Fr. Aidan’s sermon 25-05-2003.

So one of the things we celebrate at Easter is the mystery of Gods love for us and underneath he is saying that all the love leads to God. All love is the love of God. Its an amazing thing the resurrection!

Parents love for their children is the way the children learn that God loves them. It is no use telling a child that God is our father if the father is someone who violates him, abuses him, someone he hates. So all love is of God, all true love. Love of husband for wife and wife for husband; there is no point in it there is no point in two people being in love with each other, absolutely no point, if that’s nothing to do with the resurrection.

The resurrection is about two people being in love with each other so that their love can draw them to God, that through each others love they receive the love of God and give the love of God and grow closer to God. That's what marriage is about; it’s the road to sanctity; to holiness is marriage, because the love is directed and focused on loving our Lord more and more. Not in spite of the husbands love or the wife’s love but because of it. That’s what marriage is about, its what families are about, its what friendship is about.

Friendship that stops with the friend is almost a blasphemy in the light of the resurrection. Friendship is about people drawing each other closer to God and it has no meaning, it has become frustrated and vain if it doesn't lead to that. So all love is the love of God and that is the secret of it, and if you make that explicit then it works and it is strange isn't it?

I might bombard you with statistics now. One statistic and I think its accurate, people who get married in the Catholic church nowadays don’t stay together any longer than any others. So almost one in two marriages celebrated in a Catholic church breakdown, except the marriages that are celebrated in a Catholic church and are renewed with regular mass going. In other words, mass going Catholics, their marriage breakdown is three or four times less. I am saying that simply because underneath it all those two who come to mass know that their love is a gift from God to lead them to God and that’s what happens every time married couples come to mass. They acknowledge that fact and if they live that out, then it will work. It will take them over all the hurdles and obstacles and bring them a joy which God will give; a joy which comes from God, so that’s one thing to say.

Then the second thing to say is 'love one another as I have loved you'. Because we have been loved, its not given to us just to hug to ourselves, but love like any gift is given to share, so we have to be the people who share the love of God in the world. Just one specific idea about that is at the back of church after mass, I think Silvia is going to be there, handing out something from CAFOD. What they are, and I have forgotten to bring them in with me, are two postcards which we are invited to write, one to Jacques Chirac, the French President, he is President of the Congress which is taking place in Europe about World Trade and the other one to our local MP asking him to join in the lobby on 28th June for fairer trade and the alleviation of debt. Now, I would encourage you to write those postcards. You may think "what’s the point? you know politicians, they are not going to take note of us" and I would say that’s wrong.

We have seen people power in action this week. Jean-Pierre Garnier was going to get £22 million for being sacked. The shareholders of Glaxo Smith Klein revolted and said that's obscene and we are not having it. That is beginning to happen more, those big golden handshakes or golden parachutes is the latest phrase isn't it.

The Jubilee Debt campaign was very effective. It made the governments of the world acknowledge that it was stupid to give money with one hand to the poor of the world and take twice as much back, with the other. They have admitted that in principle, but I think only in eight countries have they actually done anything about it. Where they have done something about it, it has been very effective. In Tanzania they have free education now. In Uganda the economy is rising, the economy is getting much better in Uganda because of the reduction of debt. What we want to say with these letters is not to do anything new but to fulfil what they agreed to do when they agreed to the reduction of debt for the third world.

A few more statistics about coffee which is a great crop. I remember being in Brazil and watching them grind coffee. It was then roasted on a fire and they milled it. That was a small farmer but with big farms the coffee beans were simply laid out to dry. In 1990 those raw coffee beans, sold to the industrial world, produced $10 billion for the growers. They were retailed in the western world at $30 billion. Now that’s some profit!

Even worse in 2002 that same coffee produced only $5.8 billion, nearly $6 billion to the people who produced it and $60 billion to the retailers, big coffee magnets like Nescafe. That is a disgusting amount, an obscene amount. So the trade rules need changing.

Another statistic for you. Farms subsidies in developed world are $1 billion a day. We subsidise our farmers to the tune of $1 billion a day. That is more than the annual income, the annual income not the daily income, of 900 million farmers in the developing world. How unjust that is!

One example of that is that 25,000 cotton farmers in the USA in 2001 received $4 billion dollars in subsidies. Because of that they over produced cotton. They flooded the markets in Africa with cheap cotton and undercut cotton produced in Burkina Faso, so that the people there lost more than the debt relief they were getting. That’s one example.

Trade rules are loaded in favour of the rich countries. They always talk about the market economy and free trade but that is a hypocrisy because we subsidise so many of our own products. We need, we need to adjust the rules and protect some of the poorer countries' goods. That’s how our wealth arose, through protectionism. When people are desperately poor you have got to protect what they produce so that they can sell what they produce.

I remember I was with Father Tony in Sao Paulo a few years ago. He was working in the shanty towns. he had six little communities in the shanty towns of Sao Paulo and he said to me,

"Do you know what I am reading?"

and I said

"No."

"I am reading Charles Dickens"

he replied, and I said

"why?"

and he said

"The conditions portrayed in Charles Dickens are the same with my people here. You know that desperate poverty which Dickens portrayed so vividly." He said, "I am working among it now, they speak to me more powerfully that any modern novel."

And I was thinking, we would still be living in the same conditions as Charles Dickens, were it not for people power. You know we shouldn't underestimate it. I remember my Aunts and Uncles in Preston in the 1920’s when everyone worked in the cotton mills. The labour movement, really I supposed focused, it but so many Catholics were involved in that movement for fair wages for the poor workers in the cotton mills, and they won. It took them a long time but it worked, and it’s because of those people that so many people in England have a decent wage now.

So we can change things, if we can do it on a small scale in our own country, we can do it on a global scale. We are not going to do it overnight but what I am suggesting is there is an opportunity.

What has that got to do with the Gospel? Everything!

Love one another as I have loved you. And Jesus says remain in my love. In other words continue, persevere, keep at it. And that’s about the faith in the resurrection too.

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