With John 21:15-19, as with other passages of Scripture, context is vital.

In this passage of Scripture, we have the Lord Jesus, risen after His crucifixion, speaking personally to the leader of His apostles. We have more stories about the interactions between Jesus and Peter than we have for any other apostle – indicating that Jesus took special care in the discipling and training of Peter.

Peter has had three years of close personal contact with Jesus: and as part of the trio with James and John, has had more revelation about who Jesus is than anyone else. With their own eyes they saw the transfiguration of Jesus, as well as the agony of Jesus after the Last Supper.

On the doorposts in Israel back then, and even today, there are bits of scroll inside black casing to remind the sons of Israel: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength....."

The kind of love expected of Israel is nothing less than agape love.

If God commands something, then it means it is possible to accomplish it.

With the resurrection of Jesus, there is absolutely no longer any doubt about His divinity.

So when Jesus says to Peter, ‘Do you love (agape) Me?’
the reasonable expectation is that Peter should return a, ‘Yes I love (apage) You Lord’.

Jesus became incarnate, lived among us, revealing the face and nature of God to us, and especially to the Apostles, to prove the utter depths of God’s love for us, and this special Apostle says, ‘Yes, I love (phileo) You, as a friend, a companion, a brother’.

That had to have been gut wrenching for Jesus.
His whole purpose in becoming incarnate, suffering and dying for us, was to bring us into an agape love relationship with Himself, and if He has failed with Peter, then what chance do the disciples and the crowds have?

Jesus asks the same question another time,
giving Peter the opportunity to upgrade his answer
but it doesn't happen.

In some ways this is worse than Peter denying Jesus at the high priest's place.
This is face to face with the crucified and risen Jesus.

When Jesus asks again, this time He reduces the response He is looking for.
‘Peter, do you love (phileo) Me?’
That Jesus would be prepared to ask less of Peter, must have been gut wrenching for Peter.
In effect, "If you don't love Me, do you still like Me?"

Peter is aware that he has failed Jesus. He is aware that he has failed Jesus' expectations of him, perhaps even damaged their relationship. But Peter is still unable to upgrade his answer from phileo love to agape love.

Yet despite all this, Jesus reveals His mercy.
Jesus gives Peter a prophecy indicating that agape love for Jesus is still possible for Peter.

With the 'follow Me' of Jesus, Peter can start again.
They are the same words Jesus spoke to Peter when he left his boat and nets.

What will make the difference
​is the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Romans 5:5 says that the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
It is only the Holy Spirit that makes agape love for God possible.
And if we are not there yet,
then we need more of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
………………………………….
Dear God, we acknowledge how small our love for You is.
We are so sorry for failing to love You as You have loved us,
and for failing to love you to the extent that You have lovingly commanded us.
Please pour Your Holy Spirit into our hearts afresh.
Fill us with agape love for You, and for each other. Amen.

Within a week, I heard Christian leaders once on Facebook and once on YouTube say that Purgatory is not biblical. That is a statement on very shaky legs both biblically and historically.
Here is some of the evidence:

How the bible we hold in our hands today came to be
At the time of Jesus and at the time the Gospels were being written, even the Hebrew Bible canon had not been established: that is, the list of writings to be included and the writings to be excluded for use in synagogue.

The same was true in the very early centuries of Christianity, since not much could be built while the threat of deadly persecution loomed. Believers copied Paul’s letters and shared them, ditto with the Gospels and other writings considered worthy of preserving and leaving as legacy for new generations of believers. Neither was it a quick process, it took several councils of gathered bishops to pray seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit and debate, sometimes ferociously, especially in the 382 AD Council of Rome, 393 AD Council of Hippo, 397 AD Council of Carthage and 419 Council of Carthage. Note that all this took place well after Constantine’s death in 337 AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon

It was the Church that gave birth to the Bible; the Church founded by Jesus upon Peter and his successors.

That is why 1 Tim 3:15b says, looking at the transliterated Greek, “God’s household, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth”, also “support and basis of the truth”. It does not say that the bible is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

Not everything the early Christians did and taught got written about in the New Testament, but it did get passed down through the teaching of the apostles and through how Jesus had taught them to live their lives and how Jesus had taught them to worship and minister. Usually only disputed matters got into St Paul’s letters, and the stuff that was taken for granted wasn’t written about. That’s why we have St Paul write in Phil 4:9, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard or seen in me, put into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Even today we don’t write rubrics about how to take up a collection. It is part of normal practice and what is automatic and generally accepted becomes like wallpaper: always present and not debated about. No one is going to write rubrics about how to sing Happy Birthday either.

That Church founded by Jesus upon Peter also did the monumental work of copying the Old Testament, the New Testament and the early Christian writings by hand. Consider how painstaking that work was, and how much each generation valued the Word of God to preserve it to generations yet to come. All of that reverence for the Word of God and faithful perseverance enabled you to hold a bible in your hands today. Hand copying only began to cease with the advent of the printing press around 1440, which is still pre Reformation.

Every time you pick up a bible you are saying that the Catholic Church got it right at least once in the discernment of the canon of scripture.

The Septuagint and the two books of Maccabees
Remember that Galilee was a mix of Hebrews, Greeks and others. Even the names of the apostles show this fusion. Andrew and Philip are Greek names. Bartholomew is a bit of both with the Ptolemy part being Greek. Matthew is a Greek form of a Hebrew name.

The Septuagint is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew. Within that translation are seven books of the Bible written in Greek, of which Hebrew versions have yet to be found, and are called Apocrypha. Yet these seven books have had an impact on Jewish faith and practice, and Jesus Himself quoted deeply from them, and so did the New Testament writers.

Investigate for yourself and compare these New Testament references with the Apocrypha.
http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/deutero3.htm

For example, compare Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 7:32-36
“And also give generously to the poor, so that your blessing may lack nothing.
Let your generosity extend to all the living, do not withhold it even from the dead.
Do not turn your back on those who weep, but share the grief of the grief-stricken.
Do not shrink from visiting the sick; in this way you will make yourself loved.
In everything you do, remember your end, and you will never sin.”

With Matthew 25:35-36
“For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you made Me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed Me, sick and you visited Me, in prison and you came to see Me."

You can find these seven books for free at https://www.catholic.org/bible/
if you scroll down far enough.
There are passages from Esther and Daniel that are classed as Apocrypha.
Then the seven books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees.

The two books of Maccabees chronicle the era 176 BC till 134 BC, and the struggles and battles and miracles the people of Israel experienced. It was from this era that the beloved celebration of Hannukah arose. Jesus would have celebrated it every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Maccabees

But for the current discussion, 2 Maccabees 12, and especially verse 45 are important.

In the beginning of chapter 12 of 2 Maccabees, we hear of successful attacks and retaliations and battles led by Judas Maccabeus and his troops full of faith in the living God. Then they had a battle where some of them lost their lives, which was unusual. Since the next day was the sabbath, they kept that holy, and on the next day went out to recover the bodies of the dead for burial. Everyone who had died had hidden amulets of idols taken as booty from their enemies under their clothes, an affront to God who says: ‘You shall have no other gods but Me’. Everyone without those amulets was still alive. Immediately the survivors gave themselves to prayer begging God to forgive the sin of their companions. Then a voluntary collection was taken up and sent to Jerusalem so that sacrifices for sin could be offered on behalf of these deceased.

“An altogether fine and noble action, in which he took full account of the resurrection. For if he had not expected the fallen to rise again it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead, whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. This was why he had this atonement sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sin.” 2 Macc 12:43b-45

Given how readily the troops offered contributions to the collection, this cannot have been an original thought, but an existing understanding that sacrifices for sin could be offered both for the living and for the dead, and that it was an legitimate thing to do.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters still pray for the dead
This is an account of modern Jewish practice:
https://coffeeshoprabbi.com/2017/06/23/what-is-the-jewish-prayer-for-the-dead/

“God, full of mercy, who dwells in the heights, provide a sure rest upon the wings of the Divine Presence, within the range of the holy, pure and glorious, whose shining resemble the sky’s, to the soul of (Hebrew name of deceased) son of (Hebrew name of his father) for a charity was given to the memory of his soul. Therefore, the Master of Mercy will protect him forever, from behind the hiding of His wings, and will tie his soul with the rope of life. The Everlasting is his heritage, and he shall rest peacefully upon his lying place, and let us say: Amen.”

This is the prayer prayed out loud when sitting Shiva, and everyone responds, Amen.

It is also used with other ritual practices for mourning, and this is a direct correlation with that excerpt from 2 Maccabees 12 - only more than 2150 years later.

Now compare that prayer with the memento for the dead found in the major Eucharistic prayers in Catholic practice:

Eucharistic Prayer I: Remember also, Lord, Your servants N. and N.
who have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace.
Grant them, O Lord, we pray, and all who sleep in Christ,
a place of refreshment, light and peace.

Eucharistic Prayer II: Remember Your servant N.
whom You have called from this world to Yourself.
Grant that he (she) who was united with Your Son in a death like His
may also be one with Him in His Resurrection.
Remember also our brothers and sisters
who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection,
and all who have died in Your mercy:
welcome them into the light of Your face.

Eucharistic Prayer III: To our departed brothers and sisters
and to all who were pleasing to You at their passing from this life,
give kind admittance to Your kingdom.
There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of Your glory.

Eucharistic Prayer IV: Remember also
those who have died in the peace of Your Christ
and all the dead, whose faith You alone have known.
To all of us, Your children, grant, O merciful Father,
that we may enter into a heavenly inheritance
with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God,
and with Your Apostles and Saints in Your kingdom.
There, with the whole of creation, freed from the corruption of sin and death,
may we glorify You through Christ our Lord.

In each of these Eucharistic prayers we find echoes of the Jewish prayer: peace, rest, light and turning to the everlasting God of mercy to request this for the deceased.

It is possible by looking carefully at the Greek to see in Matthew 14:13-21 an account of Jesus sitting Shiva with His apostles after the death of St John the Baptist. In every other account of the feeding of a multitude Jesus preaches, but not in this account.
http://www.societyofsaints.net/blog/how-did-they-get-there-on-foot-before-jesus

Excerpt below:

“After all the parables in Matt 13, Jesus had left the district and paid a visit to Nazareth, and in the first part of Matt 14 we have an account of the death of St John the Baptist. Therefore the lakeside towns had not seen Jesus for a little while.

What we do know is that the disciples of St John the Baptist got the news to Jesus, and by extension to those disciples of Jesus who had previously been disciples of John. Jesus and John were blood relatives, cousins, and several of the apostles would have looked upon John as a spiritual father. Due to these close connections, it is likely that this news got to Jesus before it got to the rest of the district, possibly by some of John’s disciples travelling in haste.

This put Jesus and those apostles into an official period of mourning, which is a week in length and known as shiva. During this time of shiva mourners are not expected to do much more than exist, but they do expect condolence visits from friends and relatives, and the visitors are expected to bring the food.

The news must have hit the apostolic company hard, and it seems like Jesus wasted no time in getting them off to a lonely spot where they could have some privacy to work through the initial waves of grief. They pack their travelling gear, and they pack provisions and off they go. It seems reasonable that they park Peter’s boat and then head deep into the hills to sit shiva together.

Meanwhile, back in the lakeside towns of Galilee, the news of the death of St John the Baptist breaks. In their lifetime, a true prophet has been killed, one whom many of them had met, and all of them had heard of. It is shocking. In their bereft-ness, they want to try and make sense of this with Jesus. He’s not at home. Neither are the apostles, nor their travel gear. Peter’s boat isn’t moored in its usual place, but everyone knows what Peter’s boat looks like. It isn’t long before sailors and fishermen bring in the news of where Peter’s boat is now. The crowds aren’t stupid, they can put 2 and 2 together, and deduce that they are sitting shiva privately. But at some point shiva will end, and Jesus and the apostles will return to the boat, however there’s no guarantee that they are going to go back home.

But they will return to the boat, and the crowds can make educated guesses about when shiva will end. They could get themselves and their sick ones to that lonely place by then. And they need the reassurance that God is still in control. So travel plans are made, and off on foot they go. Plenty of them may have even camped out waiting for Jesus to reappear. Just like people get to places early to watch New Year’s Eve fireworks or Boxing Day sales. Some wish to offer condolence, some want their sick ones healed, some want reassurance.

Chances are that it took a little bit longer than expected for Jesus and the apostles to re-emerge. Likely too that the foot-travelers’ provisions were close to empty. We know that the apostles’ provisions were empty, because if they filled twelve baskets full of scraps, it stands to reason they were empty to begin with. It is another reason that the shiva concept makes sense. If they had just arrived, those baskets would have been full, not empty but for 5 loaves and 2 fish. The actual word used for these baskets is ‘kophinous’, the kind of baskets to carry kosher food that travelers used.

In this scenario, the timing makes sense, the size of the crowd makes sense, the coming forth of Jesus from seclusion makes sense, the absence of teaching and preaching makes sense, and the filling of the baskets makes sense.

This was a ministry time of presence to the people, listening to their fears, their grief and anxiety, and healing those sick ones who had made the difficult journey.

But there’s no food!

And food is definitely a part of shiva! Visitors are encouraged to bring food that is crowd pleasing and which can easily be served and shared, and to avoid food that requires work on the part of the mourners.

The 7 days of shiva might be closing for Jesus and the apostles, but it is likely that it is still within shiva for the crowd – assuming that Jesus got the news of St John the Baptist’s death at least half a day, and maybe up to 2 days before the crowd did.
God provides the food, through the miracle. Bread that is easy to serve and easy to share. What a thought! That through this miracle God the Father is sitting shiva together with His people over the death of St John the Baptist, and thereby consoling them in an extraordinary way. What a memorable wake for the prophet who heralded Jesus!”

Therefore, in the time of Jesus since they followed the Jewish mourning protocols, they would have used some version of the “God, full of mercy” prayer.

Remember that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, but that the Pharisees did, and that the two factions squabbled a lot about it. Then remember how much interaction Jesus had with the Pharisees and how little interaction Jesus had with the Sadducees according to the accounts in the Gospels.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were still squabbling when the time came to determine the Hebrew canon of scripture, as well as both still being in fear of Rome. 1 and 2 Maccabees reignited both fears and squabbles, so it was left out of the canon, even though everyone was living their faith practice as though it was canon.
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/omitting-the-maccabees/

The names of the Maccabee leaders were Matthias, Judas, Simon, John, Jonathan. Can you count several names of Apostles? Does it give you some idea of how important the Maccabee story was to the people of Israel when Jesus walked the earth? That’s why at the time of Jesus they were expecting a Messiah in the style of the Maccabees, mustering armies to wipe out their enemies under an anointed leader and all the rest.

Man-made traditions don’t last very long, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years. Only those traditions that have something God-breathed in them last; like praying for the dead in Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish tradition.

Have a browse through this list of 14 ways that are common ways of honouring the deceased in Jewish society: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/372952/jewish/14-Jewish-Ways-to-Honor-the-Soul-of-a-Deceased-Loved-One.htm
Many of those practices are still common amongst all of us, whatever we believe in, especially visiting the grave sites, and praying there, keeping them clean, lighting candles, donating things in memory of the deceased, special prayers on anniversaries of death, and the ‘don’t send flowers donate to such and such charity instead’. It is not so much now, but back before 1900 it was extremely common for a new child to be named for a recently deceased relative. It all started in biblical times pre-Jesus and is still going strong.

Other Scripture references
Now let us turn to those Scriptural references which aren’t quite as clear as 2 Maccabees 12.

They are all mentioned here:
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2N.HTM

1 Cor 3:14-15 “If his structure stands up to it, he will get his wages; if it is burnt down, he will be the loser, and although he is saved himself, it will be as one who has gone through fire.”

I Pet 1:7 “so that, when Jesus Christ is revealed, your faith will have been tested and proved like gold – only it is more precious than gold, which is corruptible even though it bears testing by fire – and then you will have praise and glory and honour.”

Matt 12:31 “And so I tell you, every one of men’s sins and blasphemies will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”

Job 1:5 ”Once each series of banquets was over, Job would send for them to come and be purified, and at dawn on the following day he would offer a holocaust for each one of them. ‘Perhaps’ Job would say ‘my sons have sinned and in their hearts affronted God.’ So that was what he used to do after each series.”

Thus it is biblical to pray that someone else be loosed from their sins, and that can apply to both the living and the dead since Jesus is Lord of both realms. Rom 14:7-9

Just like a word of knowledge
Many people are used to how a word of knowledge operates. God reveals a situation to a person eg there is man in this place who is deaf in his right ear. God only reveals because He wants some kind of grace released. A man presents himself, saying yes I am deaf in my right ear. People then pray with expectation of healing, and God’s grace of healing is released.

Stories about purgatory are very similar. God reveals that a specific deceased person requires certain actions or prayers to complete their time of purification. Then when those requirements are filled God will reveal that it is accomplished.

These stories are numerous in both Jewish and Christian traditions.

Here is one from https://jewinthecity.com/2022/11/why-do-jews-pray-for-the-dead/
“Rabbi Akiva once saw a man struggling under a heavy burden. Rabbi Akiva was concerned that this might be an overworked slave but it turned out to be the soul of an unrepentant sinner whose punishment was to gather wood, which was then used to burn him daily. He told Rabbi Akiva that the only way to free him was if his son would stand in front of the congregation and say “Barchu es Hashem hamevorah” or “Yisgadal v’yiskadash…,” causing the congregation to respond, “Baruch Hashem hamevorah l’olam voed” or “Yehei shmei rabbah…,” respectively. (These are the prayers of Barchu and Kaddish, in which the leader of the service calls upon the congregation to praise God, which they then do.)
Rabbi Akiva tracked down the man’s wife and circumcised the deceased’s son. When the child was old enough, he tutored him and taught him how to daven. As soon as the boy recited the appropriate prayers in shul, his father’s soul appeared to Rabbi Akiva in a dream and informed him that he had been relieved of his afterlife torments.”

Here is one from https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0324.htm about the martyr Perpetua who was martyred around 202AD in Carthage and her brother Dinocrates who had died a pagan:
“After a few days, while we were all praying, on a sudden, in the middle of our prayer, there came to me a word, and I named Dinocrates; and I was amazed that that name had never come into my mind until then, and I was grieved as I remembered his misfortune. And I felt myself immediately to be worthy, and to be called on to ask on his behalf. And for him I began earnestly to make supplication, and to cry with groaning to the Lord. Without delay, on that very night, this was shown to me in a vision. I saw Dinocrates going out from a gloomy place, where also there were several others, and he was parched and very thirsty, with a filthy countenance and pallid color, and the wound on his face which he had when he died. This Dinocrates had been my brother after the flesh, seven years of age, who died miserably with disease — his face being so eaten out with cancer, that his death caused repugnance to all men. For him I had made my prayer, and between him and me there was a large interval, so that neither of us could approach to the other. And moreover, in the same place where Dinocrates was, there was a pool full of water, having its brink higher than was the stature of the boy; and Dinocrates raised himself up as if to drink. And I was grieved that, although that pool held water, still, on account of the height to its brink, he could not drink. And I was upset, and knew that my brother was in suffering. But I trusted that my prayer would bring help to his suffering; and I prayed for him every day until we passed over into the prison of the camp, for we were to fight in the camp-show. Then was the birthday of Geta Cæsar, and I made my prayer for my brother day and night, groaning and weeping that he might be granted to me. Then, on the day on which we remained in fetters, this was shown to me. I saw that that place which I had formerly observed to be in gloom was now bright; and Dinocrates, with a clean body well clad, was finding refreshment. And where there had been a wound, I saw a scar; and that pool which I had before seen, I saw now with its margin lowered even to the boy's navel. And one drew water from the pool incessantly, and upon its brink was a goblet filled with water; and Dinocrates drew near and began to drink from it, and the goblet did not fail. And when he was satisfied, he went away from the water to play joyously, after the manner of children, and I awoke. Then I understood that he was translated from the place of punishment.

In https://www.churchfathers.org/purgatory you will find this and other examples of purgatory stories in the time zone between Pentecost and the final acceptance of the canon of Scripture in 419 AD. One of them is within living memory of the apostles. All this in the early Church founded by Jesus upon Peter before the bible came to be in its current form.

Have a browse through this list of 14 ways that are common ways of honouring the deceased in Jewish society: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/372952/jewish/14-Jewish-Ways-to-Honor-the-Soul-of-a-Deceased-Loved-One.htm
Many of those practices are still common amongst all of us, whatever we believe in, especially visiting the grave sites, and praying there, keeping them clean, lighting candles, donating things in memory of the deceased, and the ‘don’t send flowers donate to such and such charity instead’. It is not so much now, but back before 1900 it was extremely common for a new child to be named for a recently deceased relative.

How come Purgatory is not considered biblical in Protestant circles?
One answer is that it did not fit into Martin Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith alone.

A doctrine which is not supported by Gal 5:6 “since in Christ Jesus whether you are circumcised or not makes no difference – what matters is faith that makes its power felt through love”
nor James 2:18 “You say you have faith and I have good deeds; I will prove to you that I have faith by showing you my good deeds – now you prove to me that you have faith without any good deeds to show.”

The faith necessary for salvation is a free and unearned gift obtained through the sacrifice on the Cross by Jesus. But the expressing of that faith in accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour is like marriage vows, they make no sense unless you intend to fully live out that life covenant with Him.

The inherent danger in ‘once saved always saved’ is that it provides no impetus to live a life pleasing to God. Ezekiel 34 should haunt us all, especially Ezekiel 34:12, “The integrity of an upright man will not save him once he has chosen to sin; the wickedness of a wicked man will no longer condemn him once he renounces wickedness, nor will an upright man live on the strength of his integrity once he has chosen to sin.”

The doctrine of purgatory on the other hand provides a wonderful impetus to avoid sinning, and to take the steps to get right with God on a regular and frequent basis, seeking His mercy for our sins. With the doctrine of purgatory the fullness of the holiness of God is displayed, as well as His divine justice and His divine mercy. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, haven’t we? Hebrews 12:1 reminds us “to throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running in the race we have already started”. Since we start that race through the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, it means we still have constant need to remove sin from our lives. At the end of the amazing description of the heavenly temple of God in Revelation 21 we read in verse 27: “nothing unclean/impure may come into it: no one who does what is loathsome or false, but only those who are listed in the Lamb’s book of life”. We know from the Old Testament that God requires spotless purity, and the severe penalties given to those who infringed that purity, like Uzzah touching the ark instead of carrying it properly with the shafts.

What happened under Martin Luther resembles the crimes of Jeroboam son of Nebat. Jeroboam who was given by God the leadership of ten tribes of Israel, and instead of serving the Lord God, went about setting up alternate ways of worship to prevent the people returning to worship in the Jerusalem temple, because if they did return to temple worship they would gradually making their way back to the Davidic line of kings and Jeroboam’s kingship would cease.

Look at what Martin Luther did. When books in the universally accepted bible prior to 1520 AD did not agree with his doctrine of faith alone, he removed them. A man without even any episcopal authority decided that he knew better than the bishops of the whole church who went through that lengthy process in 382-419 AD. All those books now called Apocrypha from the Septuagint were deleted by Luther because they contained seeds that would lead back to Catholic and Orthodox faith practice. You noticed that reference in Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 7 about praying for the dead, didn’t you? It is only one example among many of those seeds, and everyone at the time of Jesus spoke that parable knew which book of the Septuagint He was alluding to in that great depiction of the last judgement.
​
Purgatory is biblical. Even in the truncated bible version by Martin Luther, it is still biblical.

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A printer friendly version, A4 x 10 pages, is provided below:

Just about everyone who believes in God has been praying about a close-to-the-heart matter for a long time. Whether it be for the healing of a loved one, the conversion of a loved one, the conversion of a leader, for the gift of a child, for the gift of a spouse, for the gift of employment, for revival in a locality or in a worshipping community, asking for an answer to whether a deceased loved one made it to heaven or not, for funds to enable a special project, for reconciliation between loved ones, for the release of a loved one from addiction or from a gang, asking for ‘what is my vocation?’ answers from God – we’ve all got at least one of these.

Some people receive from God very quickly, and the rest of us struggle to quieten the envy that arises in our hearts. We are happy for them, but at the same time our hearts feel shattered because our hearts feel that God has overlooked us, or that we weren’t worthy enough, and we wonder ‘what have we done wrong’?

Somewhere in our minds we know that God’s answers are always good, and that they are either Yes, Not Yet, or I’ve Got Something Better For You. But our hearts feel the pain of the delay, and it is an ongoing battle to have faith and not let doubt take over. We feel the weariness of that battle when we’ve been praying night and day for 4 years, 7 years, 12 years, 20 years. Add to that the mockery of those who infer, ‘You’re still praying for that!, Get over it, get a life’.

At times we console ourselves with the notion that there is a truth to the longer the delay the bigger and better the answer. We cling onto the answer St Monica received after 20 years of praying for her wayward son Augustine. Not only did he get converted from error, he became a priest; not only did he become a priest, he became a bishop; not only did he become a bishop, he became a saint; not only did he become a saint, but he is recognised as a doctor of the Church, and his writings appear more frequently than any others in the Office of Readings. St Monica didn’t see much of this happen on earth except his conversion, but her prayers paved the way for the rest.

We have moments of hope, faith and trust, but the battle to persevere and to keep our hearts soft and thankful towards God keeps on going.

Is there any good news? Yes, there is.
God has an observable modus operandi when it comes to long term prayers.

There are three patterns.

The first pattern is the long-term prayer followed by the suddenly. We see this in Anna the daughter of Phanuel. She had been praying for several decades that the Messiah would come, and then suddenly she is given an opportunity to hold Him in her arms. In the Gospel we see several healings take on that pattern, with long periods of illness and prayer for healing, like the woman with the haemorrhage, then sudden and complete healing through Jesus.

The second pattern is long term prayer followed by a promise followed by more long-term prayer and then a specific promise linked to a specific date. We see this in Simeon. He had prayed so much for the coming of the Messiah that God gave him a promise that he would see the Messiah with his own eyes before he died. He kept praying, strengthened by that promise, until the prompting of the Holy Spirit said something like, ‘Get to the Temple, Now!’. We also see this in Abraham and Sarah who were childless and had long prayed for a child, then God gave them a promise that they indeed would have a child, then more long years of praying and waiting occurred until God said, this time next year you will hold your child in your arms.

The third pattern is long term prayer until a holy person comes along, and not-knowing gives way to holy expectation. We see this in Hannah the mother of Samuel. She had long term prayers but after Eli’s blessing she went home happy, convinced that God had heard and answered. We see it with Elizabeth and Zechariah, parents of John the Baptist. They had long term prayers for a child, but it was only after the visitation of the angel to Zechariah that they knew God’s answer was coming.

I’ve experienced the second pattern and the third pattern in my own life.

What do these examples teach us? That God answers long-term prayers in specific, personal and unmistakable ways. God honours the perseverance of His sons and daughters in specific, personal and unmistakable ways. He doesn’t give nebulous answers to long term hopes.

That means that the array of prophetic words that say 'your breakthrough is coming', 'your long-term prayers are being answered' are just stating a universal truth and not actually promising anything. The answers to our long-term prayers are always on the way. What our hearts long for is a bankable answer to When.

Those kinds of prophetic words are rather easy to release because they are non-specific, and no one really knows if it was directly for them or not. They also tend to be crowd pleasing words because everyone wants to know that their time of waiting is over. But they also tend to be faith-destroyers and send people on hope-deferred spirals.

Let me explain how that happens. A non-specific word is given, and because they are words we long to hear specifically addressed to ourselves, we let hope spring up. Then a few weeks elapse and absolutely nothing in our situation has changed. That little spring of hope deflates and we enter the hope-deferred no man’s land again, kicking ourselves that we gave in to false hope yet again. When this happens often enough, we begin to stop believing in God’s goodness and become convinced that God is cruel. When that spiral happens often enough, we either delete that prophet’s social media posts from our scrolling or we change churches, because we just can’t go through that particular agony again.

What a difference it would make if the various people receiving this kernel of a prophetic word from God would diligently seek Him for specifics! It is similar to the change in faith dynamic between a leader saying, ‘God wants to heal people tonight’ compared to ‘God wants to heal people with hearing issues tonight’. The latter gives specific form to faith expectations, and consequently the faith level increases. Consider the difference between ‘I declare you (plural) are going to receive breakthrough today’ and ‘I declare that there is a special grace here today to heal those who have been in chronic pain for over a year’. It is far easier for someone to say, ‘hey that’s me, yes please God’ to the latter than to the former, it is also far easier with the latter for those who say, ‘hey that’s not me’, to happily pray for those whose day of grace it is.
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We do the character of God a grave injustice if we release the beginning of His communication and not the fullness of it. Frequently Jesus used the rabbinic method in the Gospels, He set a topic and waited for people to ask questions; or someone asked Him a question, He responded with a clarifying question, and the answer given by the questioner gave scope to the ultimate answer of Jesus. We know that Jesus was deeply grieved when He privately gave the apostles teaching about His suffering and death and they refused to question Him to gain deeper understanding.

The Gospel for Easter Monday is always Matthew 28:8-15 which includes an encounter with women and the risen Jesus, as well as letting us know what happened to the guards at His tomb.

What Jesus says to the women who had found His tomb empty of His body, but filled with the presence of an angel, is this: ‘Greetings. Do not be afraid; go and tell My brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see Me there’.

The homilist on Monday, a venerable retired priest, made a simple yet profound comment on this Gospel passage. Since so many of the apostles and disciples came from Galilee, Galilee represents ordinary life. Therefore, that means it is in our day to day lives that we are to expect to encounter the risen Lord Jesus.

That’s possibly the opposite of where we expect to encounter Jesus. On retreat, at a church conference, while on holiday or pilgrimage, or on a mountain top, isn’t that where we expect Him to show up?
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Lord Jesus, please help us to recognise You, and respond positively to You, when You show up in our daily lives. Please take away our fears of encountering You. Amen.

Something out of the ordinary has been happening in the Hughes chapel at Asbury College in the town of Wilmore in Kentucky USA. Surprisingly it has happened several times in the 20th century at this College. This something God Himself started. As at 1pm Sydney time on 20 Feb 2023 an extraordinary prayer meeting has been going non-stop night and day since some time on Wednesday 8 Feb 2023 Kentucky time.

What happened? At a regular Wednesday College Chapel service a 25 minute talk was given based on Romans 12:9-21. The talk was about our inability to love the way God is calling us to love unless we have experienced His love first. During the talk, the speaker promised that he would stay in the chapel for anyone who needed prayers. The chapel emptied quickly, with a handful of people staying back.

Then God initiated something. He has done this before. Blessed Imelda Lambertini was aged 11 in 1333, and her longing for Jesus was immense. When the Ascension Thursday service ended, everyone else went back to their duties except Imelda, because her longing kept her there. God then worked the miracle she had been longing for, but He wanted everyone else to share in it, since they had all been touched by Imelda’s longing. God caused a fragrance to occur which one by one drew everyone back to the chapel, and the miracle was then completed.

I haven’t heard of any fragrance that brought people back, but the speaker did ask God to give them an itch that they just had to do something about. Filling a chapel back up is a miracle in itself. This beginning had God’s fingerprints on it, and only God’s fingerprints.

Since then reports have emerged of a weighty yet blissful presence of God. What else is being reported is the continuous prayer meeting and the long lines of people waiting their turn to get into the chapel. Thankfully some people have been using their phones to record segments of this extraordinary prayer meeting.

What is extraordinary about it? It is low tech, microphones, a guitar and piano and a strange kind of portable drum, some vocals, no sight screens, no special lighting. Preaching is absent, prophecy is absent, evangelists and teachers are absent. Agendas are absent. The preaching podium is empty. Teams of musicians rotate in shifts of around 2 hours, and they are supporting what is happening, not leading it. God’s spotlight is on the body of Christ.

Naturally the concept of not being needed is unsettling to all those who usually lead.

But what we are seeing is a taste of heaven.

What happens in heaven? God’s love flows out to His people, and their response of love flows back. Most of it happens in music and praise. When God is King and present, you don’t need a preacher, teacher, evangelist or prophet. All these people are needed to help people to God, but when God shows up, everything and everyone defers to Him. In heaven, once in a while, there are testimonies. That’s happening once in a while at Asbury too.

All of the footage from Asbury shows the body of Christ praising and worshipping God in unity. Yes there are people coming and going, and there are always going to be people who haven’t yet entered into the flow of what’s going on. Coming and going is quite normal at lengthy events. Whenever necessary people break off into prayer teams for the needy, or for those needing deliverance. There is no need for an altar call, people go up of their own accord to the base of the platform to pray their hearts out to God, and there is a steady stream of people doing that.
What we are seeing is a trickle of ‘may Your Will be done on earth as in heaven’. Two millennia of Christians have been praying to see that happen.

We are seeing God put a spotlight on ordinary believers; college students, parents, families with very young children, families with school age children, as well as those with greying hair who have longed and prayed to see such days as this. God is putting a spotlight onto ordinary believers who would never in a month of Sundays be considered leaders. This is so wonderful to see. What is happening is fulfilling many prophecies.

Growth is also happening. At least two other College chapels have had the livestream patched through to them to deal with the hungry for God. There was an announcement of some building ‘across the road’ filled with parents travailing in prayer for their children. Within the past 24 hours all those waiting outside the Hughes chapel on the lawn are singing and praying non-stop too. In other university chapels there are reports of ongoing prayer meetings happening.
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Receive this message-in-action: God cares for ordinary people; God loves ordinary people; God is honouring ordinary people; God loves all of the members of the body of Christ – not just the big names. He is putting a spotlight of love on the body of Christ.
…………………………………………………………………………For the talk that preceded this wonder of God. 37 mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGvvGbgUmMU
 
Some video tape from several hours at Asbury condensed into one hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7m3SU0rqTY&t=2961s
 
Edited transcript of the last few minutes of the talk.

A few weeks ago a priest involved in campus ministry proclaimed over social media that something should be done about 85% of church goers never having asked a young adult ‘the vocation question’. Therefore he decided, every time he saw a young chap in the chapel or at Mass he was going to ask them the ‘have you thought about being a priest’ question. A quicker way to empty your campus ministry of male participants is hard to imagine. Let me explain why asking this question of any young man with a pulse is a very bad idea.

Firstly, it is God’s call and His choice alone, who He calls and when He calls them. Our task is to notice when that call has been made, and then to support and encourage it. One hundred busybodies asking ‘Have you thought about being a priest?’ does not equal even a tiddle of a call from God Himself -even if they happen to be priestly busybodies.

As a parent of a young man who has often been the only young man present at church, I know the harm such questions cause. Both ‘the wrong question at the wrong time’ and ‘the right question at the wrong time’ actually make hearing what God is saying harder, not easier. The oceans of unnecessary soul searching they cause is reprehensible.

Consider that the way God deals with a soul that He is calling to a priestly vocation is very similar to a young man wooing a young woman. He is never ever going to ‘pop the question’ until He is very sure the answer is going to be a Yes from the heart of his intended. Usually this wooing is very delicate and very slow and needs privacy. Having someone pre-empt God’s question is like a rookie cop fouling up a very long and sensitive federal investigation. Did you read the stories that came through during lockdown about the lack of visitors at the zoo helping the pandas to achieve successful courtships? It is something to remember when you are trying to foster vocations of all kinds.

Secondly, the only person who has the right to ask the vocation question is someone who has taken the time to know the young person well; to know his or her likes and dislikes; to see how the young person conducts relationships, to assess gifts and talents, and who can consequently answer these questions:

Can they sing? A dear friend, now deceased, was adamant about this being crucially important. It is rather difficult to help lead others in worship if you can’t sing. A priest needs to intone the beginning of many sung liturgical prayers. Will we mention the archbishop who grimaces each time he has to intone the Gloria? Perhaps not. Even a parent needs to be able to sing nursery rhymes and to initiate sing-a-longs on long road trips. Big liturgical occasions need a deacon who can sing the Gospel.

Are they capable of tertiary study? This is particularly pertinent to priestly and religious vocations. Priestly studies go for around 7 years with lots of exams. But even religious are required to do extensive study on the founder of the order, the charisms of the order, the rule, and how to live out poverty, chastity and obedience.

Do they work well in a team? This capacity is essential for a well-functioning parish. It is essential for religious life. It is essential for the husband-wife relationship.

Do they have the capacity to listen? Without this capacity penitents are going to find going to confession very difficult. Without this capacity any kind of pastoral care is going to fail. Without this capacity your spouse will not feel loved. Without this capacity a troubled religious will have trouble confiding in a religious superior.

Do they have the capacity for self-sacrifice? All vocations need this capacity. When a priest gets a hospital call in the middle of the night he needs this capacity. It is the essence of a religious vocation. Parents too have regular opportunities for self-sacrifice in changing nappies, midnight feeds, when youngsters are ill, when budgets are tight.

Do they regularly have an outlet for serving others? Have they become good at it? Have they begun to find joy in it? Serving others is a regular part of priestly, religious and family life. Any inability to serve is going to cause great difficulties.

When they speak, do others listen, and do others follow? A latent capacity for leadership is essential for a priestly vocation. But even a religious often has to rally volunteers for a project, and a parent often has to rally unwilling offspring for chores.

Do they have sufficient people skills? Being able to engage parishioners in small talk after Mass is obvious. But being able to work the room at a social function so that everyone receives attention and no one misses out is less obvious and more important. It is also what distinguishes the great hosts and hostesses from the mediocre ones- at family celebrations, at retreat weekends, and at any event where newcomers may be present.

Can they admit when they have made mistakes? The inability to admit mistakes sours relationships. In times past regular public confession of faults was part of religious life. The ability to say, ‘I stuffed up, I’m sorry’ is also a regular part of a healthy marriage. Consider the case where a lay person has opened up the church for Mass, and set everything up, and is ready to go home on a Saturday morning and the priest says as the person is leaving, ‘there’s an adult getting baptised in 30 minutes time, I need you to stick around for it’. No apology for abusing their goodness. No apology for not communicating the need a few days earlier so that the lay person had a chance to either re-arrange their lives or suggest alternative helpers. Such behaviour may have got the baptism running smoothly, but it has set the private needs of the lay person at zero and has set up resentment in the lay person. Instead of a loyal helper the priest now has a ‘do the bare minimum’ helper. Short term gain, long term loss.

Are they free of addictions? This is considerably important. Sadly I have seen far too many vocations, especially priestly vocations undone by an addiction from early in their lives coming back to bite them 20 years or so after ordination, and that includes alcohol, and chasing the company of women as well as gambling and the nastier things. Addictions of any kind also wreck family life because it builds up a pattern of hiding and deceit, and for family life to thrive requires trust and honesty and wholesomeness.

Are they reliable? Can you rely on them to show up in sufficient time to do a rostered task? If you ask them to do something, do you have confidence that they will get it done? Do they keep their promises and their commitments? In days gone by this wasn’t such an issue, but with the advent of ‘yes, subject to a better offer’ and ‘yes, unless someone changes my mind in the meantime’ it has really become an issue. To someone who is reliable you can give more weighty tasks than to someone who is less reliable. Having seen the havoc caused by clerics who change their minds about an issue every time a new person speaks to them about that issue, I know that no one wants to experience that. Neither does anyone want the Christmas Mass roster changed several times in the hours prior to the first Christmas Eve Mass. Choosing a course and sticking with it enables others to trust your word and your ministry.

Do they have some resistance to peer pressure? All of us are susceptible to peer pressure and propaganda to some degree. Being somewhat resistant to it enables you to follow God’s will no matter what, and no matter the unpleasant consequences. The late Pope Benedict XVI received respect from all his peers because he could never be drawn into factions and any ‘us vs them’ mentality. Any group of human beings has factions, usually divided between what is considered progress and what is considered keeping to the traditions; or divided between pro-leader and anti-leader. Belonging to factions usually requires some conformity even if the conformity is nonsensical or sinful. Belonging to factions also closes the mind and heart to alternate ideas. Because groups of priests who drink too much exist, and groups of religious who take on the latest spirituality craze exist, being able to resist joining them is important for spiritual health. Even in families, being able to resist ‘keeping up with the Jones family’ really matters. Tight budgets get tighter if everyone else seems to be getting new golf clubs or kitchen renovations.

Are they able to express gratitude for help received? There is a strain of priestly culture which says you don’t have to thank anybody, because if you do thank them, you reduce God’s reward to them. That is erroneous. God cannot be outdone in generosity, and He rewards those who serve Him in lavish ways. Visiting a nursing home is very instructive. The residents who are unresponsive and cranky no one wants to serve or visit. The residents who are responsive and who show gratitude for assistance given, everyone wants to serve and visit them. Anything you reward with thanks, praise or tokens of appreciation will reinforce that behaviour. But it needs to be the right behaviour and not the wrong behaviour. I’ve seen too many rewards given to workaholics who sacrificed sleep, health and family to meet a business requirement. I’ve rarely seen a reward for someone who gets the job done quietly and efficiently and maintains a proper work-life balance. But going overboard with thanks for every little tiny thing is bad too. Appreciation when given must mean something and not nothing. It is the person who gets to the church early to open up for Mass who needs some encouragement and recognition now and then, since most people don’t see it happen. It is the mother doing the daily tasks of nurturing children who needs some encouragement and recognition now and then, and not only on Mothers Day. It is the religious who doesn’t hesitate to answer the door or answer the phone who needs some encouragement and recognition now and then. Having a heart of gratitude to God for all His gifts and blessings needs to spill over in gratitude for those who assist us.

Have they worked through any traumatic experiences to a place of acceptance and forgiveness? Very few people escape a traumatic experience in childhood or adolescence, and some of them are very big traumas eg domestic violence, death of a parent, serious illness, betrayal. Any unresolved grief, lingering resentment, unhealed soul wounds will eventually poison vocations if not dealt with. If a person is unable to say unequivocally that God is an utterly good Father towards themselves, then they will be unable to make that necessary proclamation to others. Until that level of acceptance and forgiveness is reached, they should not progress to the next step in their vocation, be that spouse, religious, deacon or priest. Yes, it can take a very long time to get to that place, but without achieving it they will be unable to give full consent to the next vocational step.

Do they include others in decision making processes? Only asking those who always agree with whatever you say doesn’t count. Unilateral decisions made by those in leadership are almost always bad news. Imagine making a decision about a new receptacle for the weekend collections without consulting your experienced wardens and your risk assessment people? Disaster. Where the new receptable was placed made theft easier and collections were pilfered. Imagine making a decision about a mission preacher without consulting your parish council and your parish influencers. Disaster. The mission preacher had the same accent inflections as the pastor, which were alien to the congregation. Getting to the better decisions requires some consultation with stakeholders and some consultation with those who have the necessary wisdom about the subject matter. It also involves having an attitude of seeking the best solution for the greatest common good, and the humble recognition that often you are indeed fallible and not omniscient. Without inviting input from his wife, how can a husband make the best decisions for their family?

This is the raw material necessary for any potential seminary candidate. Some of it can be learned and increased, some of it can’t. However these are also the potentialities for success as a parent, as a religious, and as a leader in any kind of organisation. Therefore anyone with this necessary raw material will have several organisations competing for his or her potential. Be aware that this kind of fierce competition is happening.

What can be learned and increased needs to become the aim of youth ministry and young adult ministry. That’s what we need to measure and celebrate, not numbers of emerging vocations. An emerging vocation is worth very little if it flames out due to lack of necessary raw material.

Thirdly, it takes time to distinguish between someone responding to the normal Christian vocation to holiness and mission and between someone responding to a higher call than that. Outwardly they often look the same.

A normal Christian vocation to holiness and mission will have a daily prayer life, and regularity about going to the sacrament of penance and attending Mass. All of us are called to love God with all our hearts, minds, souls and spirits. Attendance at adoration is normal. Getting excited about the bible, and papal documents, and saints, and prayer meetings and prayer retreats is normal. Getting enthusiastic about bringing the news of Jesus to others, and about helping those in need, is normal. All of these are needed to live a full Christian life whatever our vocation may be.

So what distinguishes a higher call?

A priestly vocation needs the desire and ability to preach, it also needs desire and ability to lead God’s people in holiness and mission.

Religious and priestly vocations also have a wideness and a focus in love. That’s the desire to love and serve as many as possible because it’s the only way that is big enough to return the overwhelming love that Jesus has shown them. There’s a sense that to focus the outpouring of their love for Jesus only into spouse and children is insufficient.

Higher calls are also distinguished by longer preparation times, seasons of wilderness, and a greater share of trials and ordeals. Have a quick read through how God prepared His biblical heroes especially Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, and David and you will begin to comprehend. There’s also that line in scripture, ‘My son, if you aspire to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal’. Ecclesiasticus 2:1

Higher calls can be given to lay people too. Consider those called to found ministries and those called to exercise charisms at levels of national and international significance: Writers, Artists, Musicians, Mercy, Evangelists, Healing, Signs and Wonders, Prophecy, Preaching, Teaching.

Any of these higher calls require extraordinary commitment. To be confronted with the possibility of a higher call when you are far from ready to even begin cautiously taking a surreptitious peek at it – is enough to make a young person run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

That’s why it is so hard for young men to commit to any kind of youth group. They are already scared about how much God may ask of them, especially celibacy. Getting serious about God is dangerous stuff for a young man. Then when a seminarian or newly ordained priest visits the youth group to talk about answering God’s call, they very naturally take fright and go missing.

That’s why we’ve got to start doing things differently. Having a vocations director turn up to speak about priestly vocations when there’s only one young bloke in the youth group must stop. If that young bloke is already at church regularly, he’s already carrying the expectations of the whole congregation – a heavy and unfair load – and now he feels targeted by the talk, and then has to endure the shy and sly glances of everyone else in the room when the vocations director finishes his talk. I’d run, wouldn’t you?

About the only way around this impasse is to have a wide panel of people speaking about vocations. What you want is a holy accountant, a holy nurse, a holy grandmother, a holy police officer, a holy electrician, and a holy religious sharing about God’s call in their lives as well as the priestly representative. Then if a young person does get up sufficient courage to have a quiet word with the priestly representative, everyone else is lining up to know more from the other speakers – and the shy and sly glances are reduced to a minimum. What you want is for everyone to be excited about following God’s call, no matter what it happens to be.

Seminary itself is supposed to be a time of discernment. Sadly far too many people think that beginning seminary training means that becoming a priest or a religious is therefore a done deal. As soon as a youngster makes a tentative announcement about entering the seminary, priestly or religious, he or she is considered public property. That kind of pressure makes true discernment far more difficult than it needs to be. Please listen to this next statement very carefully. God has a track record of sending young men to seminary for a few years, and then calling them out again for other ministries. He knows they need the book learning for what He has for them to do. St Mary McKillop’s father had a few years in a seminary. One of the best regional St Vincent de Paul conference leaders had a few years in a seminary. Stop shaming the ones who exit seminary, and instead help them to follow whatever God is calling them to which needed that seminary experience. This is also true for those who enter religious life, learn to live in community and under the rule, and then leave. God isn’t finished with them either.
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Our focus must turn to helping each young person to develop the traits which will make them successful in whatever God calls them to do, and to helping all of them to listen, discern and respond to what God is calling them to do. Because everything God calls us to do is important. Even responding to a nudge from God that a certain acquaintance needs a phone call is important. Learning to listen, discern and respond to the easy stuff is the best preparation for listening, discerning and responding to the greater stuff.

Recent discussions with friends brought up the life of Caroline Chisholm several times. In her life there is much to inspire, and also much to relate to: expat, wife, military wife, mother, dedicated to works of mercy on behalf of immigrants, woman of faith, convert, courageous lobbyist of governments for social improvements, leader of travels into bush regions, and who spent her latter years with kidney troubles on a limited income – and all in the 19th century. For a time her image was on one side of the Australian $5 note when it was still printed on paper and not on polymer.
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Such broad brush descriptions of Caroline Chisholm’s life inevitably led to ‘how can I find out more about her’ questions. That’s where Rodney Stinson’s books come in. His first book about her is ‘Unfeigned Love: Historical Accounts of Caroline Chisholm and Her Work’. It was published in 2008. His second book about her is ‘See Judge Act: Caroline Chisholm’s Lay Apostolate’. It was published in 2009.

Mint condition copies of both books are still available by either writing to Yorkcross Pty Ltd, GPO Box 2171, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia or by emailing webmaster@mrschisholm.com
These details were printed in the books.

Should you think the phrase See Judge Act is familiar, that may be because it is the guiding principle of the Young Christian Workers and Young Christian Students movements. A very long time ago my parish youth group was a part of the Young Christian Students movement, but not a very good part because we did a bit too much talking about issues and not enough doing something about issues. I suspect that we were less than successful because we didn’t have worked examples of the See Judge Act method happening in real life to make the process tangible and give us those ‘aha’ moments of understanding. By putting Caroline Chisholm’s social work under the See Judge Act lens those missing worked examples are provided.

The first section of the book is a detailed introduction to this See Judge Act method. Read this part last unless you have had an association with the YCW and YCS movements.

The second section of the book is a very good biographical summary of Caroline Chisholm’s life. It would take about 30 minutes to read that summary aloud to a student or a group, and if done in two sections would suit bedtime story time or home school story time.

The last section of the book, after an explanatory chapter, then contains chapters about specific incidents in Caroline Chisholm’s life and her active response to them. Each chapter contains questions suitable for group discussion.

Because each of those seven chapters is relatively short, with the story part taking 15-20 minutes to read aloud to a group, it is short enough to allowing enough time to fit a 15-20 minute discussion into a 40 minute school lesson or ethics lesson, or even into a youth group meeting, or an adult faith group study into how to live out the parable of the Good Samaritan in daily life.

For example, one chapter tells of the arrival of an immigrant ship, and Caroline’s discovery that an outgoing 15 year old girl was missing. From past experience Caroline has a good idea of who may have enticed the lass away from safety and Caroline undertakes to travel a considerable distance at night over water to convince both the man to let the lass go, and to convince the lass to return with her across the water. The stakes were high. Staying with such a man was the path to becoming a single mother, and without any social security payments in the colony and the huge social shame, most young women on that path ended up either being forced into prostitution to survive or choosing suicide. Returning with Caroline meant the hope of getting employment with a reputable employer and the hope of finding a good husband to marry.

These short chapters would suit home school families looking for unit studies incorporating Australian history, geography, civics, social justice and opportunity for research skills. They should prompt questions about assisted immigration, what Sydney and New South Wales was like in the 1840s, how colonial government worked, what the fashions of the 1840s were like, considerations of the social welfare situation in the 1840s, and hopefully a deep dive into the letters to the editor of the Sydney newspapers of the time via the Trove website of the National Library of Australia.

For its purpose, to encourage and stimulate discussion about the life of Caroline Chisholm, this little book of 50 pages of texts and fully attributed images succeeds.
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But the detailed incidents in the seven short chapters do leave you wanting to know more about her. So if you are primarily looking for the full story of Caroline Chisholm’s life based on well-researched documentary evidence, Rodney Stinson’s other book Unfeigned Love would be a better choice for you.

This may seem like a very strange topic to bring to your attention, but it does tell a salutary tale about how media has been manipulated. It is of importance to us because media is a pathway to spread the Gospel; and if voices in the media can be muffled, then the God-fearing voices in the media can also be muzzled.

Normally long messages on Twitter either appear as Twitter-threads or as a series of numbered stand-alone tweets. After a person gets to about 30 in a series, and it is generating massive discussion sometimes the Twitter-threads get broken. That’s what happened more than once. Thankfully there were generous people who attempted to put the tweets in chronological order to make them easier to read for those who have little Twitter experience. They had a difficult task.

A bit of background may help. Some weeks after Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter he promised to release information held within the Twitter databases about the events that led to the expulsion of President Trump from Twitter on 8 Jan 2021. To do this Elon selected a few journalists and gave them access to the files at Twitter. However it was a requirement that what they released had to be published on Twitter first before it was published on any other kind of media.

On Saturday 3 Dec 2022, Australian time, the first of the Twitter Files was released via @mtaibbi. It laid the groundwork for what was to follow, and each batch of Twitter Files builds on the previous batch. Bear in mind that if these things were going on at Twitter, they were certainly also going on at other social media sites and in main-stream media as well.

The first one is here, but there is irrelevant stuff between the actual tweets.
Keep going till you get to the very end.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-elon-musk-releases-files-on-twitters-censorship-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story

This is part of @mtaibbi’s introduction, which is provided as an enticement to learn more:

3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

Although further information was supposed to be released the next day, nothing happened for several days until @mtaibbi released supplemental information.

You can read it in full here:
https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/07/second-twitter-file-thread-supplement-to-the-1st-thread/

Here is a mini summary:

“On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.
The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.
Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @bariweiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was Jim Baker. He had been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess.”

Within a day or two the second set of Twitter Files was released. It has the inside scoop on shadow banning. Yes, many suspected this was happening, but to see actual evidence of it was stunning.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/08/twitter-files-part-2/

Here are the introductory tweets for this second set of Twitter Files:

2. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.
3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) ) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.
4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.”
5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.”
6. Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.

The rest of this series of tweets shows that shadow banning based on political viewpoints and ideology did happen. Unless you know how bad it got, it will be difficult to understand the next series of tweets.

The third set of Twitter Files was about how President Trump, while he was still President, was shadow banned in various ways before and after the 2020 American presidential elections.
Yes, while he was still in the Oval Office.
It is serious stuff. 67 tweets worth.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/09/twitter-files-part-3/

Here is part of the introduction:

5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.
6. As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The “new administration,” says one exec, “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”
7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.
8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.

The fourth set of Twitter Files sadly were not numbered, and they might not be all in this link because there was a 2-to-3-hour gap between part 1 and part 2. Look for posts on 11 December from @ShellenbergerMD for the missing tweets. The previous set of Twitter Files took us up to 6 January 2021. This set takes us from there to 7 January 2021.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/10/twitter-files-part-4/

Here is part of the introduction:

“For years, Twitter had resisted calls to ban Trump. “Blocking a world leader from Twitter,” it wrote in 2018, “would hide important info... [and] hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack (Jack Dorsey) grows. Former First Lady @michelleobama , tech journalist @karaswisher , @ADL, high-tech VC @ChrisSacca, , and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump.
Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021. He phoned into meetings but also delegated much of the handling of the situation to senior execs @yoyoel, Twitter’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, and @vijaya, Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust.
As context, it's important to understand that Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff's political donations went to Democrats.
On January 7, @Jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension After, Roth reassures an employee that "people who care about this... aren't happy with where we are"”

The fifth set of Twitter Files reveals the internal communications on 8 January 2021 which led to the permanent suspension of President Trump, who was still officially the President of the United States of America until 20 January 2021 when Joe Biden was sworn in.

https://radiopatriot.net/2022/12/12/the-twitter-files-part-5/

Here is an introduction to this set of files, which may or may not be the full set of files:

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.”
8. But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier.
9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee.
10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer. It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another.
11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”
12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies. “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.
13. “It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”
14. Another staffer agreed: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.”

Notice that President Trump was declared innocent of violating the Twitter Terms of Service, yet he was still permanently suspended from Twitter. His account was re-instated by Elon Musk in recent weeks, although it has yet to be used. So the first thing a viewer of @realDonaldTrump’s account will see are these non-inciting tweets.

Many of the tweets that form the Twitter Files are backed up with screenshots of actual internal Twitter communications with some of the names and dates redacted.

What is on this blog-page is only a taster of what is in the full five Twitter Files. Please read and absorb it all. Understand that this kind of social media behaviour has been impacting countries throughout the world, not just America. Reading them certainly made me angry, as they should. But it should spurn us both to prayer and to action. Prayer that such evil is drained away completely and never holds sway again. Action that shares with others what you have discovered; and shares it as far as possible with those who have only ever heard the shadow banned version of events.

For evil to flourish all that is required is for the good to keep silent.
​
May God help us do what we must. Amen.
 

In recent weeks I have been doing a deep drive into local history. Rapidly it went from how did British settlement start in this area?: to what can be discovered about them?: to horror at how the native peoples were treated: to what was the unwritten side of the story?

The British had lived for centuries under an accepted cultural system.

The native peoples had lived for millennia under a completely different accepted cultural system; in fact you could say it was a road untraveled by any other culture.

The British and most other cultures worked on a notion of private property, and understood that this system accepted violence as a cost of civilisation. If you had something, you had to be prepared to defend it; and if you wanted to grow in importance then you had to usurp the property of others either by violence or coercion.

The native peoples came up with a completely different solution.

Instead of regular patterns of group vs group violence they chose mutual benevolence. Admittedly being human, disputes over mating rights did occur. However that is observable behaviour in the animal kingdom. What they chose was mutual survival. Part of this was choosing hospitality towards strangers to diffuse any possible violent intent.

Even now it is a difficult concept for Western minds to grasp.

The native people used what they needed from the land, and then moved on to a new location. They never depleted an area of resources. Tribes consisted of a number of family groups. Estimates for this location have a minimum number of 10 family groups, but there could have been 15 family groups, or even 20 family groups as part of one tribe. Survival depended on being part of a family group.

At certain times during the year and at agreed locations the whole tribe would gather together to conduct necessary tribal business including dispute resolution. When children neared the age of becoming an eligible mating partner, the men took the boys for initiation rites and the women took the girls for initiation rites. There were complicated rules to prevent relationships between close blood lines.

Picture an area of some 240 km2 and that would be a tribal area or country. Within it the various family groups are moving independently. Place names within country either describe geographical features, or the specific flora and fauna of a sub area, or the tribal purpose of the area. Therefore the next family group to pass where your family group has had a sojourn is most likely to be another family group within the tribe. Making sure your family group didn’t deplete the resources of a sub-area meant that the next family group to stay in that sub-area would have enough to survive.

You could think of this locality as a submerged mountain range. Which means getting anywhere other than along the waterline is going to be up hill and down dale, over rocks and timbered terrain with an occasional cave or hard rock surface. Therefore it made a lot of sense to leave tools made of natural materials where the next family group could find and use them than to carry them from place to place. In hospitality to each other on hard rock surfaces simple images of the safe game to hunt were painstakingly carved, or sometimes simple images conveying other messages to the initiated.

The other thing about this locality was the threat of flood, bushfire and drought. Anything built would either get washed away or burned away, so it truly was pointless to build anything permanent. But what was possible was working with the seasons and the locations of flora and fauna to obtain the best outcomes for everyone.

Here’s an example: In most places the tree line came down to the waterline. But there were areas that were flat, having been built up by natural sand deposits from the beach. These places were covered with native grasses due to specific cultivation. At the right time of year when the wind was in the necessary direction this flat land would be set on fire in such a way that the fire went towards the beach and burnt itself out for lack of fuel. The fire did two things: it dissuaded trees from growing and the fresh shoots of grasses after the fire would attract game animals. What this meant was that when the tribe gathered annually in that location to be together there was a plentiful food supply.

If someone was guilty of grave misdemeanor there was effective punishment. The miscreant was obliged to become the ‘first taster’ of the family group. Until a new miscreant emerged, the current miscreant became the go-to person to test whether a food stuff was poisonous or not, and if a food stuff was sufficiently ripe or not. The rest of the group would wait a day or two to see what happened to the first taster before sampling the food stuff themselves. As both a deterrent strategy and as a way of safeguarding the group from toxins it is quite brilliant.

What we often fail to appreciate is that this way of life was so successful that it didn’t need to change. It had remained a successful way of life through long stretches of drought and through long stretches of rain, through hail, storm and bushfire. It was a way of life sufficiently adaptable that paradigm change wasn’t necessary.

What this culture did do was to closely observe the natural environment. They studied the plants, the animals, the weather patterns and the landscape patterns. It wasn’t for interest, it was for survival. If you studied the life cycle and the migration patterns and eating patterns of the kangaroo then the hunt would be more successful. Not only did they study, but they used what they had learned in dancing in imitation of kangaroo and emu and through that medium passed knowledge to the younger members.

Stories were passed down from generation to generation which contained not only knowledge of the local animals but also moral lessons. On the surface they were simple and entertaining stories, but they had multiple layers of meaning. The deeper layers of meaning were only taught when a member was considered ready to learn them. This is not dissimilar to memory by association techniques.

These patterns of listening and observing the created world, and the stillness necessary for successful observation meant that this ancient culture was also in tune with the spiritual realms. Most tribes would be in tune with the good, the true and the beautiful, but some tribes would align with the darker elements in the spirit world. Not everything in the dreamtime is safe. Human beings wherever they reside are capable of both cruelty and gentleness; they thrive under good leadership and they suffer under poor leadership.

When the explorers arrived in 1770 with their western eyes they saw a natural landscape bereft of built structures; no stone structures like the Aztecs, no tents like the native Americans, no huts like the Polynesians. What they didn’t have eyes to see was a respectfully and minimally cultivated native landscape with everything needed for the survival of an ancient culture.
The description of the land as terra nullius was incorrect and wrong, yet convenient for a small island nation with dense population and many persons convicted of crime to punish. It was the first injustice upon which other injustices were perpetrated.

If not for help the native peoples gave to these strange idiots who were beginning to starve due to lack of local knowledge, the fledgling colony would not have survived. This pattern of help was repeated as explorations and new settlements began. When a convict absconded into the woods, or when someone got lost or shipwrecked, native tribes enabled them to survive.

Due to terra nullius the governor of the colony felt free to award large areas of land firstly to non-convicts, and later to convicts who had either proved themselves useful or who had served their time. No consideration was given to the what the native tribes had used these tracts of land for. The more important the ancient land use, the more likely native retaliation would be, and ancient weapons - lethal though they could be - were no match for guns.

The native population only had naturally occurring sugars in their diet from honey and berry-like fruit. Therefore the introduction of complex sugars and especially alcohol had severe effects including addiction and diabetes. Neither were they immune to the diseases that the settlers brought with them. Due to this many lives were lost prematurely.

When settlers began looking further afield than the Sydney colony there were two motives; one to find farm land with which to feed the colony and the other to exploit any other resources they found to the best of their ability. Hence the deforestation of cedar trees in the Brisbane Water area, and the commercial harvesting of seafood, particularly crayfish. No consideration was given to the impact of these exploitive activities upon the stable ecosystems and the well-trodden hunting and gathering routes of the native tribes. Local resistance was met with violence, written complaints to colonial authority, and with imprisonment and deportation. Some natives were tried for snatching the equivalent of a cigar out of a local colonial bigwig’s hands, and sentenced to deportation to Tasmania. It was commuted to two years’ hard labour in iron chains quarrying rock on a rocky outcrop island near Newcastle.

The net effect over several decades of occupation was the genocide of some native tribes and the decimation of other tribes. Since the early settlers had a very high male to female ratio of inhabitants many of the local tribeswomen were impregnated against their will and the resulting children suffered from not fully belonging to either culture. Such practices broke down the kinship bonds designed to transmit culture from one generation to the next.

The losses sustained by the native tribes are incalculable.

Sadly it has taken almost 235 years for us to begin to understand those immense losses.

This cannot have been God’s original plan.

Only the evil one is known for robbing, killing and destroying.
The losses of the early decades were followed up by the White Australia policy, and the systematic destruction of families by taking the children of native tribes to be raised in anglo-celtic families, and continued with other government policies which ultimately harmed more than helped.

So what could have been God’s original plan, and what’s behind this implacable hatred of the evil one for the native peoples of this land?

God’s plan must have been that we should learn the best from each other in order to build a completely new society based on respect for God, respect for creation, the cherishing of family life and the mutually beneficial sharing and conserving of resources.

Why the evil one’s hatred? Because this ancient culture was remarkably resilient against temptation to sin. Because it had so much good to teach and bequeath to humanity. Consider that greed, the root of all evil, did not have a foothold in this culture. Sloth is deadly in a survival culture, so it didn’t have much of a foothold either. That’s why the vehement desire for it to be snuffed out, disfigured and destroyed as quickly as possible.

Yet despite that hatred, despite the areas of genocide, the threads of that ancient culture are being slowly put back together with each artefact return, with each rediscovery of the wisdom in ancient practices and in ancient stories, and with each discovery of the gentle imprints upon the land by the ancient cultures. The deposit of good is beginning to be treasured as it should have been from the beginning.

What can we do to co-operate with God’s Plan?
​
We can ask God’s pardon and mercy upon all the sins and crimes perpetrated against the native peoples of this land.
We can ask God’s blessing upon the descendants of the native peoples of this land.
We can ask God to recompence the native peoples for all the losses and injustice they have suffered.
We can ask for God’s perfect will to be accomplished in this land.
We can work on eradicating greed and sloth from our own lives.

Over the past few months, the articles in the Catholic Weekly from Dr Philippa Martyr have had me writing either rebuttals or questioning the assumptions upon which the assertions in her articles were made. Even though they didn’t make it to publication here, they have caused me to reflect deeply.

In particular, could this part of her response be true?
"Perhaps I should have also said in my limited 750 words that the laity also need to learn to be less trigger-happy. What you're describing are not major challenges to faith and morals, like having all the laity 'co-consecrate' or things of that sort. They're minor liturgical hiccups that irritate you personally."

You need to know that I was speaking of the breaking of the one cross per altar rule and the replacement of the homily with a few brief words prior to the penitential rite. On the surface level maybe they do look like minutiae.

Lay co-consecration is serious because it is a strong ideological statement about the priesthood of all believers, and a denial of what pertains only to the ordained priesthood.

Yet a brief stroll through the Scriptures shows that God takes unlawful acts very seriously.

In Leviticus 10:1-2 we have two of Aaron’s sons taking a short cut by using ordinary fire for their incense censers instead of fire from the perpetual flame on the altar. God caused the unlawful fire consumed them immediately.

In Numbers 16 we have a lay rebellion, Korah who was descended from Levi but not from Aaron, said to Moses and Aaron, ‘You take too much on yourselves! The whole community and all its members are consecrated, and the Lord God lives among them. Why set yourselves higher than the community of the Lord God?’ What was God’s response? When all the rebels were gathered together in one place, the earth split open and swallowed them all.

And lest we think this was just a caution for Old Testament times, read 1 Cor 11:28-32: ‘Everyone is to recollect himself before eating this bread and drinking this cup; because a person who eats and drinks without recognizing the Body is eating and drinking his own condemnation. In fact that is why many of you are weak and some of you have died. If only we recollected ourselves, we should not be punished like that. But when the Lord does punish us like that, it is to correct us and stop us from being condemned with the world.’

We might then ask, well why hasn’t God done something dramatic about it? The answer might be in 1 Samuel chapters 2 and 3. Here we have the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, who were scoundrels at the altar of God. It continued for some time. Eli did warn them that sinning against God was truly serious. Then God sent an adult prophet to prophesy judgment on Eli for permitting it to happen, as well as on the two culprits. Later God spoke through the boy Samuel and warned Eli again. When Samuel had grown up, then God’s judgement came swiftly onto the whole family of Eli.

So if God hasn’t acted yet, then He has been sending warnings to both bishop and priest, and when the cup of iniquity is full, God will then act in swift judgement.

But in the meantime, there is a punishment from God that St John of Avila writes about eloquently in ‘Audi, Filia’, it is the utter misfortune of being left by God in your own errors. Because if you are in error, and you don’t know that you are in error, how can you possibly get out of that error? Ponder that until the full horror of that finds a place in your heart.

It is truly a mercy from God when He shines a light into our hearts, let’s us perceive what is wrong, and invites us to change in order to grow closer to Him.

To escape the consequences of error – if God has withdrawn from you -, someone would have to take pity upon you; and plead with God assiduously for your conversion. All of us should be afraid of this punishment; and pray with King David ‘Do not deprive me of Your holy spirit’ Psalm 50(51)11 and ‘God, examine me and know my heart, probe me and know my thoughts; make sure I do not follow pernicious ways, and guide me in the way that is everlasting’ Psalm 138(139):23-24.

So let’s now go through the breaking of the one cross per altar rule and the replacement of the homily with a few brief words prior to the penitential rite and determine whether they are minor liturgical hiccups or not.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (G.I.R.M.) has a lot to say about the relationship between the cross/crucifix and the altar. See Appendix A below.

Here we pause for a little and consider that if such precise instructions have been laid out by the Church Universal, then ipso facto these instructions have to be far from trivial.

G.I.R.M 308. 'There is also to be a cross, with the figure of Christ crucified upon it, either on the altar or near it, where it is clearly visible to the assembled congregation. It is appropriate that such a cross, which calls to mind for the faithful the saving Passion of the Lord, remain near the altar even outside of liturgical celebrations.'

In some churches this is done by having a crucifix suspended above the altar, and the processional cross placed on a side wall out of general sight when the entrance procession is over.

When there is a suspended crucifix, then having an additional small portable upright crucifix on the altar to aid the devotion of the priest is not licit. Possibly it would be licit in such cases to have a small crucifix laying flat on the altar – but it wouldn’t be a good thing. It is the crucifix either on or near the altar that denotes that this particular table-like structure is indeed an altar. There is a one-to-one correspondence of crucifix to altar, and this is underlined in the rubrics for the entrance procession when, if there is incense, only the cross and altar are incensed.

This lack of a devotional crucifix on the altar for the priest underscores that in the Mass we are publicly worshipping God, and that the Church – presumably after much argy-bargy in centuries past – came down on the side of clear visible signs for the people of God, and not on the personal preferences of the priest.

Can you now see that an important liturgical principle is at stake here? Liturgy is a public solemn act of worship of God by the Head (Jesus) and members (us) of the Body of Christ. In it is no room for private devotional preferences.

Pope Francis in Desiderio Desideravi 48 says this: 'The rite is in itself a norm, and the norm is never an end in itself, but it is always at the service of a higher reality that it means to protect.'

All of us are custodial servants of this profound gift of Liturgy. It is God’s work, we are but participants by His grace.

Whenever we start thinking of ourselves as masters of the liturgy, with the ability to change parts of it at will according to personal preference, instead of thinking of ourselves as grateful servants, then we have got it very wrong.

Here we come to the missing homily, and this is generally a weekday issue and not a Sunday issue. Yes G.I.R.M. 66b says this, itself a quotation from ‘Inter Oecumenici’:
‘There is to be a homily on Sundays and holy days of obligation at all Masses that are celebrated with the participation of a congregation; it may not be omitted without a serious reason. It is recommended on other days, especially on the weekdays of Advent, Lent, and the Easter Season, as well as on other festive days and occasions when the people come to church in greater numbers.’

And G.I.R.M. 43b
'They should, however, sit while the readings before the Gospel and the responsorial Psalm are proclaimed and for the homily and while the Preparation of the Gifts at the Offertory is taking place; and, as circumstances allow, they may sit or kneel while the period of sacred silence after Communion is observed.'

What is happening locally? First one, and when he left us, now a second priest, has started giving brief remarks prior to the penitential rite, while we are still standing, and then no homily at all, on weekdays. We normally range between 20 and 50 persons for weekday Masses, with greater numbers on Wednesdays and Fridays.

What does that mean in practice? We are standing to listen to commentary on readings which have yet to be read to us, and by the time they are read to us, we have either forgotten the commentary or are scratching our heads to connect the commentary with the readings, unless we have hearing aids and thus have only experienced gibberish. It can become a good guessing game of ‘which readings do the commentary relate to’ – but that isn’t breaking open the Word of God, is it?

There is good reason why the Church places the homily after the readings.

But it goes deeper than that on at least two levels.

The first level of these came home to me when I was visiting an elderly gentleman parishioner in the local hospital. He had been in and out of hospital for the previous few weeks. He was completely alert, albeit a bit uncomfortable, so I was surprised when he kindly and firmly said ‘What I need now is Jesus, only Jesus’. To my even greater surprise he died a few hours later. But what he said has stayed with me, and has resonated with me for over 25 years.

What our frail elderly who show up at Mass every morning need beyond anything else is Jesus, only Jesus. They need their hearts to be refreshed by the wonder of who Jesus is in every homily. Mind you, so do the rest of us as well.

Evangelii Gaudium 135b: ‘The homily is the touchstone for judging a pastor’s closeness and ability to communicate to his people. We know that the faithful attach great importance to it, and that both they and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them! It is sad that this is the case. The homily can actually be an intense and happy experience of the Spirit, a consoling encounter with God’s Word, a constant source of renewal and growth.’

Evangelii Gaudium 137: ‘It is worth remembering that “the liturgical proclamation of the Word of God, especially in the eucharistic assembly, is not so much a time for meditation and catechesis as a dialogue between God and His people, a dialogue in which the great deeds of salvation are proclaimed and the demands of the covenant are continually restated”. The homily has special importance due to its eucharistic context: it surpasses all forms of catechesis as the supreme moment in the dialogue between God and His people which lead up to sacramental communion. The homily takes up once more the dialogue which the Lord has already established with His people. The preacher must know the heart of his community, in order to realize where its desire for God is alive and ardent, as well as where that dialogue, once loving, has been thwarted and is now barren.’

The second level is that breaking open the Word of God is the way our hearts are touched and changed; and unless they are touched and changed our reception of Jesus in Holy Communion remains unchanged too.

Romans 10:13b-15a,17 says it all: ‘For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But they will not ask His help unless they believe in Him, and they will not believe in Him unless they have heard of Him, and they will not hear of Him unless they get a preacher, and they will never have a preacher unless one is sent. So faith comes from what is preached, and what is preached comes from the word of Christ.’

Homilies don’t have to be long, they can be extremely brief if only they go some way towards connecting our hearts to Jesus, and opening them in gratitude to the Father. Being in a receptive posture helps too, that is why sitting is important. Remember that standing for those who are frail or unwell or in joint pain is an ordeal.

What isn’t acceptable is a pastor who no longer has an assistant priest being perfunctory about the Mass in order to get on with all his other duties, thereby reducing any homily to an introductory commentary and saving time by returning to the altar (instead of to the presidential chair to sit), thus reducing the time after communion to a minimum, and giving out the concluding prayers from the altar.

Shouldn’t something else get sacrificed instead of preparation to preach the Word of God? Peter and the Apostles thought it of such importance that they appointed deacons to take care of food distribution and other matters. Acts 6:1-6.

If there is anything else in his life for which it is considered necessary to consistently take short cuts in the Mass, then something is seriously wrong. Once in a while, as long as good reason is proffered, is quite a different matter.

It smacks of being master of liturgy instead of being a grateful servant of the liturgy, cutting the liturgy according to personal preference and availability for other things. In some ways this is more dangerous than our lay co-consecration friend. Why? Because the majority of priests and people will sense and abhor the wrongness of lay co-consecration. And because those priests who don’t consider preaching a homily to be an honoured privilege will think it a great idea – and copy him! And because those who don’t mind the shortest Mass possible, will also think it a great idea.

Nothing any of us can do each day can shine even a candle to the magnitude of what the Lord God does in the Mass each day.

Am I being mean? Is this a minor liturgical hiccup? Poor father, he is looking after this whole big parish on his own, who knows how many sick calls, meetings and funerals are on his plate, and all the other calls upon his time and energy. But then I look at the 94 year old who is there rain, hail or shine; and I look at those who have chronically ill husbands at home; and I look at those who come in with a walker; or with the combination of walking stick and Parkinson’s; or who have got there despite failing lungs and failing kidneys; and I suspect that looking upon this combined hunger for Him, Jesus would set Himself to teach them at some length adapted to their capacity, Mark 6:34b.

When it comes to Liturgy nothing that seems to be minutiae actually is minutiae, nor a minor liturgical hiccup only due to personal irritation. More is always at stake than what appears to be on the surface.

Appendix A
GENERAL INSTRUCTION OF THE ROMAN MISSAL

49. When they reach the sanctuary, the priest, the deacon, and the ministers reverence the altar with a profound bow.
As an expression of veneration, moreover, the priest and deacon then kiss the altar itself; as the occasion suggests, the priest also incenses the cross and the altar.

75. The bread and wine are placed on the altar by the priest to the accompaniment of the prescribed formulas. The priest may incense the gifts placed upon the altar and then incense the cross and the altar itself, so as to signify the Church’s offering and prayer rising like incense in the sight of God. Next, the priest, because of his sacred ministry, and the people, by reason of their baptismal dignity, may be incensed by the deacon or another minister.

117. The altar is to be covered with at least one white cloth. In addition, on or next to the altar are to be placed candlesticks with lighted candles: at least two in any celebration, or even four or six, especially for a Sunday Mass or a holy day of obligation. If the diocesan Bishop celebrates, then seven candles should be used. Also on or close to the altar, there is to be a cross with a figure of Christ crucified. The candles and the cross adorned with a figure of Christ crucified may also be carried in the Entrance Procession. On the altar itself may be placed the Book of the Gospels, distinct from the book of other readings, unless it is carried in the Entrance Procession.

122. On reaching the altar, the priest and ministers make a profound bow.
The cross adorned with a figure of Christ crucified and perhaps carried in procession may be placed next to the altar to serve as the altar cross, in which case it ought to be the only cross used; otherwise it is put away in a dignified place. In addition, the candlesticks are placed on the altar or near it. It is a praiseworthy practice that the Book of the Gospels be placed upon the altar.

123. The priest goes up to the altar and venerates it with a kiss. Then, as the occasion suggests, he incenses the cross and the altar, walking around the latter.
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308. There is also to be a cross, with the figure of Christ crucified upon it, either on the altar or near it, where it is clearly visible to the assembled congregation. It is appropriate that such a cross, which calls to mind for the faithful the saving Passion of the Lord, remain near the altar even outside of liturgical celebrations.