Sunday Evangelium - Totus2us

Fr Andrew: "Today we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, a feast still known by its Latin name of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. This is the day in the liturgical year when we celebrate the most extraordinary gift that God has given to us: God in His love and mercy gives us Himself, under the appearances of bread and wine." Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "After years of studying what Aquinas wrote about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I have concluded tentatively that the best way of thinking about what they do is that they help to remove a condition that we are all born with, namely our spiritual autism. It is only by these gifts of grace that we can enjoy a supernatural life in which we are moved by God, as by a second person, and we can come to know and love the Persons of God. Perhaps this is why Trinity comes after the celebration of Pentecost. So, in conclusion, human reason can help to clear away erroneous conceptions of the Trinity, and it is also possible to trace the fruits of the Trinity for our civilisation, but to know the Holy Trinity personally we need ourselves to become holy." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "This feast of Pentecost is the birthday of the Church, it's our birthday. We often think of the Holy Spirit as a personal gift to the individual Christian but more fundamentally the Holy Spirit is first of all a gift to the whole Church and then secondly to all of its members. Without the Holy Spirit, the Church is like a body without life in it, without breath. Just as the principle of life in a human body, the soul helps it to grow and develop organically, to expand and yet remain the same subject, so the Holy Spirit with the Church. The Holy Spirit is called 'the soul of the mystical body' by theologians, the soul of the Church. Think of that first Pentecost - the disciples are a rather dishevelled body, they lack confidence, courage, know-how, zeal. It is the Holy Spirit descending upon them who animates them, vivifies them, makes them living members of the mystical body." Music by the Poor Clare Sisters TMD. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for mor

Fr Andrew: "The Ascension helps to teach us about our true and final home, but Scripture also suggests that it brings us spiritual benefits as well. We do not fully understand these benefits but we are told that Christ has entered the heavenly sanctuary as our High Priest. Christ has appeared before God on our behalf, bringing His own blood as a living sacrifice that takes away our sins. When, during the Mass, Jesus Christ is present on the altar as our sacrifice, we also participate in an activity in heaven. Another way of understanding this connection is by an image given to us by St Catherine of Siena. St Catherine saw a vision of Christ as a great bridge stretching from earth into heaven. Christ remains present to us here through the Church and the Sacraments. But Christ after his ascension is also in the presence of the Father in His human nature, so the ascension completes the span of the bridge." Music by the Poor Clare Sisters TMD. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus

Fr Andrew: "My own suggestion of an answer to the question of why so few Christians experience the Holy Spirit is the following: the Holy Spirit is experienced mainly in divinely inspired action but very few Christians are willing to surrender to divinely inspired action. On the contrary we want to remain in complete control of our lives, not loving with God the things that God loves. Many of us, to a greater or lesser extent, are like the people that Jesus first encounters in the Gospels. We of course want God to help us and to heal us but mainly so that we can then get on with our lives in peace and prosperity. God will of course help us often in material ways but God wants us to go further than this. He wants us to surrender our whole lives over to Him, to really be able to say "Thy Will be done". This surrender is an entirely different matter from asking for gifts of any kind and it is something we tend to find very hard. This is I think why the coming of the Holy Spirit is the final revelation of the God

Fr Marcus: "J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the most popular work of the 20th century, The Lord of the Rings, said that his whole conception of beauty, both in simplicity and in majesty, were inspired by Mary. So our devotion to Mary is not a side-show, a nostalgic piety or something interesting for those who like history. It's right at the heart of our spiritual warfare. Mary stands for the truth about humanity. She reminds us, through her son, that we are made in the image of God and called to glory. She reminds us that our hearts are for God, to be dedicated with purity, the meaning of our bodies is a spousal one. She also teaches us that the child in the womb is precious and to be defended at all costs. All the challenges of the day are met through her example." Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "When Jesus says in today's Gospel "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full" the word he uses is not life in the usual sense. The word he uses is reserved in the Gospel for the life of grace, the life of the Holy Trinity and this life is why Jesus is unique. God in the pagan world and indeed in many religions today was perceived as remote and inscrutable, at best a source of benefits but unknowable in himself. The message of the Gospel is that God has bridged this unthinkable abyss by coming among us as a man. Through Jesus alone it has become possible to know God personally, to become children of God and that is why the Our Father is a uniquely Christian prayer. To know and to love God in this way is to taste eternal life already, in a state of pilgrimage in this life and in a state of glory in the next. Since the incarnation is unique, there is only one gate to the sheepfold." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com

Fr Andrew: "In today's Gospel two disciples spend some hours speaking with Jesus but they only recognise him when he breaks the blessed bread at table and hands it to them. In that moment of recognition, Jesus is obviously underlining the link between the eucharist and his real presence, by which he will be recognised subsequently in the sacrifice of the Mass. This encounter raises the question however of why, Jesus chooses to reveal the truth of his resurrection, gradually and at intervals to various different groups. St Bede the Venerable, the Father of English history, argued that the miracle was so great that human souls could not take it in all at once but had to be led to belief gently. In today's homily I argue that the sequence of Jesus's resurrection appearances follows a well-ordered narrative. Following a reconstruction of events first proposed by St Augustine, I further propose that this narrative is that of the Beatitudes by which a soul is transformed and becomes ready for heaven." Music by Edwi

Fr Andrew: "Since the Great Jubilee of 2000, this, the second Sunday of Easter has been called Divine Mercy Sunday. The Divine Mercy is a devotion centred on the infinite mercy of God for sinners. It's visual focus being an image painted under the guidance of a Polish nun, St Faustina Kowalska. St Faustina had an inspired vision of blood and water radiating from the pierced heart of Jesus Christ. Seeing these white and red rays as an ocean of mercy for the whole world. Pope John Paul II strongly encouraged this devotion. His death on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday 2005 and his subsequent beatification on this same feast day in 2011 may also be interpreted as signs of the importance of this devotion today." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "There comes a time in our lives when we begin to have faith. We come to believe on the testimony of the Apostles or on the universal testimony of the Church. Then we can begin to see not only the resurrection as a fact, as a historical matter, but see the significance of these events, their meaning, what they stand for, for us, and for the world, and for everything. Not just a great miracle, a wonderful bloke coming back to life, not merely a grand proof of all he taught, not only a sign of life beyond the grave, nor just of God's presence amongst us. But what we are talking about here is a new beginning, a new creation, human life transformed, renewed, glorified and communicated to us." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "So these 3 groups - the crowd, the disciples and the remnant at Calvary - represent the stages of the Christian life. As we accompany Christ to Calvary, our souls are rooted in faith, purified in hope and perfected in love. This is not an easy path, as Jesus had warned James and John "Are you able to drink the chalice that I am to drink?" Not everyone is willing to follow this path straight away and God in His mercy will often make the offer again." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "The friendships of God are truly personal friendships. Jesus weeps at the death of his friend Lazarus. Peter, James, John, Thomas, Martha, Mary and many others in the New Testament are his particular friends. Jesus is brought up in a particular family, by Mary and Joseph. Jesus does not love an abstract idea of humanity or an abstract idea of friendship, but loves this person and that person, you and me. You might say that the whole purpose of our existence here on earth is to become personal friends with God, to know and love God, to become part of the intimate family of God. May everything we do in our lives help to lead us to that goal." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind? The Gospel throws up before us today the greatest challenge to religion and to belief in God, or at least a loving God - that is the problem of evil, the origin of suffering and pain in this world. At least psychologically, it is the hardest difficulty for people to overcome in their minds before approaching God as a God of love. The problem can be posed in different ways but it is always the same, fundamentally: If God is all good and loving and at the same time all powerful and influential, how can He allow evil and suffering and pain in this world that He has created? Does He not care? Tha is the question of all who suffer, it's the question of all us because we do all suffer." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "If we only knew what God was offering, we would ask Him for a drink; if we only knew the gift of God. He would give us living water that would satisfy all our desire, all our thirst. The living water is grace; living water, not stagnant water, moving, continuing. it's linked to its source. God, who is unending. In the Old Testament we read about this fountain of living water, it's God Himself, Jeremiah tells us that. In psalms too we often hear about running streams; think of that psalm 'As the deer yearns for running streams, so my soul is thirsting for you, my God.' If we could only get this point, it's a key spiritual doctrine that runs like a golden thread all the way through the Scriptures." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "I want to focus on just one small detail of Jesus's conversation with the Samaritan woman: his use of the phrase 'living water'. Materially speaking, living water means fresh and flowing water; and for water to remain living and life-giving, it must be connected with its source. If water is cut off from its source it stops flowing, stagnates and becomes dead. Now if living water is understood to mean the spiritual life of the soul, as Jesus suggests, then the lessons of this Biblical symbol become clear: just as flowing water must be connected to its source, we must be connected to God through the sacraments and prayer. Just as water is life-giving in many ways, if we remain in communion with God, our lives will also be fruitful in many ways." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "The Transfiguration of Jesus might seem so extraordinary and yet remote that it is hard to see what relevance it has to our lives. As a miracle, it served to strengthen the faith of the apostles Peter, James and John, at least when they had recovered from their fear. Yet extraordinary visions and a voice from heaven 2000 years ago might seem a long way from the concerns of our lives today. Nevertheless the transfiguration is of the greatest relevance for us, to our very hope of happiness. For if we interpret these events carefully we can glimpse the glory that God wills us to have by faith in His Beloved Son. As a consequence we should be encouraged as we make our way on pilgrimage through the darkness of this world to the kingdom of heaven." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "Adam and Eve do not need to taste the fruit to be like God or to know good and evil, for they are already made in the image and likeness of God and know what they should and shouldn't do. Similarly in today's Gospel, Jesus does not need to accept the kingdoms of the world from the devil's hand, because he already has them in his own hand. All that the devil tempts with is not a false means to a true end (the temptation of pragmatism - but the false means to a false end, an ending that is in death and not in life. So may God help us to recognise and resist false promises of happiness, to keep integrity and friendship with Him, and come safely one day into the true and lasting happiness of heaven." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Pope John Paul II to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Marcus: "If all this is true, if God is real, if Christ has come, if the Church is His living voice in the world today and through every age in history, if we are today hearing this call, then what implications does it have for our lives? What decision do we have to make today? The Lord is the new Moses and he says, "I put before you a blessing and a curse." The Lord wants us to choose the blessing because He knows by choosing anything other than Himself, the love of Him and the love of neighbour, it will only bring disaster to our lives." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus ('All Yours') was Pope John Paul II's motto to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.

Fr Andrew: "In today's Gospel, Jesus says that God will take care of his listeners, men of little faith, more than of the lillies of the field which are, he says, robed more splendidly than Solomon in all his regalia. Solomon asked for the gift of wisdom and by means of wisdom a person puts God first above all of creation. As a result, Solomon invested vast wealth in building the magnificent Temple of Jerusalem, and himself was blessed by extraordinary wealth and riches. Yet there was something cold about Solomon. He began to worship other things besides God, things that made him God's enemy and he treated his people harshly. After his death, his kingdom collapsed, dividing into Israel and Judah, a small remnant around Jerusalem. Solomon knew about God and had the wisdom to put God first, but he either lacked or lost his love of God, leading to the near ruin of his kingdom. The lesson seems to be that it is not sufficient to put God first in our minds unless we also love him with our hearts." Music by Edwin F

Fr Andrew: "Giving thanks recognises gift, and gift breaks down the logic of entitlement that demands hatred be returned for hatred. May God help us to see the struggle against evil from the perspective of divine wisdom, so that we love our enemies, pray earnestly for those who persecute us, and come safely with them one day to the kingdom of heaven." Music by Edwin Fawcett. Visit Evangelium.co.uk for more about the Evangelium project and Totus2us.com for more great podcasts. Totus Tuus ('All Yours') was Pope John Paul II's motto to Mary. Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.