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One of the endless theological debates that seminarians like to have is coming up with newer and newer theories about the birth of the Church. Just when did it begin? Was it Pentecost? Was it the Crucifixion? Or for some reason, as some suggested, the Annunciation? I’m fairly certain someone ultimately suggested Noah’s Ark…
Indeed the final scene of today’s Gospel reading, blood and water gushing out of the Lord’s opened side, the very *stuff* of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, seems like a reasonable point to say, “This is where the Church as a body began.” After all it is through Baptism and the Eucharist that we exist as a Church — making it and being made by it.
I am not intending to settle ecclesiological debates tonight. I wish, rather, to dwell awhile in contemplation of those “Glorious scars” at my First Mass, because over the last years they have become deeply personal.
One Orthodox monk whose name I have forgotten a long time ago said of Christianity in England that we cannot expect a renewal of the faith in these isles until Britain starts to honour its own saints once again. This prophecy, if you like, has stuck with me, and ever since moving across to England from Hungary to start training for ministry in the Church of England 10 years or so ago, I have been acutely aware of the local saints. And we have a rich history of them up here: I was absolutely awestruck when I discovered upon my first visit to Durham that Bede rests there, and that Cuthbert is there, and then I learnt of Aiden, and Oswald… And eventually, Blessed Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, who on 2 June 1537 was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn for his participation in the Pilgrimage of Grace, the uprising against the corruption of the Catholic Faith. An image of the inspiring resilience of the North. He marched under the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ alongside countless others who refused to settle for human authority trying to overrule the divine.
And yet I always found the idea fascinating that they did not march under any other flag but the wounds of Christ; and instead of going with a more political term like “Resistance movement”, they insisted that this was a “Pilgrimage of GRACE”.
Because it is from these five wounds that sanctifying grace comes — God’s power that is active in our own personal lives, that is capable of transforming, healing, strengthening us, when we reach the edge of our human potential. The pierced hands and feet and the wounded heart of Christ are the channels of divine life communicated to us. Through these holy and glorious wounds Christ poured out the totality of his self for us to be washed in and sustained by.
They are also the marks of Christ’s perfect obedience to the Father. Simone Weil once reflected how Jesus nailed to the Cross is the sign of absolute passivity. He becomes as passive and inert on the cross as a mere object, as matter itself. Affixed to the wood he becomes incapable of movement and of any action — and out of his own choice. Perfect and unreserved obedience. And certainly this is our aim as disciples: to become as obedient as matter, perfectly carrying out the will of God for us, offering no resistance.
And while the Lord would have never acquired these wounds had he not actively willed them, they were still imposed upon him from outside, and by the very people he came to heal and save. A stark reminder of the human condition: of how perfectly capable we are personally of crucifying someone. To gaze on the wounds inflicted by rude soldiers and jeering passers-by is to gaze on the abyss of God’s love: that God suffers and exhausts the pain of our own rejection of Him.
As tonight we are among friends — I mean, this *is* a private mass, right? – please allow me to be a bit personal.
When 3 years ago I felt it necessary to leave the Church of England and to join the Catholic Church, it was the Grace that flows from Christ’s Wounds that drew me. After a while it seemed for us that Anglicanism — as Catholic as it seemed in its externals — simply could not give what it was claiming to. The closeness of grace, its power of turning everything into what they were truly meant to be, without the corruption of sin, is simply not available to the same degree *extra ecclesia*. Joining the Catholic Church I found that what I had to fight tooth and nail for in the past is lavished on us in the Sacraments.
And that I can stand here tonight is nothing short of a miracle. It is evidence of God’s Grace that does NOT fail, and yet the way here was a personal calvary, and bruises and wounds were accrued.
To be close to the source of this grace, to have this available at hand, was worth sacrificing everything for. God’s personal call for me to be close to this source of Grace was both unbelievably exciting and yet personally the costliest thing for me and for us as a family. Choosing the Source of Grace meant being given 3 weeks’ notice to vacate our home with a 3-month-old baby, while also losing our only source of income. It meant losing my identity as a minister that I already sacrificed everything for, it meant being cast into years of uncertainty. It meant travelling up and down between here and Birmingham - about 2000 miles each month - leaving behind the family while at police search dogs and helicopters went through our garden at night. It meant financial hardship, it meant having to deal with lack of understanding and neglect, and with illness, that definitely left an imprint. But in this there was overflowing grace, through which I could do what seemed impossible to humanly do, to weather what I didn’t think I could weather, and so today I am humbled beyond measure that I still get to be here. The very definition of “impossible” ought to be, after all, a married Catholic priest.
Whether the Crucifixion and the flow of Sacramental Grace from Christ’s Side was the beginning of the church as a body, I cannot tell for certain. However it is the start of my own priesthood. So please pray for me that becoming perfectly obedient to God, I might allow myself to be opened up for you, that your lives may be sanctified through blood and water. In a society where Christianity feels more and more like a counter-culture pray that I, and we, will be able to honour of the example of our Northern Saints and martyrs and choose to suffer for access to grace over worldly power.
But to draw strength and ask for grace for the times ahead, tonight I wish to dwell at the foot of the cross with you, and to simply admire and gaze on Christ’s pierced hands, his feet, his side, the cuts of his brow, the bruises of his back, and the countless sores that he chose to bear — so that we might have access to his Very Self.
Hail, holy Wounds of Jesus, hail,
Sweet pledges of the saving Rood,
Whence flow the streams that never fail,
The purple streams of His dear Blood.
Come, bathe you in the healing flood,
All ye who mourn, by sin opprest;
Your only hope is JesusÂ’ Blood,
His Sacred Heart your only rest.
All praise to Him, the Eternal Son,
At GodÂ’s right hand enthroned above,
Whose Blood our full redemption won,
Whose Spirit seals the gift of love.