1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 & Luke 2:41-52
That is our mission here at St. Anselm. Our mission is to pray for those who have no family who have stopped recognising God in the middle of their family, to welcome them here and to let them know that they will always have a family. They will always be loved. They will always be cared for, and they will never, ever be on their own.
In The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, please sit.
This summer, as many of you know, our little family went to Rome, and it’s the first time, and we’ve gone as a family. I’ve been many times before, and Edmund has got increasingly jealous every time I’ve gone, when can I go? When can I go? And so this year we took advantage of the very reasonable prices to travel given COVID and we all went to Rome.
And there was a little Church just around the corner from the apartment we were staying in. And it was for St. Monica, mother of Saint Augustine and St. Monica, famous for praying for her son her entire life to become Christian. Because Saint Augustine was not Christian.
He was a Berber. But she prayed her whole life that he would come to know Jesus Christ. And it was only on her death bed that he finally converted and became a Christian. The prayers of a mother for her son finally came to fruition and gave us one of the greatest Doctors and teachers of the Church there has ever been, Saint Augustine, so central to our understanding of how to live a good and Godly life in the modern world. The prayers of her mother for her son.
And in this Church at the back there was a statue of Our Lady as so often there is in the churches in Rome, and it was surrounded by hearts, homemade handmade hearts made out of fabric, sewn beautifully with lace and just an astounding array of different materials, some really, really big, some absolutely tiny. And people were praying in front of the statue and coming and going, and I didn’t really know what it was. And so I looked it up. And it’s the Church in Rome where people who are struggling to start a family go, people who are married who want to have children but are struggling to have children.
It’s where they go and they kneel in front of that statue of Our Lady in St. Monica’s, where the prayers of a mother for her son are so held up as beautiful and good. And they pray for the gift of a child. And those hearts that are on the wall and in the cabinets and surrounding the statue of Our Lady are offerings of thanks from mothers and from fathers who have gone to that place and prayed for the gift of children. And their prayers have been answered.
And I can’t go into that Church, I’ve been back many times, and I can’t go back into that Church now without getting quite emotional because I know the power of the gift of a child. Indeed, we see it in our first reading in 1 Samuel, the lady who has prayed Hannah conceived and gave birth to her son and called him Samuel. And she said, I asked the Lord for him, a mother praying for a child.
That is the heart of a family, a mother praying for her child. It is the model of the family that we are given throughout all Scripture in the Old Testament and the New Testament, Mary praying for her child.
That is the beating central heart of any family.
And from there on out, it doesn’t really matter how the family is shaped or how the family is put together, how many children there are, how many people involved in the relationship there is. Let’s not forget that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father. It doesn’t matter how that family is put together. But if the mother prays for her children, whether or not they are her own, whether or not they are fostered, whether or not they are adopted. It is that prayer of a mother for her child that holds the family together.
It’s that prayer that beats in a family. It’s prayer that makes the heart of the family beat. And when you stop praying, the heart stops pumping. And that’s why I believe we see so many problems in our world because the beating heart of our families has stopped praying and has stopped beating.
And so we are called in this place to pray for those who have forgotten to pray, to pray for those who have forgotten what it is that keeps the family together, to pray for those whose families are complex and difficult and so hard to understand, to pray for those who don’t have a family, to pray, for, those who quite literally wash up on our shores, to pray for those families who arrived in life boats on the beaches of England, to pray for those families who find themselves in refugee camps in Syria, to pray for those families who find themselves without enough food to eat on Christmas Day to pray for those families that suffer with violence.
Because when we pray for them, we start the heart pumping again.
We start that heart pumping out love into that family. And through that prayer, bring them to this place so that no matter how disparate, no matter how bad their family model at home may be, no matter how bad their lives are, they will be brought into our family just as you brought me into your family nearly 18 months ago, just as you did that first Sunday, I came and covered here.
That is our mission here at St. Anselm. Our mission is to pray for those who have no family who have stopped recognising God in the middle of their family, to welcome them here and to let them know that they will always have a family. They will always be loved. They will always be cared for, and they will never, ever be on their own.
Thank you for your prayers for my family. Thank you for the prayers and support you have given us over the last 18 months as my family becomes part of this family.
Thank you for all that you do to support families in Hayes, through the food bank, through looking after your neighbour. Through Fostering all of those amazing things that happen here. Let’s continue in our next twelve months. Let’s continue in that prayer. And in that action.
Let’s continue in that love of Jesus Christ and shine it out into the whole of Hayes.
Amen