Two tables, one Body

 

Today the Church celebrates the memorial of St Jerome (c. 347-420), best known for translating much of the Bible into Latin.  His famous saying still echoes:

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.

Jerome's love of Scripture was inseparable from his love of the Eucharist. His writings provide an important witness to what Christians believed about the Eucharist at the beginning of the fifth century.  In a letter to Heliodorus, Jerome speaks of priests as those who:

confect by their sacred word the Body of Christ.

In a text translated and transmitted by Jerome, we find a striking comparison between reverence for Scripture and reverence for the Eucharist.  The text was written by Origen and later translated and transmitted by Jerome. The source cited by John Paul II explicitly identifies it as an Origen homily preserved through Jerome.  The passage observes that Christians are distressed if even the smallest fragment of the consecrated bread should fall to the ground. Such care reflects their belief that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. St John Paul II said:

Origen, who comments on our Psalm in one of his homilies, translated and disseminated by St Jerome in the West, actually interweaves the Word of God with the Eucharist: "We read the Holy Scriptures. I believe that the Gospel is the Body of Christ. I believe that the holy Scriptures are his teaching. And when he says: he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood (Jn 6,53), although these words can also refer to the [Eucharistic] Mystery, yet the Body and Blood of Christ is truly a word of Scripture, the teaching of God. When we are about to receive the [Eucharistic] Mystery, if even a tiny crumb falls, we feel lost. When we are listening to God's Word, when our ears perceive the Word of God and the body and blood of Christ, what great danger would we not fall into were we to think about something else?"

It is a reminder that the two tables of the Mass, the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist, belong together.

In Against the Pelagians he refers to clergy participating in:

the offering of the sacrifices.

Such language reflects the Church's understanding that the Mass is not simply a communal meal but a participation in Christ's once-for-all sacrifice made present sacramentally in every age.

The Christ who speaks in the Scriptures is the same Christ who feeds his people in the Eucharist, drawing earth into communion with heaven itself.

When heaven touches earth

At every Mass we are in the presence of angels.  They join our worship in ways that are silent and hidden to us.  At each celebration of the Eucharist we are joined with  Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael whose feast day is today.  

Who are these three Archangels? 

St Michael (literally ‘who is like God’) is the defender of God's people against evil (Revelation 12:7-9).

St Gabriel (literally ‘strength of God’) announced or brought the message of the Word to Mary when the Word became flesh and lived among us (Luke 1:26-38).

St Raphael (literally ‘healing of God) who accompanies travellers, restores sight and brings healing and reconciliation (Tobit 12:11-15). He declares:

I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord (Tobit 12:15).

Lord, Who at Thy First Eucharist Did Pray

An old and familiar hymn to me is one composed by William Harry Turton (1856-1938), a British army officer (Royal Engineers) and hymn writer. Used across many parts of the Anglican communion and in recent time in Roman Catholic and other denominations it captures so well the sentiments for unity. That all may be one and that one day we may, all of us, share at the same table. May it be. Amen. Amen. Amen. Here it is:

The road to the altar

A particular town in Northern Ireland has made international headlines, once again, for all the wrong reasons. Two communities remain locked in a standoff along a road leading from a church on the hill.  Gathered early in the morning for a service of prayer a group of men wished to assert their cultural rights to walk along the King’s highway. Another community living down the road objected because of the historical associations between triumphalism and subjugation of a minority.  They will not budge.

My sense is that only a return to humility, repentance, obedience and reconciliation can bring a lasting peace. Let Christ’s words be said out loud:

Saying yes with our lives

 

Sunday 27 September 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Ezekiel 18:25-28 Psalm 25(24) Philippians 2:1-11 Matthew 21:28-32

Meditatio:

“Which of the two did the will of his father?” (Matthew 21:31)

Commentary:

An old Latin phrase says, dictum meum pactum -  ‘my word is my bond’.  Ideally, a person's word should be trustworthy. Yet experience teaches us that promises are often made in moments of enthusiasm, only to be tested when difficulties arise. Like the seed in Jesus' parable of the Sower, our good intentions can be threatened by worries, trials, distractions, and changing circumstances. Doubts emerge, enthusiasm fades, and the clarity we once possessed can become obscured.

This Sunday’s readings from Ezekiel, Philippians and Matthew invite us to reflect on the relationship between words, actions, repentance and true discipleship.

Beyond reformation and the counter reformation

 

Many Roman Catholics have only limited familiarity with the diverse traditions of Anglican thought and spirituality.  There is often an excessively simple narrative that traces Anglicanism to the Protestant reformation in the 16^th Century and ignores key developments and departures in the course of the centuries. Many will acknowledge the significance of ‘Anglo-Catholicism’ associated with Keble, Pusey and Newman in the 19^th Century.
 

However, there were strains of ‘high church’ theology much earlier in the writings of what are known as ‘Caroline Divines’ – theologians associated with the Stuart era, particularly the reign of Charles I and the decades surrounding it in the seventeenth century. We ought to recall that the disruptive decades of the 16^th Century did not precipitate a sudden and dramatic change in liturgical practice in all places and all at once. There were hold-out places, reversals, purges and splintering.  Much of the liturgical material was initially adapted from medieval Latin sources and rendered into the English of the day, although subsequent revisions reflected differing theological priorities.  From the very beginning of what we know call ‘Anglicanism’ there were notwithstanding significant official changes in doctrine and liturgy under successive Tudor monarchs considerable variations in theology, liturgical practice.

One faith, many tongues: Saints Cyril and Methodius and the Eucharist

 

Basilica of Saint Cyrillus and Methodius in Velehrad village in The Czech republic

Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius were ninth Century Byzantine missionaries in communion with Rome and Constantinople who brought the Gospel to the Slavic people of the time.  They translated the Bible and the Liturgy into Slavonic.  Pope Adrian II approved their use of the vernacular liturgy which more or less survives to the present day.  They understood that the people of God should be able to worship God in a language understood by the people.  Their witness showed that the Eucharist could be celebrated faithfully in languages other than Greek, Latin or Hebrew while preserving the same faith.