This morning, we had the ordinary weekday readings, with a strong message from S. Paul on the observance of ritual purity, which is to remain within the Christian Church as it did within the Temple Judaism of Paul’s day.
“I am speaking in the language of common life, because nature is still strong in you. Just as you once made over your natural powers as slaves to impurity and wickedness, till all was wickedness, you must now make over your natural powers as slaves to right-doing, till all is sanctified. At the time when you were the slaves of sin, right-doing had no claim upon you. And what harvest were you then reaping, from acts which now make you blush? Their reward is death. Now that you are free from the claims of sin, and have become God’s slaves instead, you have a harvest in your sanctification, and your reward is eternal life.”
Letter of S. Paul to the Romans, 6: 19-22 [link]
This was to a non-Jewish community in the capital of the Empire, in Rome. They had been called through baptism out of their ancestral religion and the immorality that implied into the Judaism of the Apostolic Church, and old habits die hard. The slavery S. Paul refers to is a voluntary slavery of the heart, and he is anxious that the hearts of the Roman Christians be given to Christ, and not to something lower and more base. They are to be not the slaves to sin, but slaves to the Holy One, Who had purchased them from the powers of darkness through the sacrifice of Christ, and named them His sons and daughters. Many centuries ago, the Holy Father S. Gregory the Great had initiated a mission to the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain, anxious to draw these Germanic tribes into the Catholic Church. Slowly, Christendom came to birth in Britain, and among the first flowerings of the Faith in these countries were the two brothers, Ceadda and Cedd, both made bishops.
Here’s a short life from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. Ceadda, or Chad, was a seventh-century abbot at Lastingham (Cedd, his brother, was also an abbot there, and later bishop in Essex) and named bishop first of York, and later of Lichfield. Chad was educated at Lindisfarne under S. Aidan, then went to Ireland. Cedd and Chad then established Lastingham in Yorkshire. Chad’s appointment by King Oswiu of Northumbria as bishop at York was challenged by the rather unpleasant S. Wilfrid, and Chad was asked by the archbishop of Canterbury, S. Theodore, to vacate York in Wilfrid’s favour. Theodore did not wish Chad to vanish into the obscurity of the cloisters and appointed him bishop of Mercia in AD 669. Chad built the cathedral church and monastery of Lichfield, where he lived in monastic community, while performing his episcopal duties. The relics of S. Chad were moved in the twelfth century to Lichfield, but were hurriedly removed by the Catholics following King Henry’s reformation in the sixteenth century; they are now enshrined at the cathedral church of S. Chad, seat of the archbishop of Birmingham. All we know about Chad is what has been recorded by the monk historian called the Venerable Bede, who had been instructed himself by one of Chad’s disciples.
Today’s gospel message is quite uncharacteristic for Who we may think Jesus Christ was, for He declares that He had come to bring not peace but a sword, to cause deep and painful divisions within families. This is not a call to accept a moral code per se, but a call to establish a strong and permanent allegiance to Him – a heart-to-heart with God Himself. I was thinking of Chad and Cedd as I heard this gospel; in their day the English were still mostly pagans and these men and their families were a sign of contradiction, foreigners in their own tribes and within their own societies, because they had embraced the religion of the Apostles. Every convert to Christianity understands the fire and the sword that Christ brings into families divided in their personal beliefs, some more than others. If we are to be slaves of Christ, and if no slave can serve two masters (as Christ also said), then embracing the Christian and Catholic religion, with its radical embrace of Christ to the exclusion of even family and friends, can be immensely painful. Men and women have broken relationships and given up inheritances for the sake of the promises Christ made to those who would remain with Him. In the history of the English reformation, we read of many who fled England for Continental Europe, homeless and dispossessed, because they were desirous of remaining Catholic. We also read of a handful of those refugees who returned to England as priests to bring the Sacraments to English Catholics, and who were hunted down, tortured and executed for their efforts by a ruthless protestant government. May we always remember the sacrifices men and women made in the past and make today for their attachment to Christ, and be prepared always at least in our hearts to do the same.
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace on the earth? No, believe Me, I have come to bring dissension. Henceforward five in the same house will be found at variance, three against two and two against three; the father will be at variance with his son, and the son with his father, the mother against her daughter, and the daughter against her mother, the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Gospel of S. Luke, 12: 51-53 [link]
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 