Sunday Homily, 22 June 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

In a dark and damp castle, locked away for the capital crime of treason, there is a prisoner bent over his little desk.  He’s been there for perhaps a few months; he’ll be there for a total of fourteen months before his execution.  Scratching away on scraps of paper with the lump of coal he has for a pencil, he's writing on how to receive Holy Communion.  It’s a strange subject for someone who has no hope of release, let alone hope of a visit from a priest.  It’s a stranger subject still for one who lives in the king’s protestant utopia.

He is Thomas More, a knight of the realm and sometime Chancellor of England, an author, jurist, and apologist, who will die a martyr’s death.  Were this not Sunday, the twenty-second of June is the feast of Sts John Fisher and Thomas More: Fisher the bishop and More the lawyer, both died martyrs and lauded as saints by the Church.  Today is the anniversary of Fisher’s death; More was executed a fortnight later.

By the time Fisher and More died, they had each spent about fourteen months in the Tower of London as prisoners of Henry VIII.  To say that conditions in the Tower were grim would be an understatement.  Fisher wrote about them to Master Thomas Cromwell: “I beseech you to be good unto me in my necessity, for I have neither shirt nor suit … but one set of clothes which is ragged and torn shamefully … My diet, also, God knows how slender it is at times … I fall into coughing and diseases and cannot keep myself in health.”  Though they were in the Tower for more than a year, they weren’t idle.  Both of them wrote poems and prayers, letters and treatises.

In his little book on receiving Holy Communion, Thomas More carefully distinguished between two ways that we can receive the Lord’s Body: sacramentally and virtually.  Now, as soon as I say “virtually”, you’ll be thinking of electric computers and the internet.  More didn’t know electricity; he’d probably think “screentime” was hours spent shielding one’s eyes!  By “virtual” reception of the Lord’s Body More means powerful, effective, fruitful.

We hope and pray that everyone who receives the sacrament of Holy Communion receives also its good effects: venial sins are forgiven; mind and will are strengthened against temptation; deeper compassion for the Lord’s beloved poor and greater desire for the unity of his Church are instilled.  For St Thomas More, it’s possible to receive the good effects of Holy Communion without the sacrament – such as he himself would hope for during his incarceration.  It’s also possible to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion without its good effects, to join the procession to the altar and receive the sacrament without it making the slightest difference in one’s life.

More would push us on this, to review our lives with care to see whether the good effects of Holy Communion are coming through to us.  And if they’re not, if we’re not benefitting from sacramentally receiving Holy Communion, to ask ourselves whether there’s some block we’ve put in the way.  Is it a grave sin as yet unconfessed?  Is it an obstinately incomplete faith?  Is it an absence of personal prayer?  Is it indifference to the plight of others, especially those in need?  Is it contempt for or neglect of God’s one, holy Church?  More would offer that receiving the Lord’s Body sacramentally when there’s such a block in place would be dangerous indeed: we could say it’d mean the Lord’s Body had been placed again into a tomb, the tomb of a dead soul.

The Lord Jesus has much to give us, many graces to assist us in our day-to-day life.  Though he has ascended into heaven, he has established a way to be with us, to be close to us.  He gives his Body and Blood entirely to each one who receives him without leaving out the rest.  He is present to everyone, without being missing from anyone.  He can be consumed by a great many, without being in the least exhausted.  There is always more of the Lord Jesus to receive, to encounter, to desire, and to love. And so, in this great sacrament, he is here for you: this is how Christ enters your daily life to help you live it to the full.

May you receive him sacramentally and effectively every time you come to Holy Communion.  Thereby, may the Lord in his goodness make this earth of yours into heaven, make your time bear his eternity, and make your mortal frame alive with his life, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest