Born in the castle of Loyola as Íñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola, ca1491, the youngest of 13 children, as a young boy Ignatius fashioned his life on tales of romantic chivalry and joined the army at the age of 17.  The following year he took up arms for the Duke of Nájera.  At the Battle of Pamplona in May of 1621 he was gravely injured when a cannonball shattered his right leg.  He endured many surgeries but he was to walk with a pronounced limp ever after.

During his convalescence he underwent a religious conversion, spending hours reading the lives of the saints.  He planned a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and received a number of consoling visions.  He confessed his sins and hung up his sword.  He began theological studies at the University of Alcalá, eventually completing his studies at the University of Paris.  There, along with six companions he founded what would come to be known as the Society of Jesus (more commonly known as the Jesuits).  The order was accepted by Pope Paul III in 1540.  The new order would spread across Europe and beyond it, establishing schools, colleges and seminaries.  Ignatius died on 31 July 1556, probably of Roman fever, a type of malaria.

Peter was born c380 in Imola and was ordained a deacon there.  At the urging of Emperor Valentinian III he was made archdeacon, and around 433 pope Sixtus III appointed him Bishop of Ravenna, overlooking the candidate elected by the people of the diocese.  Peter acquired the sobriquet ‘Chrysologus’, which means the man of ‘golden words’ (perhaps first accorded to him by Empress Galla Placidia) because of his concise homilies which were both expositions of scripture and denunciations of popular heresies which competed with the Gospels for the people’s allegiance.  He advocated daily reception of Holy Communion, and taught the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the perpetual virginity of Our Lady, and the primacy of St Peter and his successors.  He was a confidant of Pope Leo I, and like Leo, he was declared a Doctor (teacher) of the Church (by Pope Benedict XIII in 1729).  He died around the year of 450 on a return visit to his home town of Imola.

From Luke 9.51, where the Evangelist tells us that Jesus ‘resolutely took the road for Jerusalem’, until the very end of Luke’s Gospel, the journey of Jesus and his disciples is systematic and orderly, a steady progression from Galilee in the north towards Jerusalem in the south.  Today’s Gospel is the solitary exception.  The name of the village to which they have come isn’t given, but St John’s Gospel [11.1] tells us that the home of Martha and Mary (and Lazarus, whom Luke doesn’t mention) was the village of Bethany, about two miles south and east of Jerusalem.

Clearly this episode is geographically and chronologically out of place; and so it is pertinent to consider why such a careful writer as Luke places it here.  Jesus’s visit to the house of Martha and Mary immediately follows upon the well-known parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, with its challenging closing exhortation to ‘Go, and do the same yourself.’  Lest the Gospel become less ‘good news for all people’ than a catalogue of moral imperatives, though, Luke juxtaposes a different kind of appeal.  ‘You worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one.’ 

That unum necessarium is to draw near to the Maker of the Universe as he draws near to us, to listen to him [cf Luke 8.15], and to receive from him all that he means to give us.  Bethany was evidently for Jesus a place of rest and refreshment [cf Genesis 2.2]; his promise is to make us partakers of that same rest and peace. [cf Ephesians 2.17-18]

He was born in Bolsward in the Netherlands. He was baptized Anno Sjoerd Brandsma. He joined the Carmelites at Boxmeer in 1898 at the age of seventeen, and took the religious name Titus. He was ordained a priest in 1905. Following his ordination, he went to Rome and studied for a doctorate in philosophy at the Gregorian Pontifical University, which he was awarded in 1909. Returning to Holland, Titus pursued the career of a teacher and writer. He taught at a numbers of schools before taking on the position of Professor of Philosophy and the History of Mysticism at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, where he was later appointed Rector Magnificus in 1932. At the same time he was active in journalism. He was vehemently opposed to Nazi ideology and spoke out against it many times before the Second World War. 

Underlying his career as a teacher and writer was his deeply personal search for the God of Jesus who was the centre of his life. He lived out this mission in a practical ways giving to all who needed his help. It was from this deep relationship and conviction that he would argue against the National Socialist ideology, as Holland came under Nazi occupation. As adviser to the Bishops on the Catholic Press, Titus defended the right to freedom of education and of the Catholic Press. Titus believed such freedoms were implicit to the message of the Gospel. 

He was arrested in January 1942, when he tried to persuade Dutch Catholic newspapers not to print Nazi propaganda (as was required by the law of the Nazi German occupiers). He had also drawn up the Pastoral Letter, read in all Catholic parishes, by which the Dutch Roman Catholic bishops officially condemned the German anti-Semitic measures and the deportation of the first Jews. After this Pastoral Letter, the first few thousand Jews to be deported from the Netherlands were all Jewish converts to Roman Catholicism, including St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

Amidst the suffering of Titus’s imprisonment, prisoners and jailers spoke of his ability to bring an awareness of peace amidst the horror of the prison camps. Eventually he was transferred to Dachau where he was killed by lethal injection on the 26th July 1942. The witness of his life is an example of prophetic action arising from a commitment to the Gospel and revealing the merciful presence of God, even in the most horrific of times.

Today is a feast of no small proportions - the grandparents of Jesus are celebrated today. So it may come as a surprise to have for our Gospel the explanation of the parable of the sower of the seeds. Although well known to many of us, Jesus had to explain it to his apostles and disciples the first time that they heard it.

The key, you will recall, is that seed has to be sown into good soil. The edge of the path, stony soil, thin soil are all no good, they will not sustain the plants for long.

From the very earliest of times, church tradition was that for Mary to be able to say her resounding ‘yes’ to Gods plan of salvation, she herself must be without any fault. And for that to happen, her parents in their turn must have been very blessed - for how could great good come out of anything less? Yet, however good, Mary’s parents could not have been prefect for like us, they were ordinary humans. In their case, tradition has it that they were childless into their old age: in the way of things then that would have been taken as a sign of imperfection - of sin.

These and other traditions of the church were recorded in documents that have not for various reasons been included in the Bible: notably the Gospel of James. This I have never read, but it does contain the names by which we know Mary’s parents, and there is no particular reason to doubt those details.

If you are not, or are not yet a grandparent, then look forward with joy to that time and remember that with your children, your responsibility is to help God prepare a rich soil for them to grow in. If you will never be a grandparent, then pray for those of us who are or may be, as your prayers will bring God’s light and rain to warm and water the soil in which our grandchildren will grow. Jane and I are so blessed, and we know your prayers are listened to.

The audacity of James’ and John’s mother is actually more stark than might be realised if just the passage from Mass today leads us to understand. Just one verse before, Matthew tells us that Jesus has taken the twelve apostles aside and has told them that the son of man will be crucified and that on the third day raised. Perhaps full marks for realising that Jesus was going to be raised to his kingdom.

The response from Jesus about sharing the chalice, was a common motif from the Old Testament - it appears in Psalm 75, Isaiah 51 and Jeremiah 25). It describes God’s wrath to be poured out upon the wicked. The boys are not deterred, nor are they when Jesus invites them to share in his passion and death (as he just did before today’s Gospel reading).

Interestingly, Matthew then in the next verses, teaches us about how two blind beggars are healed. Do they stand I wonder, for the inner healing in James and John? Their ambition, or greed, was certainly healed. John, in Acts of the Apostles, always gives way to allow Peter to proclaim the good news, James very soon is martyred (to placate the Jews, by Herod).

The clear message that we must take from both John and James’ lives, is to seek a life of service in this world, not glory in the kingdom hereafter.

Poor Jeremiah is often named as a prophet of doom. This is not completely fair as his book of prophecies includes several Isaiah-like prefigurings of the good news of salvation that is to come. For example Jer 31:31. However it is true that Jeremiah lived in times of great turbulence and difficulty for the tribes of Israel with King Nebuchadnezzar  who in his lifetime sacked Jerusalem and took the people away into slavery just as Jeremiah had warned. If you do not change your ways and repent of your sinfulness then this will happen to you, he said.

Jeremiah was certainly a reluctant prophet - personally I think all the best are - and a sign of this reluctance is the words he used to God to try and wriggle out of becoming a prophet: “I am but a child” in Aramaic is a - A - a, sounding like someone who stutters. Jeremiah was deliberately trying to show that he could not speak!

God has none of this and insists, and we should be glad because Jeremiah is one of the great prophets. Speaking truth to our obstinacy, he also models how we should respond when God calls us to some mission - no ‘a-a-a’ but lets try for a ‘Yes, with Gods’ help’.

Collect

O God, who guided Saint Bridget of Swede, along different paths of life and wondrously taught her the wisdom of the Cross as she contemplated the Passion of your Son, grant us, we pray, that, walking worthily in our vocation, we may seek you in all things. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, for ever and ever.

She was married to a nobleman and had eight children. At the age of 30 she was summoned to the court of the King of Sweden, where she served as lady-in-waiting to the queen. She tried without much success to moderate the riotous and indecent life of the royal court.

After a pilgrimage to the shrine of St James at Compostela in Spain, Bridget and her husband Ulf decided to spend the rest of their lives in monasteries. Ulf died in 1344, but Bridget went on to found a double monastery (for men and women in separate but adjacent institutions) as the start of a new monastic order.

In 1350 she travelled to Rome for the Holy Year, and spent the rest of her life there caring for the poor and the sick, denouncing the excesses of the aristocracy, and robustly telling the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon.

She had many mystical visions, which alarmed her because she feared that they might be the work of the Devil; but a learned Cistercian monk reassured her, and she subsequently dictated and published the revelations she received, which were partially devotional and partly prophetic.

The apostle to the apostles. Mary Magdalene was honoured by Jesus as the first to witness the truth of the resurrection, and sent by him to take this Good News to the apostles.

There is speculation about who this Mary was: Pope Gregory from about the 6th Century asserted that a she was the same sinful Mary who wept onto Jesus' feet and dried them with her hair - but she could also be a different Mary and there certainly is no scriptural evidence that she was the same. If she was however, here she is weeping again, but this time not because she has lost all through her sin, but because she has lost the one who saves her. The gospels identify her explicitly as present throughout the crucifixion, and must have been traumatised as a result. Through her veil of tears she mistakes first of all the angels, and then Jesus himself for a gardener leading to a rich vein in the history of religious art - but when Jesus simply says her name - she recognises him then.

She does not cling to him, but leaves him to set out on her mission; an example to us all. When we hear our name being called we often do not recognise the caller - but he will persistently call us till we do respond.