Archbishop Fulton Sheen preaching for Dr Robert Schuller on The Hour of Power

Born in 1895 in El Paso, Illinois, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was in his day the best-known Catholic in the United States next to the Pope. In the 1950s he was well-known for his appearances on the radio programme The Catholic Hour and the television show Life is Worth Living – for which he won an Emmy.  He was down to earth, had an infectious faith and wanted only to proclaim the Gospel wherever he could. Life is Worth Living made Sheen a household name, a celebrity who was called upon to give lectures, conferences, and retreats for laity, clergy and religious. 

This video is of Archbishop Sheen preaching for protestant pastor Robert Schuller at a gathering televised from the Crystal Cathedral, Garden Grove, California (which, ironically is now 'Christ Cathedral' of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange). A thoroughly orthodox Catholic, and a friend of evangelicals, Sheen was always meticulously prepared, but in fact spoke without notes using homely anecdotes, illustrations and humour, and his great command of the language, to explain God's truth. He died in 1979. His television programmes are now routinely rebroadcast on Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

Holy Week and Easter at All Saints' Benhilton

This is YOUR invitation to join us for our journey through Holy Week and our celebration of Easter.

Our regular worshippers come from a wide range of backgrounds and age groups, and quite a few from outside the parish. What we have in common is the discovery of God’s love in the ups and downs of everyday life. Joining together at Mass we lift our hearts and voices in praise to the Lord as brothers and sisters together, we gain insights into his ways as the Scriptures are taught, and we draw strength from him for our daily life as we pray and receive him in the miracle of Holy Communion.

It is possible that, like many other people, you have a suspicion that there is more to life than what you have so far experienced. You might even be wondering if there is, after all, a spiritual dimension to reality. 

Or you might look back half nostalgically to a time when you were very conscious of God’s presence and love; but your career, your ambitions, or just the stresses of keeping up with modern life, have caused you to drift away.

What better time than Holy Week to think about these things, maybe for the first time, or maybe dipping your toe back in the water after years of trying to make it through just in your own strength? What better time to reach out to God? 

You’ll find a real welcome at All Saints Benhilton.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

There are many ways of looking at what happened when Jesus died on the Cross that first Good Friday. Some speak of the Cross as a demonstration of God’s love, others as a battle in which darkness and evil are conquered, and others, still, as the sacrifice that takes our sins away.

I find it really helpful also to see the Cross as God’s way of sharing with his people - and with the whole of creation - in the anguish and pain we know only too well, not just “helping us through it”, but, even in the midst of it, pouring his love and strength into our lives. Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware puts it like this:

“ . . . there was a Cross in the heart of God before there was one planted outside Jerusalem; and though the Cross of wood has been taken down, the Cross in God’s heart still remains.  It is the Cross of pain and triumph - both together.  And those who can believe this will find that joy is mingled with their cup of bitterness.  They will share on a human level in the divine experience of victorious suffering.”

The Cross is God’s way of loving the world back to himself - transforming it - and that includes you and me.

HIS JOURNEY AND OURS

The services of Holy Week are arranged with music, Bible readings, art, drama and traditional ceremonial so as to draw us deeply into the suffering, dying and rising of Jesus.

  

We do not pass glibly to the joy of Easter Day without treading the road to Calvary with its pain and sorrow. Our journey is measured and reflective. It changes us. Holy Week is a fresh experience of God’s wonderful transforming love, a deeper knowledge of sins forgiven, and a new grasp of the victory God is trying to win in our lives over sin, evil and hatred.

  

I know that if you make the most of Holy Week 2018, you will emerge on Easter Day a new person. That is just as true for those who have been through 70 or 80 Holy Weeks as it is for those experiencing Holy Week for the first time.  If you tread the way of the Cross and journey to the Empty Tomb in sincerity of heart and - however falteringly - reach out to God, your relationship with him will be made new.

Sharing in these special services will help you put the world’s problems and tragedies in perspective, and make a little more sense out of your own life. 

See you at Mass!

SERVICE TIMES

PALM SUNDAY

8.00 am Low Mass

9.30 am The Commemoration of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem

and Procession leading into the SOLEMN MASS OF PALM SUNDAY
6.00 pm STATIONS OF THE CROSS

MONDAY & TUESDAY

7.30 pm Mass & Homily

WEDNESDAY

7.30 pm Agape Meal & Mass

MAUNDY THURSDAY

8.00 pm EVENING MASS OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 

procession to the Altar of Repose,

stripping of the Altars

and watch of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament until midnight.

GOOD FRIDAY

9.00 am Morning Prayer

1.30 pm THE LITURGY OF THE LORD'S PASSION 

with Veneration of the Cross and Holy Communion

7.30 pm Evening Prayer

HOLY SATURDAY

10.00 am Morning Prayer

8.00 pm THE EASTER VIGIL & THE FIRST MASS OF EASTER

EASTER DAY

8.00 am Low Mass

9.30 am SOLEMN MASS OF EASTER DAY

Mary: "a sister to all the children of Adam as they journey toward the fulness of freedom"

Celebrating the solemnity of Our Lady’s Assumption yesterday, we were reminded of our ultimate destiny, for the prayers emphasise Mary’s sharing in the totality of her Son’s resurrection victory as the end to which the Church also “in her foreshadowed” makes her journey through time and space.  

   

OUR EXILE

And if that is true of the Church, it is also true for us as individual Christians. In “Ye who own the Faith of Jesus . . .” (from which I have already quoted) the second last verse speaks of those for whom we seek Our Lady’s prayers:

   

For the sick and for the agéd,

For our dear ones far away,

For the hearts that mourn in secret,

All who need our prayers today,

For the faithful gone before us,

May the holy Virgin pray.

   

Did you notice “. . . For the hearts that mourn in secret”? I’m always deeply moved at that point in Canon Coles’ hymn, for it makes me think of Christian brothers and sisters I have had the privilege of knowing who have quietly embraced the suffering and pain of their lives and relationships - in some instances extraordinary suffering and pain - and, rather than retaliating or taking it out on everyone around them, have become “the hearts that mourn in secret.” From a place of real spiritual and emotional strength (that they often didn't think they had!) they have been content to offer themselves and their experience to the Father in union with the suffering of Jesus so that it at least becomes redemptive for the sake of others, while they themselves are strengthened at the foot of the Cross by the presence with them of the Mother of Sorrows.

   

Sometimes there is a trusted friend or spiritual director who will understand. But sometimes there is no-one. We “mourn in secret” perhaps even crying ourselves to sleep at night in a kind of loneliness that feels like spiritual exile. It is especially in those moments that we are grateful for the loving embrace of our Lady Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mother of all his people. It is out of that experience that generations of Christians have regularly prayed the Salve Regina at the end of the Rosary:

   

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy;

hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;

to thee do we send up our sighs,

mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,

thine eyes of mercy towards us;

and after this our exile,

show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

   

Even if some of us have been spared those particular depths of personal suffering, it is sadly true that living the full Catholic life within Anglican structures is more and more difficult. The sense that we are called to do so, at the same time bearing joyful witness to the Faith once delivered to the Saints, causes us to suffer very deeply the sense of being exiles within our own Church. 

   

But it is now becoming clear that the rapid changes in our western European culture that in most places has deliberately decided to “move on” from its Judaeo-Christian foundations, pose equally great challenges for ALL Churches of every tradition. We are still called to bear witness to the Good News of Jesus, whatever the cost - and in the short to medium term future, the cost may be very great indeed, as Pope Benedict XVI has suggested in his writings.

   

RAISED UP TO BEAR WITNESS 

In this context, a very small proportion of Anglicans, with hearts on fire with love for Jesus, holding on to the full Catholic Faith may seem a fairly impotent and thinly spread community as far as the big picture is concerned. But, as St Paul wrote, 

“God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” 

(1 Corinthians 1:27-30)

   

It is my belief that God has raised us up in our particular contexts to keep alive aspects of the Faith that might otherwise disappear from notice. In the aftermath of celebrating Our Lady’s Assumption let us rededicate ourselves to that vocation.

   

In the Book of Masses of Our Lady, there is the most wonderful Preface for the Mass of Our Lady, Mother of Divine Hope. Since its publication, many years ago, it has been one of my favourite prayers (especially in this particular translation). I share it with you as an encouragement to be faithful to the Lord in joy and in sorrow, and to be those who journey through this world with our eyes raised to Mary, our “sister in Christ”, the “Mother of all her Son’s people”, “the fairest fruit of Christ’s redeeming love” who continues to pray for us as we make our pilgrimage to the fulness of heaven’s glory where we, with her, will share the completeness of her Son’s victory over sin and death:

   

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,

to give you thanks with all our hearts,

Lord, holy Father,

for your gift to our human family

of Jesus Christ, the author of our salvation,

and of Mary, his Mother, the model of divine hope.

   

Your lowly handmaid placed all her trust in you:

she awaited in hope and conceived in faith 

the Son of Man, whom the prophets had foretold.

   

With untiring love she gave herself to his service

and became the Mother of all the living.

Mary, the fairest fruit of Christ’s redeeming love,

is a sister to all the children of Adam

as they journey toward the fullness of freedom

and raise their eyes to her,

the sign of sure hope and comfort,

until the day of the Lord dawns in glory.

What kind of Messiah? (Luke 9:18-24 )

Now it happened that as Jesus was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  And they answered, “John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.”  Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”

And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

- Luke 9:18-24 (ESV)

When prayer is mentioned in St Luke’s Gospel, we know that something really important is about to happen. Here Jesus is praying, but it says that he is praying “alone” even though the disciples are “with him.”  Each of the Gospels shows us how Jesus would draw aside from those who were with him just to pray to the Father. And St Luke places special emphasis on the relationship between the praying of Jesus and his mission. (This theme continues in St Luke's "second volume", his story of the early Church - The Acts of the Apostles - beginning with the community of disciples waiting in prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to equip them for their mission.)

PRAYING “ALONE”

We need to pause on this point, for sometimes we imagine that we need perfect conditions in order to grow in prayer - like waiting until we can go on retreat to “get away from it all.” Of course, we should  go on retreat if we can. Jesus himself did when it was possible. But it’s also important – I think more important - for us to learn to pray “alone” in the crowd, during the bustle of our daily lives, or at home especially if those with whom we share our lives do not share or understand our faith journey. A lot of Jesus’ praying was of this kind. 

His prayer and his mission are bound up together. It’s the same for us.

WHAT HAD THEY SEEN HIM DO?

What is it about this particular moment that led Jesus to ask his disciples who they thought he was? Well, let’s look back on all that had happened so far as written up by St Luke:

* Chapter 3: Jesus is baptised and anointed by the Holy Spirit. 

* Chapter 4: Jesus goes to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and is tempted by the devil, before teaching in synagogues around Galilee (including Nazareth where he caused an incident), releasing people from evil powers, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, and leaving Galilee to preach and teach in Judea. 

* Chapter 5: Jesus preaches from a boat, enables the disciples to catch a large haul of fish, cleanses a leper, heals a paralised man, calls Levi the tax collector to follow him, reaching out as well to a large crowd of tax collectors and Pharisees. 

* Chapter 6: Jesus seems to be breaking the Sabbath by picking grain and healing a man’s withered hand. He gathers more disciples, and preaches.. 

* Chapter 7: Jesus heals the Centurion’s servant, raises a widow’s son, welcomes the anointing of his feet by a woman (a “public sinner “) whose sins he had forgiven. 

* Chapter 8: Jesus teaches, raises up Jairus’ daughter, and heals a woman’s haemorrhage.

* Chapter 9: Jesus sends a group of disciples out to preach and heal in his name. His real identity is is being debated. Is he a reincarnation of John the Baptist? (That’s what King Herod wondered!) When the disciples’ return, he feeds the five thousand. 

WHO IS HE – REALLY?

So, we come to this crucial point in the ministry of Jesus. He is praying “alone” while the disciples are “with him.” I think he’s been praying about them and their role in continuing his mission. He knows how important it is for them to grow in their understanding of who he is and what his mission is really all about.  

So he asks them the two questions we hear today.

The first, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” is a kind of survey question. And they answer: “John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.” We can almost hear them eagerly reporting what they have heard. 

The second question, is more personal: “But who do YOU say that I am?” Peter answers on behalf of them all. They have been with Jesus. They have witnessed his actions. They have seen his love for the people. They themselves have experienced his love. He has touched their hearts and their lives. They have sat at his feet and been nourished by his teaching. For Peter and the disciples, Jesus is unmistakeably the Christ, the Messiah, God’s “anointed” one. 

MORE TO LEARN

Many people reading this passage for the first time are surprised that Jesus then tells the disciples to keep this to themselves. Surely he would want them to let all and sundry know who he really is. I think that Jesus knows the disciples have a great deal more to learn - about himself, about the real captivity from which he rescues people, about the suffering he would endure - before they can begin to understand what they profess. In fact, it will only make sense to them after he has died and risen from the dead.

Lots of Jewish people at that time expected God to send a messiah (“anointed one”) a “warrior king” who would expel the Roman legions from their land and restore them as a sovereign nation. This is the background to Peter acclaiming Jesus as the “anointed of God.” But his idea of “the anointed one”, the “messiah” or “Christ” certainly had no room for a suffering messiah. 

It is a sacred wonder of the Christian faith that God’s “anointed King” redeems us by entering into the human experience of suffering and pain, not just “for us” (in the sense of bearing our sins and absorbing their consequences - although he does that!), but also “with us” in order to accompany us in the extremities of our circumstances, so that we might know the depths of his transforming, strengthening love.   

I wonder if Jesus spent this particular time of praying “alone” mulling over the pain and suffering that lay ahead of him in the fulfilment of his role as the “anointed of God.” After all, it is now that he tells the disciples that he “. . . must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” 

TAKING UP OUR CROSS

But the real crunch here – for the original disciples as well as for us – is that, according to Jesus, suffering will also be part of the lives of all who follow him. Being his disciple, now as much as in the early years of the Church’s story, means a life of “joy and peace in believing” (Romans 15:13), “life in all its fulness (John 10:10). But it has nothing to do with protecting our own interests and privileges, ensuring our own comfort and status, or even with “saving our own life.” It has everything to do with deepening our union with him and responding sacrificially to the distress of those around us who so desperately need to know God’s love and our love, accepting that even the suffering we endure becomes redemptive when prayerfully offered to the Father in union with the suffering of Jesus and embraced for his glory and the redemption of the world.

The glorious triumph of the Cross (St Ephrem)

In the Office of Readings today, as we continue to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord jesus Christ, we read with delight from the SERMON ON THE DEATH OF CHRIST by St Ephrem the Deacon. Ephrem (or “Ephraem”, or "Ephraim"). was born around 306 AD at Nisbis in the Roman province of Syria, near present-day Edessa, Turkey, not far from the border of Iraq. He became a disciple of St. James, Bishop of Nisibis, and seems to have accompanied him to the Council of Nicea in 325. When Nisibis was conquered by the Persians in 363, Ephrem fled to a remote cave in Edessa where he did most of his writing. We know that he visited St Basil at Caesarea in 370.

St Ephrem wrote many works to teach the Gospel and to defend the Faith of the Incarnation against Arian and Gnostic ideas. He did so with great imagination, making full use of his poetic and musical gifts, often composing poems and songs which the people would sing at home and in the fields while they worked. A number of his poems became part of the liturgy of the Syrian Church. St Ephrem, in fact, became known as the Lyre of the Holy Spirit. His profound love of the Scriptures permeated all his works. He died in 373 A.D., and was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1920.

Those with a bit of extra time will enjoy reading Mary C. Sheridan’s article,  "St Ephrem - Faith Adoring the Mystery.”

Here is St Ephrem’s beautiful passage on the Death of Christ:

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when, by a loud cry from that cross, he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it. 

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man. 

Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong room and scattered all its treasures. 

At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was the vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life which that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing, released life itself and set free a multitude of men. 

He who was also the carpenter’s glorious son set up his cross above death’s all consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognize the Lord whom no creature can resist.

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge, by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man, and made it the source of immortality for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead. 

Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.

Where heaven's love and heaven's justice meet

On today's Mass Readings: Exodus 32:7-14; John 5:31-47

At different times in the Old Testament we come across what I have seen called a “cycle of mercy.” Today’s first reading is an example. With mighty hand and outstretched arm, the Lord had liberated his people from slavery in Egypt, and they are on their journey to the Promised Land. Moses had climbed the mountain to commune with the Lord and receive the Law, the Torah, the Commandments, the principles by which the Hebrew people would be able to live in harmony with the Lord and with each other.

But while Moses is on the mountain they rebel and worship a golden calf. This is a reference to the Egyptian God, Apis, a young bull, who symbolised power and sex. The Hebrews would have been very familiar with the drunken sexual orgies that were part and parcel of worshipping Apis. (Some say that this worship even involved human sacrifice.) So, it says, the Lord is angry. But Moses intercedes with him. Actually, Moses “bargains” with the Lord, and – this is the important bit – reminds the Lord of his covenant. The Lord then “turns back his wrath” and shows mercy to his people, caring for them and sustaining them on their journey. Of course, this is what the Lord wanted to do all along. In today’s Gospel reading Jesus says that Moses “bears witness” to him, that because he is God, he was there, hidden in the folds of Jewish salvation history.

I guess what you really want today is for me to give you an easy answer as to whether Moses really changed the Lord’s mind by interceding for the people? Well, it IS one of the tricky passages of the Bible! What I am inclined to think is that at this very early point in the “progressive revelation” of God to his people what we have is the best way there was, culturally speaking, of explaining that the just and holy law-giving God is also the God of mercy and love, who has bound himself by a covenant to his people. In other words, he is not ONLY “just and holy”, angry at the depraved worship of Apis. He is also, by his very nature, “merciful” and “loving.” 

As the Scriptural revelation unfolds, we see him always WANTING to show mercy and forgiveness. Do you remember Psalm 103: “As far as the East is from the West – so far does God put our sins away from us.” Or Micah 7:15: “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity? . . . You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” And think back to last Sunday’s Gospel, Luke 15, the Prodigal son). That parable told us how God wants to pour upon us his forgiveness and love, and receive us back to himself. It was not God’s fault that the relationship went wrong. But his love is as endless as his holiness is real. Both those things matter. We can cut ourselves off from him, we can fall into the mire of absolute depravity, but we can never stop him loving us or giving us the chance of a new beginning, if only we will surrender to his love.

That is not, of course, to deny that throughout the Scriptures a real tension continues to exist between the reality of God’s love and his justice. It is a tension that is only resolved on the Cross, where “Steadfast love and faithfulness … meet; righteousness and peace … kiss each other" (Psalm 85:10). Or in the words of the old Gospel hymn, the Cross is the “trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet.”

Mary at the foot of the Cross

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow . . . What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? (Isaiah 53:7)

When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:26-27)

The late John de Satage, an Anglican scholar from the evangelical tradition, was fond of referring to Mary as "The Mother of all her Son's people." He would explain that Mary "is the climax of the Old Testament people, the one to whom the cloud of witnesses from the ancient era look as their crowning glory, for it was through her response to grace that their Vindicator came to stand upon the earth. In the order of redemption she is the first fruits of her Son's saving work, the one among her Son's people who has gone all the way. And in the order of her Son's people, she is the mother." ( John de Satge, Mary and the Christian Gospel, SPCK, 1976, page 111.)

Father of mercies, 
whose only Son, 
hanging on the cross, 
gave his Virgin Mother Mary 
to be our Mother also. 
Grant that under her loving care, 
her children may grow daily in holiness, 
to the end that all mankind may see in your Church
the mother of all nations. 
Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, 
who lives and reigns with you, 
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God, ever and ever. Amen.

Wisdom from Carlo Carretto (3) - his testimony

Dear friends, I am so glad that many of you visit my blog each day. I know that sometimes you are so busy that the best you can do is to read quickly through whatever is there, or even just glance at it to see if anything of interest jumps out at you. 

Today, however, I would like you to find time to read this passage from Carlo Carretto (In Search of the Beyond) in a contemplative way. Those of you who are not Christians might begin to understand us. Those who focus just on the Church's institutionality with all of its scandals and evil might begin to see why we remain. And those who have not been to the foot of the Cross for some time might just experience a little renewal of love for the Saviour.

Jesus As The Truth and The Sacrament

I began to know Jesus as soon as I accepted Jesus as the truth; I found true peace when I actively sought his friendship; and above all I experienced joy, true joy, that stands above the vicissitudes of life, as soon as I tasted and experienced for myself the gift he came to bestow on us: eternal life.

But Jesus is not only the Image of the Father, the Revealer of the dark knowledge of God. That would be of little avail to me in my weakness and my sinfulness: he is also my Saviour.

On my journey towards him, I was completely worn out, unable to take another step forward. By my errors, my sinful rebellions, my desperate efforts to find joy far from his joy, I had reduced myself to a mass of virulent sores which repelled both Heaven and Earth.

What sin was there that I had not committed? Or what sin had I as yet not committed simply because the opportunity had not come my way?

Yet it was he, and he alone, who got down off his horse, like the good Samaritan on the way to Jericho; he alone had the courage to approach me in order to staunch with bandages the few drops of blood that still remained in my veins, blood that would certainly have flowed away, had he not intervened.

Jesus became a sacrament for me, the cause of my salvation, he brought my time in hell to an end, and put a stop to my inner disintegration. He washed me patiently in the waters of baptism, he filled me with the exhilarating joy of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, he nourished me with the bread of his word. Above all, he forgave me, he forgot everything, he did not even wish me to remember my past myself.

When, through my tears, I began to tell him something of the years during which I betrayed him, he lovingly placed his hand over my mouth in order to silence me. His one concern was that I should muster courage enough to pick myself up again, to try and carry on walking in spite of my weakness, and to believe in his love in spite of my fears. But there was one thing he did, the value of which cannot be measured, something truly unbelievable, something only God could do.

While I continued to have doubts about my own salvation, to tell him that my sins could not be forgiven, and that justice, too, had its rights, he appeared on the Cross before me one Friday towards midday.

I was at its foot, and found myself bathed with the blood which flowed from the gaping holes made in his flesh by the nails. He remained there for three hours until he expired.

I realized that he had died in order that I might stop turning to him with questions about justice, and believe instead, deep within myself, that the scales had come down overflowing on the side of love, and that even though all, through unbelief or madness, had offended him, he had conquered for ever, and drawn all things everlastingly to himself.

Then later, so that I should never forget that Friday and abandon the Cross, as one forgets a postcard on the table or a picture in the worn-out book that had been feeding one’s devotion, he led me on to discover that in order to be with me continually, not simply as an affectionate remembrance but as a living presence, he had devised the Eucharist.

What a discovery that was!

Under the sacramental sign of bread, Jesus was there each morning to renew the sacrifice of the Cross and make of it the living sacrifice of his bride, the church, a pure offering to the Divine Majesty.

And still that was not all.

He led me on to understand that the sign of bread testified to his hidden presence, not only during the Great Sacrifice, but at all times, since the Eucharist was not an isolated moment in my day, but a line which stretched over twenty-four hours: he is God-with-us, the realization of what had been foretold by the cloud that went before the people of God during their journey through the desert, and the darkness which filled the tabernacle in the temple at Jerusalem.

I must emphasize that this vital realization that the sign of bread concealed and pointed out for me the uninterrupted presence of Jesus beside me was a unique grace in my life. From that moment he led me along the path to intimacy, and friendship with himself.

I understood that he longed to be present like this beside each one of us.

Jesus was not only bread, he was a friend.

A home without bread is not a home, but a home without friendship is nothing.

That is why Jesus became a friend, concealed under the sign of bread. I learned to stay with him for hours on end, listening to the mysterious voices that welled up from the abysses of Being and to receive the rays of that light whose source was in the uncreated light of God.

I have experienced such sweetness in the eucharistic presence of Christ.

I have learned to appreciate why the saints remained in contemplation before this bread to beseech, to adore, and to love.

How I wish that everyone might take the Eucharist home, and having made a little oratory in some quiet corner, might find joy in sitting quietly before it, in order to make his dialogue with God easier and more immediate, in intimate union with Christ.

But still that was not enough.

Jesus did not overcome the insuperable obstacle presented by the divinity and enter the human sphere simply to be our Saviour. Had that been all, his work would have remained unfinished, his mission of love unfulfilled.

He broke through the wall surrounding the invisible, and came down into the visible world to bear witness to “the things that are above,” to reveal to us “the secrets of his Father’s house,” to give us in concrete form what he called eternal life.

What exactly is it, this famous “eternal life?”

He himself defined it in the Gospel: “And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)  So eternal life is, first and foremost, knowledge. It is a matter of knowing the Father, knowing Jesus. But it is not a question of any external, historical, analogical knowledge which we could more or less imagine, possess perhaps, even now; it is rather a question of real, supernatural knowledge which, although it is still surrounded here by the darkness of faith, is already the same as the knowledge we will have when the veil is torn aside and we see God face to face. It is a question of knowing God as he is, not as he may appear to us or as we may imagine him. This is the heart of the mystery I have tried to describe as the beyond, and which is the key to the secret of intimacy with God and the substance of contemplative prayer.

In giving us “eternal life,” Jesus gives us that knowledge of the Father which is already our first experience of living, here on Earth, the divine life; which is a vital participation, here and now, in the family of God; and which means that while we remain sons of man, we are at the same time sons of God.

Jesus is the Image of the Father, the center of the universe and of history.

Jesus is our salvation, the radiance of the God we cannot see, the unquenchable fire of love, the one for whom the angels sigh, the Holy one of God, the true adorer, the eternal High Priest, the Lord of the Ages, the glory of God.

Jesus is also our brother, and as such he takes his place beside us, to teach us the path we must follow to reach the invisible. And to make sure that we understand, he translates into visible terms the invisible things he has seen – as man he acts as God would act; he introduces the ways of the family of God on to the Earth and into the family of man.

Mother Maria Skobtsova on the measurelessness of Christian love

Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945) was a spiritual inheritor of the theology of Bukharev. Born in Latvia, her name in the world was Elisabeth Pilenko. She became a politically active Socialist in Russia around the time of the revolution; escaping to Paris with her husband. In Paris, she became involved with the Russian Students Movement and became friends with many of the Russian theological intelligentsia.  Sergius Bulgakov became her father confessor. A theologian, poet and social worker she petitioned her bishop to take up the habit. She was professed and was given the monastic name Maria.

She strongly wished to continue a monasticism open to the world in the manner of Alexander Bukharev. In the 1930s she reached out to the suffering poor of Paris. A controversial socially active monasticism caused a scandal with more conservative church members, but Mother Maria endured. With the advent of World War II, Mother Maria and her friends reached out to help Jews hide and escape Nazi persecution.  She was betrayed to the Germans and was put to death, taking the place of a young girl scheduled to die in the gas chambers. Her martyrdom took place in the last days of the war in Ravensbruck concentration camp.  On January 18, 2004, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul recognized Mother Maria Skobtsova (often known simply as "Mother Maria of Paris") as a saint along with her son Yuri, the priest who worked closely with her, Fr. Dimitri Klépinin, and her close friend and collaborator Ilya Fondaminsky. All four died in German concentration camps.

The following is from Mother Maria's well-known essay "Types of Religious Lives", available HERE as a pdf document.

The Eucharist . . .  is the Gospel in action. It is the eternally existing and eternally accomplished sacrifice of Christ and of Christ-like human beings for the sins of the world. Through it earthly flesh is deified and having been deified enters into communion again with earthly flesh. In this sense the Eucharist is true communion with the divine. And is it not strange that in it the path to communion with the divine is so closely bound up with our communion with each other. It assumes consent to the exclamation: “Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the Trinity, one in essence and undivided.” 

The Eucharist needs the flesh of this world as the “matter” of the mystery. It reveals to us Christ’s sacrifice as a sacrifice on behalf of mankind, that is, as his union with mankind. It makes us into “christs,” repeating again and again the great mystery of God meeting man, again and again making God incarnate in human flesh. And all this is accomplished in the name of sacrificial love for mankind. 

But if at the center of the Church’s life there is this sacrificial, self-giving eucharistic love, then where are the Church’s boundaries, where is the periphery of this center? Here it is possible to speak of the whole of Christianity as an eternal offering of the Divine Liturgy beyond church walls. What does this mean? It means that we must offer the bloodless sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-surrendering love not only in a specific place, upon the altar of a particular temple; the whole world becomes the single altar of a single temple, and for this universal Liturgy we must offer our hearts, like bread and wine, in order that they may be transubstantiated into Christ’s love, that he may be born in them, that they may become “Godmanhood” hearts, and that he may give these hearts of ours as food for the world, that he may bring the whole world into communion with these hearts of ours that have been offered up, so that in this way we may be one with him, not so that we should live anew but so that Christ should live in us, becoming incarnate in our flesh, offering our flesh upon the Cross of Golgotha, resurrecting our flesh, offering it as a sacrifice of love for the sins of the world, receiving it from us as a sacrifice of love to himself. Then truly in all ways Christ will be in all. 

Here we see the measurelessness of Christian love. Here is the only path toward becoming Christ, the only path which the Gospel reveals to us. What does all this mean in a worldly, concrete sense? How can this be manifested in each human encounter, so that each encounter may be a real and genuine communion with God through communion with man? It implies that each time one must give up one’s soul to Christ in order that he may offer it as a sacrifice for the salvation of that particular individual. It means uniting oneself with that person in the sacrifice of Christ, in flesh of Christ. This is the only injunction we have received through Christ’s preaching of the Gospel, corroborated each day in the celebration of the Eucharist. Such is the only true path a Christian can follow. In the light of this path all others grow dim and hazy. One must not, however, judge those who follow other conventional, non-sacrificial paths, paths which do not require that one offer up oneself, paths which do not reveal the whole mystery of love. Nor, on the other hand, is it permitted to be silent about them. Perhaps in the past it was possible, but not today. 

Such terrible times are coming. The world is so exhausted from its scabs and its sores. It so cries out to Christianity in the secret depths of its soul. But at the same time it is so far removed from Christianity that Christianity cannot, should not even dare to show a distorted, diminished, darkened image of itself. Christianity should singe the world with the fire of Christian love. Christianity should ascend the Cross on behalf of the world. It should incarnate Christ himself in the world. Even if this Cross, eternally raised again and again on high, be foolishness for our new Greeks and a stumbling block for our new Jews, for us it will still be “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). 

We who are called to be poor in spirit, to be fools for Christ, who are called to persecution and abuse — we know that this is the only calling given to us by the persecuted, abused, disdained and humiliated Christ. And we not only believe in the Promised Land and the blessedness to come: now, at this very moment, in the midst of this cheerless and despairing world, we already taste this blessedness whenever, with God’s help and at God’s command, we deny ourselves, whenever we have the strength to offer our soul for our neighbors, whenever in love we do not seek our own ends.