TROUBLED HEARTS, LOCKED CHURCHES

At St Patrick's Napier today, the Gospel was one Father said he knew off by heart, having proclaimed its "many dwelling places" to comfort innumerable mourners at innumerable Requiems.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled," said Father. He quoted St John (14:1-6) with a rare assurance and absolute sincerity. His lovely homily was taken to heart, I'd like to think, by the small congregation - and it would have gone down just as well a few streets away, at St John's Anglican.

But when I returned half an hour or so after Mass to pray - in the church, not the chapel, on the principle that the church is the right place to pray to the Blessed Sacrament, not an adjacent chapel - I found that although the chapel was open, the church was locked. And I remembered my 'big' daughter explaining that locking is now the policy. Because vandalism is now the problem. 

With a Sunday congregation the size of St Patrick's, isn't it possible to roster parishioners on half-hour stints during the day to protect their church and the incredible Treasure within? Imagine the result! No vandalism, and huge spiritual growth for parishioners and parish - especially if everyone began or ended their stint with St Therese's Prayer for Priests.

It may sound like a Jolly Good Idea, (I've just been reading a Famous Five book to a nine-year-old) but is there the will to do it? Parishioners and even priests being human, they have to know what's in it for them: they have to know that with our Eucharistic Lord, He who alone is "the way, the truth and the life", they can become divine.

A sermon pointing out that it is only Our Lord in the Eucharist who can make us divine is one which will never be preached at St John's Anglican. It's up to our Catholic priests to preach it, "in season and out of season", this pontificate of Pope Francis being no exception. 

Our Eucharistic Jesus is the only "way" to making men priests and the rest of us saints.