The Oxford Oratory is a vibrant centre of Catholic life. Our church is open every day: join us for Mass, pop in for some quiet prayer, or come and discover more at one of our groups. Our historic church of St Aloysius has been a key feature in the lives of the city’s Catholics for 150 years, attracting people of all ages and from every walk of life. We use beauty to raise hearts and minds to God, faithful to the traditions of St Philip Neri and St John Henry Newman.

Wednesday 4 December 2024

Advent Hope

Advent, as we well know, is a season of waiting and anticipation, when the Church invites us to reflect on the mystery of our Lord’s coming — past, present and future. In the writings of St John Henry Newman, our Cardinal, we find some profound insights as to how we are to live this season of anticipation. St John Henry reminds us of the importance of interior preparation. In one of his sermons, he writes: “We are not simply to believe, but to watch; not simply to love, but to watch; not simply to obey, but to watch.” This watchfulness is at the heart of Advent — and it is not a merely passive waiting, but an active, intentional readiness for the coming of the Lord. Newman’s words are a challenge to go beyond the surface, to put away distractions and to prepare our hearts to receive the Lord with purity and devotion. Advent, for our cardinal, is meant to be understood as a call to self-awareness — not to drift through life without a clear sense of purpose, for the Christian has a definite work to do and an important goal in mind. “Respice finem!”

Newman’s life and theology is deeply infused with hope, a truly Advent virtue, which looks forward to the end and fulfilment of things. “Faith tells us of things we do not see, but hope tells us of things that are to come.” Advent is marked by this hopeful longing, not just for the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord at Christmas, but also of the future, when “He shall come again in glory, to judge both the living and the dead.” For Newman, hope is not some wishful thinking: it is rooted in trust in God’s promises and a confident expectation that they will be fulfilled. The Cardinal, clung on to this virtue during the course of his long life; especially during the many trials and difficulties he faced, which he endured in faith with great hope, trusting always that God “knows what he is about.”

At the heart of Advent is the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh and living among us. Our Cardinal contemplated this profound mystery of God’s love for his world, seeing it, the generosity of God towards us, and his humility in becoming one like us. In one Christmas sermon, he reflects on the amazing fact of the Lord’s humility: “And with a wonderful condescension he came, not as before in power, but in weakness, in the form of a servant, in the likeness of that fallen creature whom he purposed to restore.” And in his sermon The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life: “He became as one of his own creatures, as one of ourselves, born of a woman, having flesh and blood, bones and nerves, like ours.” This truth should fill us with awe and gratitude, as much as it did the Church Fathers of the early centuries, as they struggled to present the Catholic Faith coherently, formulating the Creeds, so that Christians could express what they believed with a united voice and heart. The Incarnation continues today, because Jesus Christ is still Emmanuel, “God with us”, here and now, living among us in his Word and in the Sacrament of the Altar. Let us then foster the true Advent spirit, of watching and “waiting in Blessed Hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ”.


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Wednesday 27 November 2024

The End is Nigh

With everything that is going on in the world today you might think that the end is nigh. Every news report and weather forecast seems designed to make us all very frightened. But every age has had its wars and crises, and there have always been those who have claimed special knowledge about the end of the world or some coming disaster: mankind has always lived in the shadow of some uncertainty about what the future holds.

As we end one liturgical year and begin Advent once more, the Church has us turn our hearts and minds to the end-times. The Lord made a considerable number of predictions of the future in the Gospels, and many of them involve death and disaster. They fall roughly into two: predictions about the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, and predictions concerning the end of the world. Jerusalem and the temple were indeed to be destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans under Trajan, and not one stone stood upon another. Often, however, in the Gospels we find predictions of the end of Jerusalem and the Temple mixed up with predictions about the end of the world. Our Lord says that there will be many earthquakes, plagues, famines, wars: for these will inevitably occur. Almost every age of the world has experienced its ample share of these things. But maybe that’s exactly the point. The end of the world is always nigh.

Because it is not the end of this physical world — the earth, and all it contains — that should concern us, but our own end. From the standpoint of our own death, what will we regard as being the most important in our lives? Probably not our careers, or politics, or economics, or our bank accounts, or our carbon footprints, but probably our families, those we have loved, and how we have lived during the time given to us. And of course our own end will be in judgement, for we will have to render an account to our Creator. And that judgment will come down to the question — which we must be constantly asking ourselves — whether God and our neighbour have been the principal concerns of our life. Scripture constantly emphasises these questions. Remember Our Lord’s summary of the Law: You shall love the Lord your God, and your neighbour as yourself. Heaven and Earth will pass away, but his words shall not pass away.

Our consolation is, of course, that while war, disaster and death are inevitable, hell is not. We have the strength and consolation — and great hope — of our faith, with all the assistance that our faith gives us, to avoid the fate worse than war, disaster and death. As Christians we need to accept that assistance and use it regularly — the Mass and Holy Communion obviously, but also Confession, and prayer and fasting and penance and good works. That is how we ensure that God and our neighbour are our principal concerns, and our primary anxieties. If we are trying to live a good life, with the help of God’s grace, trying to help others and love others, and put right those things that are wrong in us and in the world, then we have no need to fear our own apocalypses, and the judgment of the one who loves us more than we could ever deserve. He is the one, as St Paul says, who does more for us than we can ask or even imagine. Or in his own words, the one who came not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world — and that means you and I — might be saved.


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Thursday 21 November 2024

We didn’t pack all the Christmas shoeboxes ourselves. We’ve been very pleased to receive donations from other local groups, especially the Oxford Syro-Malabar Youth Group, as well as some local businesses.

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Wednesday 20 November 2024

A record 232 shoeboxes stuffed with Christmas presents have started their journey round the world with @samaritanspurseuk, on their way to children who would otherwise have nothing for Christmas.

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Wednesday 20 November 2024

Morning

We are not all of us going to be a “morning person”. Some people do seem to be able to jump out of bed bright and cheery and full of beans; I remember being told that it was because of such people that breakfast was eaten in silence in religious houses. The fact is that for some of us it takes us rather longer to begin the day and start functioning as a human being. And yet there is something so glorious about the morning, with its silence and its sunrise. Even during those awful times when waking from sleep comes with dread — even then there is a great promise which dawns with the rising sun, when as the darkness gives way so gently and so quietly to light, God says to us all again, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

And for the Church her day begins anew too. By the time this reflection goes out to the world from the gates of 25 Woodstock Road, the Mystical Body of Christ has been long awake and doing Her Master’s work. In this city the religious brothers and sisters of various flavours have already taken our prayers and praise, and that of the whole Church, and sung them in the offices of Matins and Lauds. The houses of God will have opened their doors and gates so all who pass near can “come and see” and begin the day with God. In our own Oratory church the Fathers and Brothers will have made their meditation as Fr Manni tells us:

Each of the brethren, as best he can, pours out his soul to God, and with silent lips but clamorous heart pleads the cause of his salvation with God, with all the piety of a devout soul, by means of prayer, supplication, asking for the bestowal of gifts and praising the bounty of the divine spirit with all his heart.

Meanwhile souls in need of the mercy of God have been into the confessional and out again, having sought the mercy of God and found it again. The altar is set and Christ comes down to this Bethlehem, this House of Bread, to feed his people once more with food for the journey — with his grace and his charity — that this day, which could be the last for any of us, may be lived with him in whom all find life. 

Whatever or whomsoever the Lord may send us this day, we begin with him anew, offering to him all that is and has been and ever shall be, begging him the grace that this day, please God this day, his brilliant light may dawn upon us, upon those whose names he has written on our hearts, and on all his children, that all might walk in his grace. It is only his light, his dawn, that can bid the clouds and pangs of dread or fear to depart and give way at last to his day, his morning both excellent and fair.

Monsignor Benson writes so wonderfully of the Church’s ceaseless action in the service of her Lord:

For I see through her eyes, the Eyes of God to shine, and through her lips I hear his words. In each of her hands as she raises them to bless, I see the wounds that dripped on Calvary, and her feet upon her Altar stairs are signed with the same marks as those which the Magdalene kissed. As she comforts me in the confessional I hear the voice that bade the sinner go and sin no more; and as she rebukes or pierces me with blame I shrink aside trembling with those who went out one by one, beginning with the eldest, till Jesus and the penitent were left alone. As she cries her invitation through the world I hear the same ringing claim as that which called, “Come unto me and find rest to your souls”; as she drives those who profess to serve her from her service I see the same flame of wrath that scourged the changers of money from the temple courts.

As I watch her in the midst of her people, applauded by the mob shouting always for the rising sun, I see the palm branches about her head, and the City and Kingdom of God, it would seem, scarcely a stone’s throw away, yet across the valley of the Kedron and the garden of Gethsemane; and as I watch her pelted with mud, spurned, spat at and disgraced, I read in her eyes the message that we should weep not for her but for ourselves and for our children, since she is immortal and we but mortal after all. As I look on her white body, dead and drained of blood, I smell once more the odour of the ointments and the trampled grass of that garden near to the place where he was crucified, and hear the tramp of the soldiers who came to seal the stone and set the watch. And, at last, as I see her moving once more in the dawn light of each new day, or in the revelation of evening, as the sun of this or that dynasty rises and sets, I understand that he who was dead has come forth once more with healing in his wings, to comfort those that mourn and to bind up the broken-hearted; and that his coming is not with observation, but in the depth of night as his enemies slept and his lovers woke for sorrow. Yet even as I see this I understand that Easter is but Bethlehem once again; that the cycle runs round again to its beginning and that the conflict is all to fight again; for they will not be persuaded, though One rises daily from the dead.”

(From ‘Christ in the Church’)

It is morning. We begin again. Behold, he is making all things new.


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Friday 15 November 2024

“He who does not go down into hell while he is alive, runs a great risk of going there after he is dead.” — St Philip

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Wednesday 13 November 2024

In those days: The most valiant man, Judas, took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honourably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin. (2 Maccabees 12:43–46)

The Epistle at the Solemn Requiem Mass for Remembrance Sunday.

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Wednesday 13 November 2024

Ready for the end, ready for the beginning

As the Church nears the end of another liturgical year — there are only two more Sundays before Advent begins — the readings at Mass take on an apocalyptic character. We begin thinking about the end; our Lord tells us to be watchful, to stand ready, and to change our ways. November, with the Masses for the dead and Remembrance events calling to mind those who died in war and conflict, can make us think a lot about what we miss — about those we miss. Such things can make us think about the end times in a more serious way than we usually might. But, of course, in the Christian life the end is just the beginning. If we are ready for one we must be ready for the other.

In all those apocalyptic readings there is a sense of the “now” and the “not yet” in terms of the end times. This is true also of heaven. We are all acutely aware of the ways in which we are not in heaven at the moment, but it is also true that heaven is right here with us, egging us on to glory.

In a letter to one of his friends, a great French abbot who died in 1937, Dom Paul Delatte, wrote:

I don’t think that there is a single [suffering] that submerged in him, does not turn into joy. He is faithful. We are his; he is ours. Our eternity has begun. On the surface it appears that the years change, that they succeed one another; but we are already carrying our portion of eternity in the treasury of of our faith and our charity… We are travelling toward eternal love. A Dieu (to God).

Letter to Emilie Butruille, 1898

It is the sort of thing one can only write with the most profound and saintliest of hearts — totally trusting and full of faith. But he is on to something: we carry our portion of eternity in our faith and in our charity. If we want to know how to respond to the changing times, painful memories, the fear of difficulties ahead, we must give ourselves over more to acts of faith, live in faith, and look at things through the eyes of faith to understand them from the point of view of heaven. We must give ourselves over in charity to others more and more, strive to see the good in them, try to do little acts of love for others, and pray hard for those in our life. These are heaven’s actions, and the more we do those, the closer we are to bringing heaven about in our life now. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have (so the saying goes) and the same is true of our life. Live for heaven now and we will be well suited to it when our turn comes.

It is not, however, just about getting ready for the future, but being happy now. “We are his; he is ours,” Dom Delatte wrote, and on account of this fact, “I don’t think that there is a single [suffering] that submerged in him, does not turn into joy.” What we have the assurance of is the greatest and most lasting friendship of all time. He is ours. The more we submerge ourselves in him, the more our burdens become light and with that lightness comes the joy of knowing he is carrying them with us. Such a new start begins with the simplest and smallest of acts, and it can begin today.


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Tuesday 12 November 2024

At that time: Jesus said to the crowd of the Jews: “All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:37–40)

Gospel at the Solemn Requiem Mass for Remembrance Sunday.

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Monday 11 November 2024

Remembrance Sunday: Solemn Requiem for the Fallen

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Wednesday 6 November 2024

Blessed Salvio Huix

We celebrate today the first of the sons of Saint Philip to shed his blood for Christ. St Philip had a great desire for martyrdom and that is why he is so often depicted wearing red vestments, as is done on the feast days of martyrs. Yet Saint Philip was not to be the great missionary martyr he once longed to become but was called to spend his life in Rome, faithfully administering the sacraments and preaching the word of God. It would in fact be over 300 years after the Saint’s death that an Oratorian would be martyred for love of Christ and his Church. 

The courageous bishop, Salvio Huix-Miralpeix, who led his flock faithfully up to the point of death, entered the Oratory in Vic at the age of 30 in 1907, having been ordained a priest four years earlier. In 1927 he was appointed Bishop of Ibiza where he remained for eight years until he was translated to Lerida. Just over a year later he was martyred. On 5 August 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he and twenty other prisoners were made to dig their own graves. Blessed Salvio asked just one favour from his murderers, that he would be the last to be executed so that as each prisoner was shot he could bless them. His life as a bishop and the details of his martyrdom are well-recorded, but what about those twenty years in his small Oratorian community in Vic?

We are blessed here in Oxford to have a large collection of writings and letters of Blessed Salvio, amongst which are his pensaments y proposits dels dies de retiro (“thoughts and intentions of retreat days”) recorded each month from December 1904 to September 1935. Each entry contains a short focus of prayer and reflection for his monthly retreat day. They give us a glimpse into the life and prayer of Blessed Salvio as an Oratorian novice, as Provost of his community and as a bishop.

Some entries from the first year of his noviciate are translated here:

10 June 1907 — First month of life at the Oratory
I will implore with special interest and fervour the help of God with the ‘Deus in Adjutorium’ and of the Most Holy Virgin Mary with the ‘Sub tuum praesidium’.

12 August 1907
I will enter the confessional with great recollection, and with intention, and with the heart raised to God.

11 November 1907
I will be more careful to hear Holy Mass with devotion.

15 June 1908
Every day in prayer: an act of humility, one of contrition, one of trust and one of resignation and conformity to God's will.

We see here in just these few short extracts how Blessed Salvio tried to model his life on the example of Saint Philip: regularly hearing confessions, celebrating Mass with great devotion and praying at all times, with a particular love for Our Lady. His desire to accept the will of God in his life is a model of perfect humility for us all. His holy life is a shining example of a true son of Saint Philip and a holy shepherd of Christ’s flock. Blessed Salvio ended his earthly life by gaining the palm of martyrdom, joining his suffering and death with that of Our Lord. In our world where the Faith is evermore under persecution may he be an example of courage in adversity, and through his intercession may Christians persecuted for their faith be given strength. 

From November 1908 onwards, he also lists in his Pensaments a saint he has taken as his particular patron for that month. What is quite apparent is how often he chooses the saints and beati of the Oratory. Unsurprisingly Our Holy Father St Philip is listed many times, but so too are Saint Francis de Sales, Blessed Antony Grassi, Blessed Juvenal Ancina and Blessed Sebastian Valfrè. These great men who fashioned their lives after that of St Philip are there for us too, to be taken as our special patrons. Happily we now have the great privilege of adding to that list of Blessed Salvio’s patrons, Blessed Salvio himself. 

Blessed Salvio Huix, proto-martyr of the Oratory, pray for us.


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Tuesday 5 November 2024

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Monday 4 November 2024

The Fathers and Brothers have been busy last week folding and packing Christmas cards. They’re available to buy now in our bookshop or online: https://tinyurl.com/oratory2411

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Saturday 2 November 2024

November Music

Friday 1 November Solemn Mass 18:00
All Saints
Missa Euge bone Tye
Justorum animae Stanford
Os justi Bruckner
Placare Christe servulis Dupré

Saturday 2 November Solemn Mass 10:00
All Souls
Requiem a8 Lobo
Versa est in luctum Lobo

Sunday 3 November Solemn Mass 11:00
31st Sunday of the Year
Mass in the Dorian mode  Howells
O quam gloriosum Victoria
Adoramus te Christe Monteverdi
Allegro Vivace (Symphony No. 5) Widor

Friday 9 November Solemn Mass 18:00
Solemn Requiem for deceased
Fathers and Brothers of the Oratory
Officium Defunctorum a4 Anerio
Ego sum resurrectio Hassler

Sunday 10 November Solemn Mass 11:15
Solemn Requiem for the Fallen
Officium Defunctorum a6 Victoria

Sunday 17 November Solemn Mass 11:00
33rd Sunday of the Year
Missa Tertia, Octavi toni Croce
Hortus conclusus Ceballos
Ardens est cor meum Dering
Prelude, Fugue and Chaccone in C Buxtehude

Sunday 24 November Solemn Mass 11:00
Christ the King
Piccolomini Messe Mozart
Attollite portas Byrd
Siderum rector Byrd
Nun danket alle Gott Karg-Elert

Saturday 2 November 2024

All Saints and All Souls may now be over, but the lamps still burning before their statues remind us that our friends in heaven haven’t stopped praying for us.

O blest communion! fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest:
Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest.
Alleluia, alleluia!

But lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The Saints triumphant rise in bright array:
The King of glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Alleluia, alleluia!

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Saturday 2 November 2024

“Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.” (2 Maccabees 12:45)

All priests can say three Masses on All Souls, to give the faithful departed as much help as possible. All the faithful can assist the Holy Souls not just through prayer, but also through special indulgences granted by the Church in November. Every November, there are opportunities to obtain plenary indulgences for the Holy Souls in purgatory by: (1) visiting a church on 2 November and praying the Our Father and Creed; (2) visiting a cemetery and praying for the faithful departed on any of the days between 1 and 8 November (it is possible to obtain an indulgence each day this is done). As with all plenary indulgences, it is also necessary to go to confession, receive Holy Communion, pray for the Pope’s intentions and be detached from all sin.

Today the Fathers offered fifteen Masses for the Holy Souls.

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Wednesday 30 October 2024

Holiness is not boring

If you enter our church and look at our sanctuary you will see a bunch of eccentrics — the images of the saints, of course. Our Lady and St Joseph are quite respectable, but if you came across John the Baptist in the street, you would probably cross over to the other side when you saw him. Then there’s St Cuthbert who, when he wasn’t walking around carrying St Oswald’s head, would be standing in freezing cold water up to his waist. And that’s only the stained glass. Half of the statues show the saints proudly carrying the weapons that were used to kill them. There is St Charles shown as he walked the streets of Milan with a noose around his neck. There are hooded monks and veiled nuns oblivious to the world around them, lost in heavenly contemplation.

We have a tendency to think of the saints as weirdos, as exceptions, as special people. They’re not like us. As Saint John Henry Newman said so incorrectly about himself, “I have nothing of the saint about me.” We think that sainthood is something beyond our reach. But God has made each and every one of us in order for us to be saints. Sainthood is an invitation to people “from every nation, race, tribe and language.” (Rev. 7:9) Our Holy Father St Philip wanted all of his spiritual children to become saints. Not canonised saints — we should love to be unknown. And as Blessed Dominic Barberi said, that’s too expensive. But we should all be saints nonetheless. Because a saint is quite simply someone who is in heaven.

Those saints on our sanctuary are all different. And the fact that they’re slightly weird shows also that they are not boring. So many people make the mistake of thinking that being holy has to make us dull. But to be focused on getting to heaven does not mean we have to abandon our unique personalities and become clones of each other. We need many saints to show us that there are many ways of following Christ to heaven — in fact, as many different ways as there are people. There will be some saints that we relate more too, that we have more in common with, who inspire us on the way. But when you do reach heaven, you will be the first person to get there by exactly your path. And you will arrive in the spot that God has prepared before all eternity precisely for you. And nothing about that idea is boring.


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Thursday 24 October 2024

Judgement

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5

How well we know these arresting words of our Lord. And arresting is what they are meant to be: quite literally they should stop us in our tracks, causing us to pause and take a brief look at ourselves and see how we measure up in their light. For the truth is, we do judge other people, and sometimes quite harshly, pouring forth pronouncements from a lofty position of our ‘rightness’, often fuelled by indignation and rage. When we do this, we fail signally to listen to the voice of Jesus trying to make his voice heard over our anger, urging us to take note of our own failings and sins, which are sometimes greater than those which have made us so angry. Christ wants to compare the speck in our brother/sister’s eye with the log in our own. The warning is that what we mete out to others will be ladled out to us in return. Remember the beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.” It is important to keep this promise in mind when we are tempted to be merciless!

It was a method of our Lord to make his teaching vivid by using the language of metaphor or proverb. Think of some of his sayings, such as: “If a man strikes you on one cheek you are to turn to him the other,” or the teaching which bids us pluck out the eye or cut off the foot or hand that offends or causes us to sin. Are these meant to be rules applicable to all occasions, or are they sayings embodying a principle? The principle here is that love is to be so absolute, so demanding upon us, that no limit can be placed on its manifestation.

So the words of Jesus that we are not to judge anyone also embody an important principle, but they do not lay down a universal rule. On occasion, he himself passed judgement. He judged St Peter when he tried to deflect him from the Passion; he judged Herod as “that fox”; he had some pretty harsh words for the Pharisees, those “whited sepulchres” and blind leaders. Remember too, how he told us to “judge righteous judgements” (John 7:24). Furthermore, the Lord gave to his Apostles and to his priests the function of “binding and loosing” the sins of penitents in the sacrament of Reconciliation (John 20:23).

Jesus’ command not to judge is given to us in the context of the parable of the speck and the log, a timely warning that not one of us may judge another until we have first examined or judged ourselves — until we have allowed the Holy Spirit to search out the secret places of our heart and purge us of our own guilt and sin. This is something which might be inferred from the direction given by Jesus to the men who so eagerly readied themselves to stone the adulterous woman in John 8: “Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.” A thorough examination of conscience would surely restrain us from extreme or harsh condemnation of another, and if our position in society calls upon us to make a judgement, we should do so in a spirit of meekness, understanding and love, in accordance with the truth. When our Lord commands us to refrain from judging, he would have us bear in mind our imperfections, our tendency to pass judgements that are not helpful, proceeding from motives of bitterness or jealousy or wounded pride.

None of us can pronounce a final judgement on another. That prerogative belongs to God alone, for it is only to him that “all hearts are open and all desires known.” Besides, we aren’t always in full possession of the facts nor can we fully comprehend the motives of another person’s actions. In truth we can sometimes get it wrong. St Paul tells us that we cannot even judge ourselves (1 Corinthians 4:3). If we do, it is likely that our judgement will fall far short of that given by God in his merciful and just love. Maybe we should simply leave the business of judgement to the Lord, committing ourselves and all others into the hands of him who judges righteously.


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Friday 18 October 2024

Our Forty Hours’ Exposition has begun. Come and spend an hour with Our Lord anytime between now and midnight tomorrow or Sunday afternoon. This is a special opportunity for us to intercede for all the many needs of the Church, the world, our city, friends and family, as well as handing over all our own problems to Jesus and his most Sacred Heart. Or just come and spend some time with him. He is waiting for you!

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Friday 18 October 2024

Our Adult Catechism class got off to a good start last night. Please pray for all those preparing to enter the Catholic Church. #oxfordoratory

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