This Sunday in the gospel Jesus asks "Who do people say the Son of Man is?". Who do you say He is? What do you understand by the term “Son of Man”. At one level the answer is obvious. After all we have the whole story encapsulated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, His ascension into heaven, and the decent of the Holy Spirit – something called the pascal mystery. But who is Jesus to you? My parents were country people with a faith rooted in a culture reaching back probably before St Patrick recognisably brought the Christian faith to Ireland. Jesus was part of the cycle of life, just as much as the crops they grew, the produce they harvested, the very air they breathed. Everything was imbued with the grace of God. The shadow side was a deep-seated superstition of what was perceived to be the primitive forces of nature. But, either way, Jesus and the intercession of Mary and Joseph overcame everything. So for me, for a long time, I guess that the Son of Man was literally a cardboard figure, an image of the Sacred Heart dedicated when I was two and a bit years old, which I still have and honour. As with those images, His eyes followed me round the house everywhere, but who was He? What did I need from Him? What did He want to offer me? Either way I followed my own path, at least what I thought was “my path”. It was not that I did not believe, I just went what I believed to be my own way. The question of who is the Son of Man was pushed into the background; but even in those days, wherever I was, somehow, I needed to know where the Catholic church was, though I seldom went in. Eventually, one Sunday morning, for no apparent reason, I decided to go to the local Catholic church. After the Mass I had a chat with the priest who had a knack for spotting new faces. He did not judge me but invited me to come along for a few weeks and see how I got on. Which I did, and here I am now, by the grace of God a priest in His Church. That same priest helped me to put my vestments on at my priestly ordination. Why do I tell you this? Because I suspect that we all have our own story about who the Son of Man is for us. For me the Son of Man is not the Jesus sitting on the pearly grey clouds of heaven of my childhood prayer cards. Jesus alive and He is God; He is in the glory of the Father with the Holy Spirit, but He is still as human now as He was at His incarnation. Jesus is Lord, but Jesus, the Son of Man, is also our brother and through Him we truly are the sons and daughters of God. We see the face of Jesus reflected in each other if only we care to look. Whoever is one with Jesus is one with the Father through the Holy Spirit. Isn’t it beautiful that we share in the son/daughtership of Jesus, where His Father is also Our Father? Think about it; extraordinary, isn’t it? To make this oneness with Jesus complete we also have to be one with each other through the Holy Catholic Church, in its rites and forms, which contain the fullness of the word of scripture; the traditions reaching back to the earliest times; and the teaching that flows from both of these through our successive Holy Fathers. This is not easy; there will be times when our spiritual oneness with each other, and within our community of the church, will set us against “oneness” with the world. There will be times when we feel at odds even with ourselves in terms of what we may say or feel about ourselves; the world; and the teaching of our church. There will be times when perspectives within and outwith the Church will differ. But truth does not depend on emotion. Our church, your church, through the teaching authority of our Holy Father, is not founded on the shifting sands of feelings and intuition but on the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We see this in Sunday's Gospel, where Peter, though he often proves to be deeply fallible, is 100% correct about Christ is. He goes beyond the concept of the Son of Man to say to Jesus you “are the Son of the living God”. Not a phantom God, but a living God, as alive as you and me. Living, alive, vibrant, full of life, full of love - eternal love. My prayer for you all today, and always, is that you stay close to Jesus in the life of his Catholic church and that you will experience the living God in your hearts and souls; now and always. As always, please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you. Fr Chris

BAPTISM PREPARATION: the next baptism preparation session will be Saturday the 26th of September at 2.00pm in the meeting room at St Urban’s. Registration forms are available from the parish office.