2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

This brief account from John’s Gospel of our Lord’s baptism gathers together many strands of tradition and prophecy, reaching back to the words of the prophet Isaiah. Stories of a people’s journey are often handed on almost imperceptibly, woven through generations across every culture and walk of life.

Serving in a busy naval base on the Cornish coast some years ago, a few of us would escape in the evenings to a small pub in a nearby fishing village. As the evening wore on, conversation would fall silent when a group of local Cornishmen, gathered loosely around the bar, would begin to sing sea shanties. Songs that brought to life the hardship, love and loss that marked the lives of sailors and smugglers and their families who had lived in the village generations before, so maintaining a link with lessons learned in the past.

Some time later, I was to spend a few days in the Falkland Islands before heading south to Antarctica with HMS Endurance. Staying for a short time in Port Stanley I got to know the small community of St Mary’s Church, the original chapel of which was consecrated just ten days after this one - in June 1873, serving the small Catholic community who, until then, had attended Mass in their homes whenever a priest was visiting. 

The culture of the Falkland Islands is shaped by its maritime heritage, its isolation from the wider world, and a deeply felt British identity.

Unsurprisingly, the 1982 conflict loomed large in the stories told by locals, especially in the bar of the Upland Goose – one of the few pubs on the islands.

One night when dining with the parish priest, he told me how, on the weekend following the Argentine invasion, a group of young soldiers from the invading force turned up for Saturday evening Mass. The priest allowed them in on condition that they left their rifles in the lobby. And so, invaders and invaded worshipped together, their shared Catholic faith overriding the divisions brought about by conflict.

At mess dinners - an established part of naval life - as the port was passed around, the Royal Marine Band would lead us in our own sea shanties - rousing songs telling stories of our forebears, reaching back to the time of Nelson and beyond. Customs, history, belief, and tradition preserved and handed on through the medium of music.

On Holy Saturday in 2006, I was in Africa, serving on board HMS Echo. We were alongside in Durban, having left Capetown a week earlier, rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Late that evening, I slipped away to concelebrate the Easter Vigil at Emmanuel Cathedral in the heart of the city.

The liturgy lasted four hours. I was glad I’d advised my Catholic shipmates to come to the Sunday morning Mass instead as they would have found the vigil quite a marathon.

Vesting beforehand in the sacristy, the principal celebrant - Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, who is now retired - smiled and said to me, “Father, you will not have experienced anything like this before.”

We began with the lighting of the Easter fire in the cool of the African night, and then processed into a cathedral that was colourful, alive with music, overflowing with people full of the holy spirit. As the Cardinal baptised and confirmed new members of the Church, joy spilled out in every direction: people dancing in the aisles to the driving drumbeat of Zulu chants and songs which wove the history and culture of the Zulu people into the ancient rituals of the Catholic faith.

Later on, living for two years in the Deep South of the United States - the Bible Belt - I was introduced to the musical traditions of African American Christian communities. Four-part harmonies, call and response, shouts of praise, polyrhythms, hand-clapping and foot-stomping: music whose roots lay in the suffering and resilience of slave communities, transformed into prayer and praise.

Such rituals, bound together by song and story, are found among indigenous peoples across the world. Through them, the history and wisdom of different cultures and creeds are preserved in forms familiar to families and communities alike. One purpose of these traditions is to pass on hard-won lessons to future generations lest they forget and be forced to begin again, rebuilding what has already been built and relearning what has already been learned.

Since that day of its opening in 1873, our own faith community here at St Robert’s has been blessed with the richest of such traditions. Our liturgies, scripture readings, and prayers reach deep into Judaeo-Christian history. The stories we listen to have been handed on both orally and in writing, stories proclaimed in sequence at Mass, stories that help generations to remember the history, laws, the lessons and the lineage of our faith, and above all, the teachings of Our Lord Himself. At the centre of all this stands the very heart of our worship: the Eucharist.

These customs and traditions are more important than ever in a world which increasingly lives only for the moment, often with little regard for the lessons of the past.

When John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, he was drawing upon wisdom passed down through countless generations. Isaiah speaks of the suffering servant - like a lamb led to the slaughter, a sheep silent before its shearers. John recognises in his cousin the fulfilment of that image of a lamb: one whose life, from its very beginning, was set on a path that would lead to a long walk through the streets of Jerusalem, amid mockery and jeers, toward the sacrifice of the Cross.

By using the image of the lamb, so familiar to his people, John also evokes the Paschal Lamb, eaten each year in ritual remembrance and celebration of God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery. Across the centuries, Isaiah and John together proclaim the salvation found in Jesus: the Son, the Servant, the Lamb of God.

We have received this saving knowledge from our own ancestors in faith. And like Isaiah and John, we too are called to pass it on and to bring Christ to others and to ensure that the chain of faith remains unbroken.

Do we really want to be a broken link in the chain of faith? The one who receives the faith, passed on through generations of our family, and then fail to pass it on to those who come after?

Even if it fails to resonate fully with us, do we want to deny future generations the potential to tap into the power that comes from heaven above?

If we are to communicate the faith at all, we must first live it with conviction, not merely perform it by rote, ticking the boxes while our hearts remain elsewhere. Half hearted faith persuades no one and gives life to nothing. 

We are called to live faith which is authentic and therefore infectious, a faith that catches fire because it is real. We are to reflect the light to the nations - Christ himself - so that others may focus not on us but on the One who works through us.

Yet some still proclaim a gospel of fear, casting God as vengeful and severe, quick to condemn and slow to forgive. In doing so, they deepen the world’s shadows rather than dispel them.  Our calling is to illuminate the world by reflecting the face of God - merciful, radiant, and alive with love and self sacrifice.

A missionary priest recalls being in a remote African village when a food convoy arrived. The people, who struggled daily to feed their families, patiently formed a queue as tables were set out.

The priest noticed a young girl standing at the back. When she finally reached the front, all that remained was a single banana. He watched as she took it and went to sit beneath a tree with her younger brother and sister.

The girl carefully peeled the banana, then cut it into two pieces, giving one to her brother and one to her sister. As they ate, she licked the inside of the banana skin. The priest said, “I knew that day I was seeing the face of God upon the earth.”

May God bless us as we strive each day to become the people He is calling us to be. May we imitate the Lamb of God more closely. May we discover God anew in the customs, traditions, and worship that shape our faith. And may we help others, through our lives, to see the face of God upon this earth.