Parish of Hoyland Saint Andrew
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August 23rd, 2022

8/23/2022

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Forthcoming Services
Thursday 25th August Feria 10.00am
​Sunday 28th August Parish Mass 9.30am

Coffee Mornings every Tuesday from 10.00am, all are welcome.

Thoughts from the pulpit
​“Yes, there are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be last.”  (Luke13:30) With those words Jesus challenges our understanding of who belongs and who does not, of who is deserving and who is not.
 
We British are said to be known for our patience when queuing.  Perhaps that patience might have been tested more in recent times as people join long queues for passport control.  Certainly, there is a tendency to get very annoyed if people jump queues, because it just doesn’t seem fair.  Those who are first in the queue are expected to be first served and those further back will have to wait their turn.
 
Being first is usually something that we think should be awarded on merit.  What kind of outrage would it cause if the gold medal that should have been awarded to the winner of a race went instead to the third in line or to the last?  What if the highest post in a company or the most responsible position in the country were to be awarded to anyone other than the most competent?  Perhaps I had better not take that one any further!
 
So that saying of Jesus might seem a bit challenging in any of those contexts.  But Jesus is speaking about something different.  At the beginning of that gospel passage, Jesus is asked whether only a select few will be saved.  His reply suggests that it is something difficult: “Try your best to enter by the narrow door because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.  He then goes on to suggest that some will knock on the door and will be turned away.  Although they had shared in the Lord’s company, they might as well have been strangers.
 
The people Jesus was speaking to were those who would have understood themselves to be the chosen people.  If anyone should come first, it would be them.  But Jesus has strong words for them.  If they thought that being saved from sin and death and belonging in God’s company for eternity was all just a birth right, they needed to have a rethink.  There were many among those who saw themselves as first, who were not faithful to God’s ways and who had little regard for many of their closest kin, let alone the stranger.  Even the most religious – at times, especially the most religious – saw themselves as part of an elite, but did not reflect the mercy, the compassion and the grace that we see in God.  These are the people who were warned that they might just find themselves on the outside, grinding their teeth with rage as others go in before them.
 
Jesus warns the children of Israel that there would be people from far-off places who might just get there before them.  Some of these would have been people they despised or regarded as their enemies.  As we know, the gospel message of Jesus was not limited to the original chosen people, but was proclaimed throughout the Mediterranean lands and then much further afield.  Coming to faith and being a faithful disciple of Jesus does not depend on where we come from or on any other accident of birth.  It depends on our response to God, on the state of our hearts and on our way of living.  It would not be a question of how many would be saved – this was not about numbers.  The choice is open to every one of us whether to follow or not; whether to repent and to live differently.
 
Jesus was not necessarily speaking about who would or would not get into heaven.  He was addressing a particular issue at that time about who deserved to be part of the company of God’s chosen ones.  It really highlights the strange and wonderful work of God’s grace.  No one is born more deserving, nor do we even earn it.  It is more a question of how we respond to God’s grace.  Our decisions do have lasting consequences, so as well as looking at how we live here and now, we also need to be mindful of our eternal destiny.
 
Jesus speaks about a narrow door and a locked door.  But we also know that Jesus comes and knocks on that interior door of each one of us.  If you have seen the Holman Hunt painting “The Light of the World”, you may have that image of Jesus with a lamp, knocking at night time on a door surrounded by weeds.  Whether we feel worthy or not, whether we consider ourselves first or last or somewhere in between, Jesus invites us.  It is his will that the prophecy of Isaiah will be fulfilled, that people from far and wide will be among those who are both called and chosen. 
 
St Ambrose once observed: “He would never come and knock at the door unless he wanted to enter; it is our fault that He does not always enter.”
 
Lord Jesus, you opened the gate of heaven to us.  Your saving death purchased for every person the gift of everlasting life.  Protect me from being complacent or negligent in my walk with you and teach me that, although the door is narrow, your presence keeps me safe.


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News Bulletin week commencing 6th August 2022

8/10/2022

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Services
Thursday 10th August 10.00am Mass, St Clare.
Sunday 14th August 9.30am Parish Mass, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Thursday 18th August 9.30am T2 Mission Area Morning Prayer St Thomas's Worsbrough.


Coffee Morning from 10.am every Tuesday, all are welcome.
Offering from the sermon 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
“You may be quite sure of this, that if the householder had known at what hour the burglar would come, he would not have let anyone break through the wall of his house.”
Having our houses broken into is a prospect we don’t really want to contemplate.  But it would be a foolish householder who would ignore the need for security and for contents insurance.  We hope that we shall never need it.  House burglars tend to try to be unpredictable.  If we knew when their arrival would be, then we might be able to catch them out, but it doesn’t tend to work that way.
 
The disciples of Jesus were often eager to know when God’s glory would be fully revealed.  Jesus tells them not to be concerned with the time or the season, but he does tell them to be ready.  It might seem to be a strange comparison that Jesus gives between himself and a burglar.  No one welcomes a burglar, but for anyone of faith the arrival of Jesus should be a joyful prospect.  Jesus knows how to make an impression and to get the attention of those who hear his words.  In this image of the unexpected visitor, Jesus shows us that God does not operate according to our own timetables or expectations.  It is those who are prepared who will be able to rejoice at his arrival.
 
The New Testament was first written in Greek.  The Greek language makes the distinction between time as something ongoing and time in terms of an important moment.  You may have been watching some of the sporting events that have taken place recently.  There have been some dramatic moments and memorable achievements.  We have seen the joy and surprise of those who have succeeded.  But we know that those key moments don’t just come out of nowhere.  The athletes themselves will be more aware of that than anyone else.  Without all those weeks and months of dedicated practice and training it would never happen.
 
I think that something similar is true of our faith.  We all long for those special moments of consolation and of wonder.  Yesterday was the feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord.  We see how the disciples were in a state of awe and wonder as they saw Jesus transfigured on the mountain, shining with God’s glory.  It was an unforgettable experience.  But their journey as disciples was not always like that.  There would be times of frustration and uncertainty, times of doubt and times in which they would lose faith in themselves. Their faith in God would take a battering too.  Jesus gave his disciples those glimpses of glory not to make them think that faith is always like that, but to give them the vision that would guide and encourage them along their way.
 
Sometimes our own personal faith can grow weary.  Life can take a lot out of us, especially in these recent difficult times.  We can wonder what God is doing.  We may sometimes feel that our worship has become a bit too routine or that our prayer life is not all that it should be.  Sometimes we might prefer to lose ourselves in more worldly consolations that give us a more fleeting kind of comfort.  These are all very human experiences.  But it is only our faith in God that will give us the strength to become all that we are created to be.  Only God can bring us lasting peace and joy.
 
Like the disciples of Jesus, Abraham would have been encouraged through his life journey by those glimpses of glory and that personal sense of being called by God.  When our faith is young it may seem more vivid.  Even so, we can recapture that joy and that newness by continuing to find our own place in the Scriptures and through being honest and open to God in our daily prayer.  We don’t have to do it alone.  I don’t think that any of the Lionesses in their recent victory would have claimed that they did it alone, but as part of a team.  For the same reason God calls us together as his Church to worship and to encourage one another as we work for the coming of the kingdom.  We find strength in God and we should find support and understanding from one another too.
 
In all these ways we make ourselves ready for the God who cannot be controlled by us.  The Jesuit spiritual writer, Gerard Hughes, spoke about the “God of Surprises”.  As the gospel today reminds us, “the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”  It also says: “Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”  In terms of faith, being awake means the opposite of being complacent.  If we know Jesus in the Eucharist and in one another, then he will not be a stranger to us.  The more we are acquainted with God’s ways and the more we live by the example of Jesus, the more ready we shall be to receive him.  He comes to us even now in all kinds of unexpected ways.  We also proclaim in the Creed that he will come again in glory.  Let us not be strangers to his presence so that we may be ready to share that glory.

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Newsletter 1st August 2022

8/3/2022

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​Notices
Mass Thursday 4th August 10.00am
Parish Mass 7th August 9.30am

Coffee Mornings every Tuesday from 10.00am every-one welcome.

Advance Notice: The next T2 Mission Area Service is on Thursday 18th August at St Thomas's Worsbrough.

Sunday Thoughts (18th in Ordinary Time
It’s holiday season and many people are making for the coast.  One of my favourite places since childhood is Whitby and I know I’m not alone in loving the place.  It has been in the news recently for a different reason - the number of second homes in the town.  The sad thing for many ordinary residents in places where people buy extra houses is that it makes life more expensive for the less well off.  Some local people are beginning to find themselves excluded. 
 
Jesus uses a parable in the gospel today, telling of a man who stockpiled more crops than he needed and who built bigger barns to store the goods.  The setting might be less familiar to us than a northern English seaside town, but it would have been very topical for people in Galilee at that time.  Rich absentee landlords lived in great comfort in Herod’s new cities on the rents and quotas levied on the ordinary workers on their estates.  They helped themselves to the best of the crops, whilst the ordinary workers had to subsist on a much poorer diet.  Those who did all the work could find themselves excluded from the benefit of this, whilst the wealthy built bigger barns to house all the excess.  It was far more than they could use for themselves.  No doubt those who heard the parable would have known exactly what Jesus was talking about.
 
It seems unlikely that Jesus was telling this parable in an angry way or trying to incite the people he was speaking to.  People were used to the wealthy having more than enough.  They were also used to their own lives being a struggle to get by.  Jesus seems to be indifferent to the authorities.  Instead of anger in his parable, there was probably a note of wry humour.  The man was preparing to enjoy his vast riches and to find his security in new and bigger barns, but then off he pops.  His barns and crops are of no use to him anymore.  As in the words of the psalm:
“You sweep men away like a dream
Like grass that springs up in the morning.”
Even stories and humour can be dangerous and can provoke a strong reaction from the authorities.  The emperor doesn’t like to be reminded that his new clothes are a bit on the skimpy side.
 
So Jesus is not trying to start a revolution.  The parable is not really aimed at the wealthy man at all.  In fact, the man appears in the end as a tragic figure and we are invited to feel sorry for him despite his greed.  Jesus is really pointing to the futility of putting all of our work into building up treasure on earth.  There are things we need to live a good life, but there comes a point where stockpiling can be of no real use to us.  Psychologists tell us that hoarding things can sometimes be a denial of our mortality – a way of fooling ourselves that we can find the security we long for in having all these things.   The parable reminds us that this kind of security is an illusion.  So too is the striving to find happiness in building up more and more possessions.
 
In our anxiety about what we have and what we want, we can forget where our real treasure lies.  St Paul shows us that it is better to aim for higher things – for the things that last for eternity.  He tells us:
“Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven.”
This is not about pie in the sky, but a recognition that when we love God and when we grow in faith, in generosity, in compassion, we discover true riches.  The desire for more and more can make us meaner and more fearful.  Ecclesiastes has some words to say about this: “Vanity of vanities.”  We cannot take any of these things with us in the end, but lives that are rich in love for God and for other people are lives that store up treasure in heaven.
 
Jesus gives us the bread of eternal life.  We receive in the Eucharist this food for our journey.  What we receive from God in faith will never leave us hungry or thirsty.  So let us pray that God may help us to let go of all that enslaves us here on earth.  May we discover the true value of our lives and know where our real treasure is kept.

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    Saint Andrew

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