“It is at this time of year,” the remark came, “when one is a bit fed up with Easter Hymns. There are no good ones left and it is too early for May hymns to Our Lady.” Whilst clergy can find the oddest things to complain about, there is both something with which to have sympathy in this view and also something to rebel against. As we head into the last week before the Ascension we can marvel that Easter still goes on, whether we have sung all the good hymns or not. But that is rather the point: Easter does go on and on and it is something about which we do not give enough thought.

At the moment of the incarnation, our Lord took our human nature to himself but also shared his divine nature with us. And as he went through his life experiencing all that it is to be human, he shared with us his divinity. Just as death is an ever present reality in everyone’s lives, every day, so too the resurrection is an ever present reality in the lives of believers. If the human experience is coloured by the presence of death, that colour is changed by the fact that the life of the Risen Christ colours it too.

Caryll Houselander once reflected on this presence. She wrote:

All day long, all over the world there is resurrection. A puny infant is baptized; Christ lives again, strong in his new life. A convert is received into the Church, a little appalled and disappointed by the sense of emptiness in his own soul, after the long tension of his conversion; Christ comes back to the world. A boy murmurs the monotonous story of his sins in the cramped confession box, the words of absolution are spoken; Christ lives again in the heart of mankind. A forgotten old woman dies in the workhouse. To those who close the eyes and cover the quiet face nothing extraordinary has happened; in the eyes of the Eternal Father, Christ has risen again from the dead.  Every day thousands of people receive Holy Communion. Christ who has been sacrificed on the altar is laid in the tomb of their hearts. There is no place he will not come: prisons, hospitals, schools, camps, ships at sea, cathedrals, little tin churches; he comes to them all. He comes into the houses of the sick and the dying, regardless of whether they are mansions or slums.

When we receive the sacraments, we too must be conscious that Christ is ever rising in our hearts. We are joined on to him, and so those moments of grace, of renewal and of devotion are participations in his resurrection. We have to make sure we look for them and keep them. Easter characterises and defines the life of our soul as much as anything else. If we only kept that in mind more we could still be found singing, “Christ the Lord is risen today” with as much freshness and gusto in July as on Easter morning, because the truth is that it is always Easter morning somewhere.

So the Ascension is not the end, because there is no end. We are in Easter now, and we always will be. And we must thank God for that.

This Saturday we commemorate St Philip’s Patronage of this very Oratory. It is not just a ceremonial observance, but a profound recognition of the influence and care of our beloved Holy Father over the lives of the Fathers of the Oratory and the souls they shepherd.

Saints are set apart for a sacred office of dedication to God’s service. St Philip is entrusted with the continuous care of the souls here as the patron of the Congregation of the Oratory. On this feast, then, we are reminded of his gentle role as our Holy Father, and the special place he holds in our lives. He is our protector and advocate. He is our intercessor, speaking on our behalf to the Lord. He is someone who guides us now as once he guided the people of Renaissance Rome.

It might have been the Saint’s exceeding joy, humour and approachability that initially attracted the attention of the people of his city, but it was certainly his deep faith and love for our Lord that inspired people to love our God as St Philip loved him. It is this same deep faith and love that makes him our spiritual father, always willing to intercede for us.

But the idea of patronage also encompasses inspiration. St Philip’s commitment to Rome is the perfect example of the commitment of this Congregation to the people of Oxford. The Oratory Fathers strive to emulate the joyful disposition and humour of St Philip, aiming always to approach the love of God with a light heart and spreading that same joy and example of sanctity to others. This sanctity of St Philip is not one only characterised by miracles or his Counter-Reformation work to keep our Catholic faith alive. It is firstly characterised by our patron’s genuine humanity and humility. By being available, approachable and interested in human nature, St Philip transformed ordinary encounters into moments of spiritual joy and closeness to God.

We should invite him to guide us with his love away from sin and temptation; to be not only the patron of our Oratory, but of our whole lives, unreservedly; to be the one we seek for aid; to be the one who guides us to eternal bliss.

As we celebrate the feast of the Patronage of St Philip, let us recommit ourselves to living out his virtues, especially of joy, humility, and love. May his intercession continue to guide us to Heaven as he inspires us on Earth. And may his Oratory remain a beacon of faith, fellowship, and service to all, as St Philip intended.

The Gospel writers include a mix of events that took place after Christ’s resurrection. The accounts of what exactly happened when the tomb was first found empty all capture the same events from a different angle — whether that is of the women who found the tomb empty, of Mary Magdalene, or of the apostles. It may be that each Gospel writer wanted to include something that the others had not. Or that there are significant spiritual truths being conveyed in these different emphases. Or, perhaps, that each writer simply included his own favourite accounts of what happened next.

St John more or less says this himself when he seems to conclude his Gospel with the words: “there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) Christ continued to appear to his disciples for forty days — we only have partial accounts of four of these days in the Gospels. There probably was too much to write down. But then John goes on to write another chapter, where he includes just one more resurrection appearance that he couldn’t leave out. Perhaps this was his favourite story — we can certainly understand if it was.

Seven of the disciples, including Peter and John, go fishing. They work all night and catch nothing. Then a mysterious figure appears on the shore and tells them to try again on the right side of the boat and they’ll catch something. And they find more fish than they can haul in.

They’ve been here before, of course. Jesus did this when he first met them (Luke 5). And it makes John realise: “It is the Lord!”

When they get to land, they find Jesus waiting with a charcoal fire with bread and fish ready, and he invites them to bring some of the fish they have just caught and join him for breakfast.

There are many important things that take place here, like Peter’s reconciliation, and Our Lord’s prophecies of what will happen to Peter and John. There is a powerful image of the Church in the net full of fish that does not break. But what I find most interesting are the questions this passage raises in passing without any attempt at answering them.

For a start, where did Jesus get his bread and fish and fire from? When the disciples come ashore, it’s clear that there is plenty of bread and fish on a fire already, and the disciples add to that fish. Jesus has a “here’s one I made earlier” moment. But did he? Did he say: I’m God, so let there be a fire, let there be bread and fish, and there were? Did he command his angels to light a fire and provide these things? Or — and this is the option I like best — did he do it himself? No one says that we can’t take pleasure in fishing or lighting fires once we’ve risen from the dead.

As much fun as it is to picture the angels busying themselves with fishing rods and kindling, I suspect that’s not what happened. We can’t be sure of course. Each option is possible. But that still tells us something. It tells us that it is possible that Our Lord, risen from the dead, could have chosen to do these things for himself, if he wanted to. We know he continued to interact with the physical world — as we see when he eats breakfast. There is something quite moving in the idea that all those everyday tasks that go with being human are not beneath the risen Lord, and that he might even have done them by choice.

It takes John only a few sentences to describe the disciples’ work and journey back to shore. It won’t have been instantaneous. Jesus was waiting on the shore for a long time. What was he doing during that time? He wasn’t teaching anyone. He wasn’t healing anyone. He wasn’t sleeping.

Was he praying? Maybe. Earlier in the Gospels, whenever he has time to himself, he uses it for prayer, to be alone with his heavenly Father. But those intense periods of prayer he set aside before were for working out the details of his mission. Now that his mission is more or less complete, I don’t think he needed to pray in quite the same way. So what is he doing?

Perhaps he just sat there, enjoying the sun rise across the lake and lighting up the hills on the other side. (I’ve never been to the Holy Land, but a quick image search suggests it’s a stunning view.) And so I like to think that Our Lord simply took pleasure in the beauty of the world he created. He looked at it all and saw that it was good, as he had done once before. And he did so, sitting on the beach, next to a fire, listening to the sound of the waves, and waiting for his friends to join him.

Christ is risen from the dead, but he hasn’t lost any of his humanity that he shares with us. We look forward to sharing in the joys of heaven with him one day. But he already takes pleasure in sharing our joys now.

The Franciscan missionary, St Juniper Serra, the “man who founded California”, was known to say “Always go forward; never look back.” While it is undoubtedly a good piece of advice for those embarking on the missionary enterprise, it should suffice for us too, who are living the life of faith in Christ. We too are on a journey, and the greatest enemy to our progress is a tendency to turn back to what was, to look to our past, and most especially, our sins.

We should never look at any sin in our past life — especially since it has been confessed and forgiven — except in a way that leads us to give thanks and praise to God, “whose mercy endures forever!” St Augustine, and later St Thérèse, held that Grace is everything. We have so much for which to give thanks to God, so much for which, like our Lady, to “magnify him”. This means, to make much of him. This is what the Saints do: they give thanks to the Lord for his mercy and grace, without looking back, propelled onward by joy. If you look back at your past and are depressed by what you see, do what St Paul did. First, he acknowledged “I was a blasphemer”, but he didn’t dwell on that. He didn’t say how unworthy he was to be a follower of Christ, let alone an apostle. In fact he says: “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, for he counted me faithful, appointing me to his service.” (I Tim. 1:12) When St Paul looked at his past and saw his sin he did not hide away saying, “Woe is me, I’ve done such terrible things, I’m unfit to be a Christian.” Not at all. The effect was to cause Paul to give praise to God. He gloried in Christ’s grace saying, “and the grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” (1 Tim. 1:14) This is something, an attitude, we can copy. If we look at our past and feel depressed, it means that Satan has scored a victory over us, causing us to doubt God’s mercy, and therefore his love, and to focus on ourselves, which is never a good idea. By all means be sorry but don’t be sad, since Grace was more abundant. Padre Pio once reminded a penitent that “God’s mercy is infinitely greater than your malice.”

We are still celebrating the Lord’s triumph over sin and death in his glorious Resurrection, which, because we have been called to share in that Risen Life, gives us real joy. The past then is dead, and through the grace of Baptism, we are now one with Christ, our sins having been blotted out once and forever. He walks with us, guiding and leading us on the way, which is why we should heed St Juniper’s words: “Always go forward; never look back.”