Fr. Michael Williams

I hope you are all enjoying the World Cup, despite England’s performances so far! I must admit that I am! The World Cup is a catholic event. Catholic means universal. So the world cup is a universal event bringing many of the nations together. It is not surprising that the World Cup is a universal - a catholic- event because it was founded by a devout Catholic and Christian Democrat called Jules Rimet. He wanted football to be a means to bring together peoples from across the globe. This idea unquestionably arose from his Catholic spirit. That spirit which we heard in St Paul’s letter to the Galatians: ‘there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus’. Jules Rimet used his faith to influence the culture around him. His Faith taught him that the people who make up nations of the world are all children of the one God- Our Father in Heaven.

Like Jules Rimet we too need to influence the culture around us with our Faith. Our Faith should help us to build a Christian society in our country. I suppose we are all trying to do this. But we know it is not easy with so many influences at work in our society that are trying to create an anti-Christian culture. The Christian ethos is certainly opposed by many powers in our country today. A starting point for us to help create a Christian culture in our families, our communities, our culture, could be adopting ‘the spirit of kindness and prayer’, that the prophet Zechariah speaks of in the first reading. Kindness is showing compassion, sympathy, thoughtfulness to those around us and those beyond us. It is something we are all called to practice. Obviously being a practicing Catholic means coming to Mass each Sunday, but it also means practicing kindness in our families and communities. Zechariah also speaks of the spirit of prayer. Hopefully we are here this evening because we have that spirit of prayer. But to help build a Christian world we need to increase that spirit of prayer within us. More prayer in our homes, in our families. Like the psalm we must cry out, ‘For you my soul is thirsting, O God, my God’ for ourselves and others.

Finally, Jesus is clear in the Gospel that suffering is an essential part of His mission, and thus ours. This is difficult for us to accept. No one likes suffering. Yet we must all partake of it while we are in this world. We are going to get it whether we like it or not! It may be illness, family difficulties, unemployment. Of course, we should try to eradicate these sufferings in our society, or at least mitigate them. But sometimes we just seem so weak in the midst of sufferings and then ‘we must take up our cross every day and follow the Lord’. Taking up our crosses with the spirit of prayer and kindness operating in us and out of us will bring many graces. Uniting our sufferings to Christ’s is probably the greatest prayer we can make. All the great saints of the Church have said this. Think of Padre Pio.

And let’s remember suffering is not the end of the story. The story concludes with the Resurrection! And that is why we are here today, celebrating Our Lord’s victory. It was a victory which inspired Jules Rimet may it inspire us too, to follow in the Lord’s footsteps.