Our Lord in today’s passage from St. Matthew’s Gospel offers rest to those who “labour and are overburdened”. Whatever our condition in life, we should hear these words as addressed to us. He tells us to shoulder His yoke and learn from Him, for “my yoke is easy and my burden light”. The gentleness and kindness of His invitation suggests the imagery of the Good Shepherd, familiar to us from St. John’s Gospel. His yoke and burden are light only because He has carried them for us. We can interpret these as the yoke of obedience to God and the burden of suffering. When we are obedient to God's Will, when we accept any suffering in His Name, so long as we do so in union with Christ, we can then, and only then, find them “light” and “easy”.

    Today’s second reading at Mass begins a series from the 8th chapter of his great Epistle (i.e. Letter) to the Romans that will take us through the next five Sundays. In this Chapter, one of the profoundest in all his writings, St. Paul deals with such topics as: The Holy Spirit—the true life of the Christian; The state of our being “children of God” brought about by the Spirit; Our heavenly destiny and the mysterious way in which even the natural world around us is somehow waiting for our glory to be revealed in Christ; And finally, Paul’s wonderful exclamation of praise to God in Christ for allowing nothing in all creation to come between us and His love “made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

    As so often in St. Paul, he opens this chapter by putting before us a great contrast: in this case the total contrast between what he calls the spiritual and the unspiritual, of which we hear in today’s extract. He explains that the foundation underlying this crucial difference is in the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit. Hence it is with the “spiritual” that our interests lie because, “unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to Him”. What does the Spirit do for us who possess Him? It is the Holy Spirit who gives life—that life which raised our Lord from the dead. The Holy Spirit therefore shares with us the life of Christ’s resurrection. But there is a further point to this life—it is the opposite not just of death, but also of sin. If we are to live properly according to the life of the Spirit given to us at our baptism, then we must shun sin which only leads us back to the death from which we have been rescued by the Spirit. In this extract we begin to see clearly the connection between the Spirit and life on the one hand, and between sin and death on the other. Our bodies as well as our souls can live with a spiritual life just as Christ’s body is spiritually enlivened in His resurrection from the dead. The daily life of the Christian requires us constantly to “put an end to the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit, so that we may live”. We learn here the importance of subduing our natural bodily appetites in order to set our bodies and souls free from slavery to those appetites: a slavery of sin which leads to bodily and spiritual death. The close co-operation between Christ and the Holy Spirit in the life of the redeemed is a sign to us of St. Paul’s very real understanding of the Holy Trinity at work in us.

“DAY FOR LIFE

This particular Sunday each year is set apart by the Bishops to pray for, and reflect on, issues of various kinds concerned with human Life. There is a leaflet at the church doors outlining this year’s topic—life and mental health.

    Some of you may have seen last Wednesday an item on the BBC local news concerning two of our Parishioners: Mrs. Ellen Westwood and her daughter Kathleen. Three months ago, when Mrs. Westwood was in hospital with an infection following surgery, the staff decided that she was dying and therefore withdrew all food and drink from her, while administering doses of morphine which left her in a stupor. Her daughter objected to this policy but was overruled. She was even initially prevented from either herself providing food and drink to her mother, or even from taking her home. Eventually Kathleen appealed to another of our parishioners, a Senior Consultant in another hospital, to come to their help. This, mercifully, brought about a sudden and complete reversal. Mrs. Westwood was allowed home where she is still alive and in good spirits if a little frail, being in her 80’s. We congratulate Kathy Westwood on this success and wish her and her mother every blessing. There is a warning to us all in this—don’t let the medical staff become dictators over you and your loved ones in matters of life and death. We recommend that everyone make a form of “living will” specifying that in case of illness or incapacity no medic should be permitted to take decisions to deprive you of food and drink, and naming someone as your attorney who will defend you against decisions which are proving ever more difficult to challenge, let alone overturn. Specimens of such a form of “living will” will be available at the Church doors after Mass next week.