TRINITY XI, Year A: August 3, 2008

Preacher: Fr Andrew Greany

I was talking to an artist the other day. He showed me a still life, not his own work; it's by someone who had a huge influence on him. Three bottles, three different shapes, standing close together, but with a space between them where the necks narrow: look, he said, just look at how the colour fills the space between two of those bottles, then draws your eye upwards to the delicate shades at the top of the canvas. To most of us, certainly to me with no artist's eye, there's just a space between the necks of two bottles; but to that artist, there was space with infinite potential. 'We have only five loaves and two fish, but what are they among so many'. But ah, the Lord sees that they have potential to feed the multitude. Jesus sees with the visionary, generous eye of the loving God, where the disciples see with the pragmatic, limited eye of most men and women: 'every one of us inside his own skin, every one of us the centre of his own little world' (Austin Farrer).

But back to my artist again; as well as looking at paintings we looked out of the window. 'I'm so lucky to have those trees to look at — just think of the ways that the leaves move; or the different ways they flutter to the ground when autumn come — they've got so much to offer me.' Here's a second generosity, a sense of the unbidden generosity of nature; and when Jesus has seen those loaves and fishes with the visionary and generous eye, then He offers them, like the food and drink without price, to recall this morning's passage from Isaiah. Here is God's generosity: everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, come have wine and milk for free. Eat and be satisfied, and there will be basketfuls left over. And we must imagine that the crowd, and all who discovered Jesus to be bread of life and living water, were as deeply grateful that they were fed and sustained as is our artist for the trees outside his window.

A sense of these two aspects of generosity is what, I suggest, we should bring with us to Mass, and so I invite you to look at three features of every Mass. First, the general confession with which we begin — indeed the preparation which we make for that general confession in the minutes before the Mass begins (yes indeed, how do we use that time?) — this should be the stimulus for us to look over the recent days and hours, to see how generous our eye has been, how grateful we have been for the giftedness of life; in Farrer's words, have we stayed, every one of us, simply inside our own skins, every one of us the centre of our own little worlds, unable to see with the visionary and generous eye? And has gratitude been characteristic of our life-style, prominent as we recall what surrounds us, like that artist with his trees?

Secondly, let us move on to the Offertory: presentation of those ordinary materials, bread, wine, water, and the currency of our daily lives on the collection plate, the ordinariness of ourselves. On these God looks with the generous and visionary eye, showing that these will be transformed, that we may be transformed. Yet also we bless our gracious and generous God, because of His goodness we have this bread, this wine to offer. So how do we use those moments of the Offertory; it isn't just about singing the hymn, but about praying ourselves into a unity with those ordinary materials, those offerings on which God looks with generous eye. It's about lifting ourselves into that attitude of thanksgiving — blessing God, the Lord God of all creation — which is to be sustained in the Eucharistic prayer itself, in which having blessed and thanked God for creation, redemption, gift of Holy Spirit, we are symbolically lifted up with bread and cup, elevated at the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer by the priest.

Thirdly, let's take ourselves to the conclusion of the Mass. How do we use those moments of quiet after we have received our Communion, or before we listen to the organ voluntary? The public words are the prayer that we may be sent out in the power of the Spirit, and the invitation to go in the peace of Christ. The public words are about being thankful that we have been fed with the body and blood of the Lord — and our last words are 'Thanks be to God'. Certainly in that post-communion prayer there is invitation to mission; but it isn't enough simply to hear that kind of challenge to be active in God's service and most likely to feel guilty about it. To have been fed with the very being of Jesus Christ, to go out in the power of His Spirit is to accept, in the very depths of our beings, that we are identified with Him; it is to be seeing with His visionary and generous eye, to be discerning the potential of the nondescript space between the necks of the bottles.

And that 'Thanks be to God' is not 'thank God that's over for another week and we managed it in five minutes less than last week'; it's the final call to draw together the whole music of thanksgiving which is the heart of the Mass: thanksgiving for forgiveness, for word read, marked and digested, for the companionship of Christ and of our neighbours because together we are in Christ, for ordinary material and ordinary people taken and transformed, for the vocation, distinct in each one of us, to be Christ-bearers, like Mary whom we shall salute, full of grace. St Paul felt great sorrow and unceasing anguish about his kinsmen by race. So much was theirs: the sonship, the glory, the covenant, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises. Well, so much is ours, the adoption in Christ, the new covenant, the sacraments, the gift of being one, as Julian of Norwich would have said, oned with Christ. There is joy in heaven, surely, when we realise what we are called to be, that God looks on us with His generous eye, when we give our thanks and praise; must there not be anguish when each one of us stays in his own skin, contained in his own little world, and takes for granted our generous God?