been granted a Sovereign Pontiff who has captivated the hearts not only of his own flock, but seemingly of the western world and the mainstream media. Since the publication of his encyclical on the environment, the Holy Father has even been acclaimed as a “world leader” by some of the most hard-bitten secularists on the planet today.

We can only pray that the moral authority which even the media and anti-clerical potentates are now attributing to the Holy Father will play in favour of our persecuted Christian brethren. This month, Pope Francis will visit the President of the United States of America in Washington. On 25th September the Successor of St Peter will address a meeting of the United Nations in New York. Pray hard that the Holy Ghost will take possession of that assembly, so that the hearts of the powerful will be moved to take decisive and swift action to save what remains of the Christian presence in the Middle East. Pray that the Paraclete will inspire the Holy Father to find the right words to galvanise that assembly into action.

In this time of great urgency and untold suffering, there is something we can do, as members of the Communion of Saints, to assist those of the saints who are currently suffering persecution, homelessness and death. We can give generously, to an extent that is self-sacrificial. We should aim to turn that £25,000 raised so far into £100,000, and much more as the months go by. And we can all pray. One of the most powerful weapons we have is the Rosary. Pray it every day for persecuted Christians. And may Our Lady of Victories and the great Pope St Pius V intercede for us all.

We would like to encourage readers to make a donation to Aid to the Church in Need, and to consider supporting their work in favour of persecuted Christians on a more continuous basis. Donations may be made through the Oratory (please make cheques out to “the London Oratory Charity” and indicate in a covering note that they are for the Middle East appeal.) You can also donate directly online, at http://www.acnuk.org/donate2.php. Please go to the “Oratory Middle East Appeal 2015” donation category.

Fr Julian Large

August 2015 Letter from the Provost

The prophet Amos was given an unenviable mission. A herdsman from a backwater in Judah, he was sent by God to the Northern Kingdom of Israel to proclaim a message of judgment. The Northern Kingdom was not what we might consider to be prime mission territory. Its powerful ruler Jeroboam II had secured a period of peace and plenty. Samaria, the capital, was a byword for luxury and sophistication. Religiously the kingdom also seemed to be thriving. The sacrificial worship of the Israelites was conducted with pomp and circumstance, and the prosperity was interpreted as divine favour.

         However, behind this veneer of comfort and religiosity, the reality was not so pleasing in the eyes of God. Thriving commerce had brought the Israelites into contact with pagans, and the true religion was being contaminated by worship of heathen idols. And while the economy boomed, corruption and injustice were rife.

         Needless to say, the arrival of a cowherd from the wilds of the south was not well received. Amos was eventually driven out of the kingdom by the chief priest at the great sanctuary in Bethel.  Within forty years the mighty Northern Kingdom had been destroyed and its population was deported by the Assyrians in 720 B.C.

         In purely human terms the mission of Amos looks like a flop. But the important thing is that Amos was obedient to God’s command, and so he fulfilled his mission. We can be confident that Amos enjoys his reward in Heaven, even if we cannot be so sanguine about the destination of those who rejected his prophecy. Amos was a faithful servant of the word of God, even if that word fell on deaf ears.

         When we talk about the word of God in the Old Testament, we are talking about the words of Holy Scripture, and the words that were pronounced on the lips of the prophets under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament the Word of God Himself comes to us as a Person. This is the Eternal Logos, God the Son – the Word of God with a capital ‘W’. And again, like the prophets in the Old Testament, the Word of God Who is God receives a very mixed reception. Two thousand years after the Resurrection, we find a large-scale rejection of the word of God. The word transmitted in Holy Scripture is disdained by those who make the laws which govern our society. And the Word of God Who is God is largely ignored by those whom He came to save.

         Nevertheless, it remains our task as Christians to proclaim the word of God. In this challenging climate bishops and priests have to do what they can to make the word of God as accessible and attractive as possible. And it is up to all of us to give credibility to our belief, by living in charity and especially in the care we show towards those in need. At the same time, the Gospel can only be effective when proclaimed in its integrity, and this includes the hard bits as well as the passages from Scripture which no-one minds hearing. Some will embrace the Gospel in its completeness while others – perhaps even the vast majority – will reject it. Many reject it today because they are frightened of sounding a discordant note when everyone else is singing obediently from the same libretto.

         Of course, everyone is glad to hear about mercy and love. And the New Testament is the greatest love story ever told. But Our Lord also sends His Apostles to preach a Gospel of repentance [Mk 6.12]. In order to taste the sweetness of God’s mercy and to participate in the Divine Love which is the essence of the Life of the Blessed Trinity we first need to confess our sins and receive forgiveness.  This message of repentance will lodge in the throat of a society which, if it deigns to acknowledge the reality of God at all, only allows Him to exist in so far as He affirms us.

         It can be tempting to reinterpret the word of God beyond recognition in the futile hope of adapting the message to modern prejudices, but then the Gospel is sapped of vitality. Such theologizing and prevaricating also constitute a calamitous contravention of Our Lord’s instruction to His Apostles when He sends them out to preach repentance. “If any place will not receive you and if they refuse to hear you,” He tells them, “shake the dust that is on your feet for a testimony against them.”

         One of the glories of the Oratory Church is the series of statues of the Twelve Apostles, by the baroque sculptor Giuseppe Mazzuoli, originally created for the nave of Siena Cathedral. Looking at those statues we should consider that all but one of the Twelve were put to death for preaching the Gospel of repentance. Some of them carry the instruments of their martyrdom. St Andrew stands in front of his cross. St Bartholomew carries the blade with which he was flayed. And yet they were not a failure. Yes, they enraged the religious and civil leaders of the day, and they paid the ultimate price. But their blood fertilized a mustard seed which flourished into a mighty tree, in the branches of which the birds of the air have come to make their nests for two millennia. We should ask the Twelve Apostles, and the Prophet Amos, to intercede for us. Like them, may we have the courage to sing those discordant notes that need to be heard while the rest of the world sings so obediently from the same libretto.

Fr Julian Large

July 2015 Letter from the Provost

Five hundred years ago this month, our holy father St Philip Neri was born in the early hours of 22nd July, the feast of St Mary Magdalene. Just hours later the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity were infused into his soul in Baptism. In the wretched heat and humidity that afflict Florence in high summer it was prudent to administer the Sacrament without delay.

Our Lord tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard which when it is sown is the tiniest seed in the field, but when grown it becomes a tree in the branches of which the birds of the air come and make their nests. The seed that was planted in St Philip' heart in the famous Baptistery of St John, and which germinated and took root during his childhood in Florence, would eventually flourish into a mighty tree in Rome. His own room was the nest (he actually called it his nido) in which the fledgling first Oratory would become the base for an apostolic mission that would earn him the glorious title Apostle of Rome.

As other Oratories began to be established, it was St Philip's wish that each house remain autonomous, and this status is preserved to this day in the Church's law. Nevertheless, every Oratory is to be like a branch that is animated and nourished by that supernatural life that was nurtured in St Philip's nido half a millennium ago. The purpose of an Oratory in the plan of salvation is to give encouragement and direction to anyone who seeks spiritual refreshment in the shade of its bough. An Oratory is supposed to provide a spiritual home, usually in an urban context, in which friendship with Our Saviour is nurtured under the gentle guidance of St Philip and the protection of Our Lady.

St Philip came to be listed among the saints of the “Counter Reformation”. Mention of this authentic and glorious renewal in the life of the Church conjures up images of the Church rolling out all the engines of spiritual warfare. Established religious orders were to be reformed or suppressed; new congregations would be equipped with spiritual and intellectual artillery to defend the Faith and reclaim territories lost to schism; Jesuits were to be deployed around Europe to engage heretics in public dispute, or despatched to risk life and limb recruiting converts from the heathen New World. In contrast to this, St Philip's own mission within the Church Militant took place entirely on the home front. In the words of Blessed John Henry Newman, "He put away from him monastic rule and authoritative speech as David refused the armour of his king....His weapons should be but unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he did was to be done by the light and fervour and convincing eloquence of his personal character and his easy conversation. He came to the Eternal City and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually grew up around him." In other words, it was through personal contact and friendship that St Philip contributed to the renewal of the spiritual life of Rome that was essential to the success of the Catholic Reformation.

Under the tyranny of sentimentalism that reigns supreme today, there is a danger that friendship can take on a shallow meaning and be understood mainly in terms of feelings and utility. To understand how friendship was so effective in St Philip's apostolate, it is necessary to appreciate the classical and Christian traditions in which he had been formed by the Dominicans at San Marco, and through his later studies in Rome. In the Aristotelian understanding, friendship is a "settled disposition" - a habit, based on virtue. It involves the recognition of an intrinsic good in the other, and a reciprocated commitment to serve that good and make it flourish. In a truly virtuous friendship, the parties will also work together for the common good. Whereas for Aristotle such friendship is only ever possible between equals (he said that the one good we must never desire for our friends is that they become gods, because if our wish were fulfilled then we should immediately forfeit their friendship), St Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on Sanctifying Grace makes even friendship with God a reality. This is because God actually shares His Divine Life with us through Baptism.

St Philip excelled in making men's hearts receptive to this vocation to live as friends with God. His joyful influence fostered an ambience in which his spiritual children found pleasure in each others’ company and came to assist each other in living virtuously. A shy cobbler whom St Philip spotted sitting at the back of the Oratory was summoned to the front and hugged like a long-lost child returning to a family that included cardinals and princes. A watch-seller on the verge of bankruptcy found himself suddenly overwhelmed by eager customers at the Oratory, where St Philip's friends had been primed to empty their purses and buy every watch and clock he could provide. This infectious spirit of generosity and charity was fostered by visits to attend to the poor in the Roman hospitals. Even those who came to the Oratory with unworthy motives were eventually captivated by the "Winning Saint", and some found themselves taking Holy Orders or religious vows as a result.

This school of Christian friendship was the magnificent mustard tree which developed from that seed of the Kingdom planted in St Philip's heart half a millennium ago at his Baptism on 22nd July 1515. By his intercession, and under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin, may it continue to flourish in the Oratory today and for centuries to come.

Fr Julian Large