+ The end is nigh. This is the second Sunday in a row that the Church’s Sacred Liturgy has cried out that the end times are coming—this Sunday using St Luke’s more succinct, but nevertheless clear, account.
 
And this is the first Sunday of Advent; a season in which we look forward to the coming of Christ—to His second coming at the end of time, of which today’s Holy Gospel speaks, to His coming to us personally (or to our going to Him) at the end of our lives, and to the celebration of His wondrous Incarnation in the forthcoming feast of Christmas.
 
The Church has traditionally taken time in Advent to recall the reality of what we call the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell—and rightly, for even if to speak of these matters seems a very long way indeed from what the world would call “the Christmas spirit”, they are in fact at the very heart of it. For Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, did not take on human flesh in order to make us ‘feel good’ in late December. He was not born of the Blessed Virgin Mary in order to provide us with “happy holidays” or “joyful feasts”. No: God became man in Jesus Christ because death and judgement are realities. He came to open for us the possibility of everlasting life in heaven and to save us from eternal damnation in hell.
 
Advent, the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, is when we are called to consider these truths anew. Thus our Holy Mother, the Church, puts last things first, as it were, because they are the most important. For, as St Thomas More declares during his sham trial in the renowned play, A Man for All Seasons:
 
“Death . . . comes for us all, my lords. Yes, even for Kings he comes, to whom amidst all their Royalty and brute strength he will neither kneel nor make them any reverence nor pleasantly desire them to come forth, but roughly grasp them by the very breast and rattle them until they be stark dead . . . so causing their bodies to be buried in a pit and sending them to a judgment . . . whereof at their death their success is uncertain.” (Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons)
 
Princes and Presidents, Popes and paupers will all die. So shall we all. Such is the reality of the human condition after original sin. In the end, there is no avoiding this stark reality.
 
St Benedict teaches his monks “to keep death daily before one’s eyes”. (Rule, ch, 4) This is not so that monks can be kept in a state of paranoia or debilitative fear, but so that we shall live each day in conspectu æternitatis—with the reality of eternity before us. This, surely, is a joyful reality, filled with hope, and not something of which one should be afraid—if we are faithful to Christ, to His Church and to her teaching.
 
This, surely, is the import of Advent. This, surely is the point of St Luke’s cry “Levate capita vestra: quoniam appropinquat redemptio vestra.” (Lift up your heads, for your redemption is at hand.)
 
Our redemption by God made man is at hand. It is time, this Advent, whether our own particular judgment or the end of the world is soon, or whether it may yet be a little while, to lift up our heads and attend to the eternal realities of death, judgment, heaven and hell. For we shall each face them: their existence is not a matter of personal opinion or preference.
 
But we can face them with hope and anticipation: the hope made possible by Hope Himself in His Incarnation which clear and distinct reality we celebrate at Christmas. If holidays and feasts are to be celebrated, if we are to have happy times with family and friends in a few weeks’ time, they will have meaning if each one of us has devoted the necessary time and effort this Advent to prepare ourselves spiritually. For then we shall truly have something about which to celebrate. If Christmas 2021 finds me advanced in virtue and more determined to conquer vice, if it sees me having made reparation for the damage I have caused, if I have reconciled with God and with others in areas where I have been estranged—most certainly through the making of a good confession, but in other ways, as necessary, as well—then, if I have done all of these things, I need not fear death or judgment or the everlasting torments of hell. I can live and rejoice in the hope of the unending communion with God and all who are faithful to Christ in heaven.
 
My brothers and sisters, Advent can be a very busy time in which the world can engulf us in the trappings of the coming feast. Let us resolve to begin Advent well today, and to continue it with clarity and resolution. In this first Mass of Advent let us ask for the grace to lift up our heads and to see clearly and with humility that which each of us must do at this moment so as to be able truly to rejoice in the coming feast of Christmas. +

Before celebrating first Vespers of the first Sunday of Advent it was a great joy to bless our newly made altar, to place within it the names and intentions of our over five hundred benefactors, to put in place the ancient altar stone made available to us by the diocese and to bless the three new altar cloths and dress the altar with them.

It will be some time before the final restoration of the monastery church – with, please God, a marble altar – will be possible, and we wanted to put in place something more worthy than our temporary arrangements for the altar hitherto. It seemed only right to dedicate some funds to the worship of Almighty God amidst those going to plumbers, electricians, masons and architects!

We are profoundly grateful for the dedicated, highly skilled and professional work of our local carpenter, Menuiserie Pierlot, and to those who have contributed towards this project. Contributions towards the cost are still needed and most welcome: they can be made through our support page.

A blessed Advent!  

+ “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
 
It is all well and good for Our Lord to have said this, but all that He says in the Holy Gospel of this Mass is so unsettling that it was removed entirely from the lectionary in the reform which produced that which is called “the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman rite.” (Traditiones custodes, art. 1). It would seem that ‘modern man’ is not allowed to hear Our Lord when he speaks of realities that may upset his equilibrium.
 
With all the respect due to the post-conciliar reformers who sought to have these words of Our Lord themselves pass away, to the promulgators and promotors of the reformed liturgical books, and to those who rather a-historically hold them to be the only legitimate form of worship in the Latin rite, I beg to differ. These words, known and meditated on in liturgical Tradition and commented on by the Fathers of the Church, have much to say to us. Our Lord’s stern warnings were uttered for a purpose—our salvation, nothing less. They must not be muted.
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Let us prescind from the temptation to speculate on antichrists and abominable idols that desecrate sacred places in our times. An obsession with these warnings can create a devastatingly destructive spiritual paranoia, even if we must be clear that idolatry abounds and must rightly be resisted, and that false Christs, too, may well appear, and must not be heeded.
 
But what we must not pass over or ignore is the clear teaching of Our Lord that for His elect, for those who are faithful to His teaching, trials and tribulation are coming. They are inevitable.
 
We know this: the life of the Christian is the via crucis. We must each carry the cross.  Our daily determination to avoid the occasions of sin and grow in virtue costs a great deal. Past sins and enduring habits of sin weigh heavily upon us—sometimes more heavily than we think we can bear.
 
When the trial of profound personal suffering arrives, its uninvited and often unimagined form is a grave shock, and the temptation to despair can be real as we anxiously try to find a way to move forward.
 
So too, the Church herself is not exempt from trials and tribulations, as history more than adequately demonstrates. We expect these: her mission is to stand as a beacon of Truth in a world of lies. And the Prince of Lies is dedicated to doing all that he and his legions can to bring her, and us, down.
 
Attacks from without are one thing. Attacks from within are more insidious and can leave us demoralised and deflated. Our Lord’s warning of false Christs, which echo His warnings about false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing and which were taken up by Saint Paul in his turn, are deeply unnerving—particularly given that in our own day there is no shortage of doctrinal dissonance in the Church where harmony is what is due.
 
It can seem at times that everything is collapsing around me, indeed within me. The waves of the crises that batter us appear utterly too powerful: to offer any resistance seems futile. 
 
My brothers and sisters, Our Lord’s words this morning do not hide this terrible reality which we shall all face in varying ways. Trials and tribulations do await us, and even if we have already been through much, more yet is to come. But Our Lord does not teach us this truth in order to drive us away, or so that we shall sink into the quicksand of despair. No: He does so in order to prepare us, to forewarn us as it were. For the Christian life is that of the via crucis. It costs. But it has its reward.

For, as Our Lord teaches us this morning, the trials and tribulations we shall experience, howsoever horrendous they may be, shall be as nothing in the fact of the triumph when we see "the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and He [sends] out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they [gather] his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to another."
 
Our task, then, indeed our God-given duty, is to persevere unto the end—be that to the end of our lives or even to the end of the world, should that arrive—in order to participate in Our Lord’s definitive, cosmic triumph over evil. That involves accepting the suffering that comes to us—even as we rightly seek to remove it or lessen its impact. For suffering generously accepted and offered to God is a beautiful and truly salvific reality. It involves clinging on to the Truth when its implications seems least comprehensible, or when almost everyone rejects it. It involves, at times, being rejected as was Our Lord Himself. It involves the Cross. And by the Cross sin and death have been conquered once and for all.

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away,” Our Lord teaches us this morning. We must never doubt this, whatever lies ahead. And in persevering in this Truth, we must not fail to make frequent use of the weapons He has given us to prepare us for the combat that awaits us: daily prayer, frequent confession and fruitful participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at least every Sunday. For the perseverance we need, and for the prudence duly to equip ourselves for it, let us pray with fervour at the altar this morning. +

+ The striking comparison of the Kingdom of Heaven to a mere mustard seed has much to teach us—as our Lord most certainly intended. The radical disproportion between the size of this seed and the potential it holds within it is indeed the stuff of much contemplation and instruction.

​Some Fathers of the Church have regarded the mustard seed as Our Lord Himself, applying to this parable His teaching that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (Jn 12:24) Others following the teaching: “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you,” (Mt 17:20) interpret the mustard seed as faith. It is the latter, proposed by St Ambrose, that I should like to ponder a little this morning.

For the gift of faith is sown in us at baptism, often when we are but infants with little perceptible effect. It must grow and be nourished and be protected from the dangers outlined in the earlier parable of the sower (Mt 13:1-9). As any Catholic parent knows only too well, the seed of faith is all too often devoured by predators in our world or choked by the insidious weeds and thorns that grow up alongside us. Faith requires good soil in which to germinate and grow, and this must be diligently cultivated and protected, most particularly in a world inimical to it.

A seedling takes many years to become a sapling, and a sapling takes more time still to flower and bear fruit. Much nourishment, training and even pruning is necessary before a well-rooted tree stand firms, grows independently and itself bears fruit—something well understood by novice masters as well as parents.

But even saplings can flower, and the fruit of faith alive and growing in a young person is something of true beauty, even if it is sometimes dismissed for its apparent lack of maturity. Yet how many saints have made heroic resolutions whilst being ‘mere’ teenagers? How many fruitful vocations have been readily and generously accepted by those who would today be deemed lacking in the requirement of ‘sufficient’ experience of the world to make such a choice?    

The first flowers of the gift of faith are amongst its most important and are not to be undervalued by those in authority in the family or the Church, for they are the unique gifts of Almighty God given for the good of the salvation of the young person for God’s own purposes in the Church and the world. We who are older and who supposedly ‘know better’ would do well to revere these gifts, not revile them.

For the gift of faith that has taken root in a soul enables the person to say a radical yes to God’s call, be that to the sacrament of Christian marriage, to the monastic or religious life or to the secular priesthood. For only a man or woman deeply rooted in faith can promise thus in a world dedicated to self-gratification and transitory pleasures. In the light of faith we discover and are given the means to seek after all that is True, Beautiful and Good amidst the shadows cast by the world, the flesh and the devil.  

These latter often impede the growth of faith in us, taking root and growing as the weeds amongst the wheat of last Sunday’s Holy Gospel. They can even uproot and kill the life of faith in us, with all the eternal consequences that that implies.

This dangerous and terrible reality is something with which we must reckon whilst there is still time. For even when it is almost strangled, the gift of faith sewn in our souls at baptism holds out the possibility of regeneration—of repentance and of conversion of life. This possibility, this magnificent reality, is of the very essence of the Kingdom of God, of the life of faith. Despair has no place in God’s household, even if at times those responsible for its administration behave to the contrary.  

For with God’s grace, nourished and restored by the sacraments, sustained by prayer and instructed by the teaching of the Catholic Church, faltering faith can become strong again. The lingering sins of youth can be overcome. The injuries suffered, or even caused, by us in mature life can be confronted in penitential and evangelical hope. Indeed, in God’s Providence, new flowers can blossom and unforeseen fruit can be harvested through our humble witness, even if it be the last hour of the day, (cf. Mt 20:1-16)

My brothers and sisters, no matter how deeply or fruitfully the gift of faith has taken root and grown in us to date, each of us is called to open our hearts and souls more widely to this gift, so that the Kingdom of God may grow more fruitfully in us and through us, for our salvation and for the salvation of the world. To that end we offer ourselves on the altar in this Holy Mass. +

+ The world, as we know only too well, is a field in which many weeds grow amongst the wheat. Unfortunately, the Church, too, has weeds sown by the enemy that sprout and grow up in her midst, that attract much attention and eclipse the fruitful wheat patiently growing in the same field. At matins this morning St Augustine identified these weeds not as bad Catholics (those who know the truth but fail to live up to it) but as heretics—those who obstinately deny the truth and promote and teach falsehood. Clearly this is not a new problem in the life of the Church.
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Clearly, too, it is not an obsolete problem, for our own age does not lack those in the midst of the Church—even some in high office who deny true doctrine, perhaps through their subtle promotion of a false compassion, perhaps through their silence when clarity or correction is required, perhaps through their habitual tolerance of grave errors, or perhaps even through the dissemination of teachings which intentionally erode and undermine the Truth. One can think of contemporary examples in respect of the necessity of baptism for salvation, nature and sanctity of Christian marriage, the apostolic teaching on the nature of the Blessed Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor. 11:29—a teaching removed from the lectionary of the Roman rite in the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council), the nature of the Church herself, the God-given truths about human sexuality, the reality of hell, and so on.

In the face of this, as we strive to overcome sin and temptation and conform ourselves to the Truth of Christ, we can almost justifiably become discouraged. It would be easier, surely, if these insidious ‘weeds’ and their false teaching were uprooted and removed without delay (as has sometimes been the case in history). They give scandal. They lead people astray. We ourselves might become entangled by their disingenuity. Souls are, surely, lost because of them!

It is difficult, then, to understand Our Lord’s insistence on allowing the weeds to grow to maturity alongside the wheat--even with the parable’s insistence that this is so as to ensure that none of the growing wheat is mistakenly uprooted and cast out. But this is the reason given in the Holy Gospel: the Lord does not wish to risk losing any of the growing wheat. His patience and prudence in this matter is clear, even if it causes us much frustration at times.

Thus we are taught that our impatience in the midst of the mixed and difficult situation in which we find ourselves in the Church today must be tempered with patience. The day of the harvest shall come. There shall be a reckoning and the weeds shall be sorted from the wheat. The wheat shall be gathered into the Lord’s barn and the weeds shall be tied into bundles and burned. Judgement, heaven and hell are realities which all men must face in the end.

Our patience must mirror that of the Lord Himself, for He “is merciful and awaits [the] amendment” of all (Rule of St Benedict, ch. 7). The hope proclaimed by the Gospel upon which we sinners draw so often is open to all, heretics included. Conversion, contrition, forgiveness and penance are all possible even for the most wicked of deniers or dissemblers of Catholic doctrine, and we must avoid the temptation to a pharisaic self-righteousness which would deny them true mercy when it is humbly sought, even by those who offend us most. Our Lord died that all sinners—treacherous teachers of false doctrine included—might have the opportunity to be saved.

St Benedict insists that his monasteries be oases of this evangelical patience. The abbot is to do all that he possibly can, and more, to bring monk guilty of a grave fault to repentance and amendment of life (see Rule, chs. 25-29) Indeed, the Rule insists on a patience that is rarely found in monasteries or religious congregations in our day. But even then, this patience must needs be tempered with prudence.

Drawing on the experience and teaching of St Paul, St Benedict concludes, reluctantly, that in the face of obstinate wrongdoing, the knife of amputation must sometimes be used, “lest one diseased sheep contaminate the whole flock” (ch. 28)—though St Benedict constantly reminds the abbot that he himself shall have to render an account of all his judgements to God (see: ch. 3).

Any father of a family—be that the family that is the fruit of Christian marriage, or be it a diocese or parish or a monastery, or even the Universal Church—is called to be a prophetic icon of the evangelical patience taught by Our Lord this morning. So too he must be a practitioner of true prudence in the face of infectious obstinacy.

Each of us share in this mission. Our daily prayer and work and example amidst the weeds that grow up around us must reflect the realities that falsehood abounds, that salvation is to be had only through faithful perseverance in living according to the Truth of Christ clearly taught by His Church, and that repentance and conversion are always possible in this life.

For the conversion of heretics, for the conversion that is necessary in ourselves, and for the grace of perseverance unto the end in fidelity to Christ and His Church, let us pray earnestly before this altar this morning. +

Our November 2021 Letter to Oblates and Associates "On Remembering the Dead" may be downloaded here.

For more information on oblates and associates, please contact the Oblate and Associate Master at this email address.