Father Aidan's Sermon – Sunday 10th August 2003

John Paul II, in his letter about the Eucharist, has a lovely idea which is basic to the Eucharist but I was quite enchanted by it in the sense that, the Eucharist - the Mass, if you like, begins at the Last Supper but is in the context of the Triduum so He says "This is my Body, this is my Blood" but He has to live that out; He has to 'enflesh' that; and so it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday and the morning of the Resurrection.

So, in the Mass, there's everything, from the great celebration of the family feast, the feast with friends, the party, the rejection, the isolation of the Agony in the Garden that he begins to live those words out and the rejection of the Crucifixion, the grief and the sorrow of Christ, so violently expressed on the cross; grief for his Mother, the grief for the world who rejected him and His feeling of abandonment, like that of Elijah who lay down - "Let me die, let me die" - the depths of despair almost; and then the joy and triumph of the Resurrection.

So, wherever we're at in life now, we may not be feeling the extremity of those emotions but some of them will be in our lives now and it's that which is caught up into the Mass, so that it's the presence of Christ - for us now.

I've just been in the Lake District in this beautiful weather for a week and we said Mass every morning with the family of the people I was staying with and the little ones, they had to look for God during the day and then tell us about it the next day.

One of the things they said about the sign of God's presence and His care for us in their lives was - standing in one of those Lake District becks, or streams, in the cool water on a hot day - and the fish nibbling at our toes and our legs, the minnows swimming round and Liam said "The fish were a sign of God because it wasn't just one, there were so many of them." And he developed a way of catching them too! He managed to catch about a dozen (and put them back!).

The other thing was (…it's great being with little children on a walk - first of all, when you get a bit older, you have to walk at their pace and it's a wonderful excuse - you feel heroic about it and it's just your pace actually, well just my pace anyway!) but they need attention all the time, which is great too and it was Liam again I was walking with and he said "Have you any sweets?" and I didn't; I'd run out of sweets and we were walking along and there, suddenly, was a patch of wild raspberries and we picked God's sweets and ate those and it was a real gift from God and the next day Liam said "He gave us sweets yesterday when we wanted sweets."

So the fish and the wild raspberries are signs too of the presence of Our Lord so close to us in our lives now.

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