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HOMILY FOR ST PHILIP’S DAY 2025
When St John Henry Newman, founder of the English Oratories, chose as his motto Cor ad Cor loquitur, “Heart speaks to heart”, he must have been inspired by St Philip, whom he calls Cor Flammigerum in his litany, “Heart of flame”, or more literally “Fire-bearing Heart”.
St Philip was known and loved both in his lifetime and after his death as a big-hearted man. In fact, after his death it as found that he was big-hearted literally as well as figuratively: his heart was found to be abnormally large, and indeed it had at some point been enlarged to the point where it had broken two of his ribs as it expanded. This phenomenon was immediately attributed to his experience in his youth when, praying at night in the catacombs he felt his heart suddenly warmed, aglow with divinely infused love.It matters little whether, as some have suggested, there was a natural explanation, perhaps an aneurism, for the his swollen heart; grace is revealed in nature, and it was surely a special disposition of Providence that the big-heartedness of this “Saint of gentleness and kindness”, as Newman’s hymn styles him, should be manifested in his very flesh.
We tend, in contemporary culture, to oppose heart and head in our thinking, and reasoning is often found wanting in comparison to feeling. Pascal appears to confirm our prejudices in this regard in his famous aphorism: “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” It was not the intention of that great spiritual master to disparage our God-given faculty, and yet it is true that mere reason can appear cold in comparison with the longings of the human heart.
The first reading presents us with Solomon’s overriding desire for Wisdom, which we see as a cerebral concept. Elsewhere the sacred writer puts into Solomon’s mouth the beautiful request: Give me the Wisdom which assists at your throne”. But in the Old Testament wisdom is not a matter of theoretical knowledge, of in-depth instruction or even of intelligence in the sense of a high IQ. It is a savoir vivre, an art of knowing how to live, covering everything from the skill of the craftsman to the prince’s art of governing; it is the supreme gift of God; a gift which permits us to lead not just a good life, but THE good life, sought be the Greek pagan philosophers but at last made accessible to us through the gift of the Gospels and the descent of the Holy Spirit: a life perfectly attuned to what humanity was designed to be, because perfectly attuned to the mind of the God who designed that humanity. Wisdom in this sense involves the whole person, both heart and head. And indeed, as the Old Testament period progressed, thisWisdom became hypostasized: it took on more and more the quality of a person, with God eternally and active in creation. In the fullness of time, it was manifested to us in the person of Christ, the Logos, a word which means both word and reason, who is made flesh and dwells amongst us, who opens his heart to all humanity on the Cross, and pours forth from his pierced heart the Spirit who illumines our minds and warms our hearts.
The Oratories in this country fulfil a vital role which has not always and everywhere been well fulfilled in our time: instruction in the content of the faith, exposing its reasonableness and its intellectual cohesion. We see small but significant signs of a revival in our time among some young people who search for meaning and reason in a society which has become obsessed with the subjective and the trivial. As yet, this revival seems to happen mainly in places like universities, among those more inclined to the head than the heart.
That some of those who will be opinion-formers of tomorrow are coming to Christ, in spite of all the obstacles that contemporary culture puts in their way, is to be celebrated. And yet there are dangers to be avoided: the danger of a dry intellectualism, full of lofty thoughts but exposed to the danger of being subsumed by ideologies which would exploit these ideals for ends ultimately opposed to them, or of a haughty elitism, whether intellectual or social.
Because we need also to reach out to that vast category of persons who have neither the time nor perhaps the natural inclination to occupy themselves with a search that can seem overly cerebral and insufficiently attuned to the needs they daily feel for love, comfort and support. From the underclass enslaved by the bread and circuses of welfare dependence and trivial entertainment, to the “aspirational” classes obsessed by materialistic goals of wealth and status. In order to reach these people, the heads that earnestly seek divine truth must learn to prompt the heart to learn to see and respond in love to the needs of our fellow men and women, who at the deepest level thirst for something greater and more lasting.
The way we will attract these is not through clever arguments but through practical demonstrations of love, compassion and care.
St Philip was attentive to both of these needs, those of the head and those of the heart. He gathered around him intellectuals like Baronius and provided ample opportunities for enquiring minds through a high standard of preaching (then much neglected) and catechetical instruction. He was by birth a member of the social elite, and indeed this greatly served his apostolate, as he gathered around himself men who were also of the intellectual elite (and he knew how to bring them down to earth through his teasing and pranks). But he also devoted himself to the care of the poor, the sick, and the marginalised, and formed his followers to do so also. And he fostered among all classes of people the religion of the heart through devotions, the beauty of religious architecture, music and poetry. Above all, as a confessor and spiritual guide he showed a compassion and an empathy which brought many to Christ, even sometimes the most hardened of sinners.
The opposite error to intellectualism and elitism, particularly prevalent in our time, is that of vacuous sentimentality. The religion of the Heart needs the form of knowledge (as is affirmed by our first and second readings) to avoid the formlessness of untutored emotion which inevitable dissipates without it and leaves behind avoid, an empty yearning for something more substantial.
The apostolate of the Oratory must aim to combine the heart and the head as Philip did. Solid instruction, preaching that both inspires and instructs must speak to the head; compassion combined with clear headedness in the confessional, the beauty of the liturgy and popular devotions to the heart.
Community life is the place where you, dear Fathers and brothers, are called to learn how to unite mind and heart. It requires renunciation. It is, as Philip said, Mortificatio Maxima, the greatest mortification. To prefer the common good to our own opinions, judgments and inclinations and ambitions. Our society stands in such need of the realisation that the common good is the only environment in which the good of each individual can flourish. May it spread outwards from your own community to the families of this Parish, the schools and chaplaincies where you minister, to the wider Catholic and Christian communities, and through them to all with whom all with whom we come in contact. May you be the Apostles of York, as Philip was Apostle of Rome.
This means that St Philip must be not only a supreme example and guide for the Oratorian Fathers and Brothers, but through them his influence must spread out to the various groups which coalesce around the Oratory, within the parishes entrusted to your care and the various groups dedicated to prayer, reflection and the promotion of a liturgical life which nourishes both the heart and the head.
This must inevitably lead to action, to practical demonstrations of selfless love and service, especially among the marginalised. There has been in past decades a tendency to concentrate on charitable outreach almost exclusively, as if we were ashamed to talk about the spiritual and transcendent basis of our faith. There is a natural and laudable reaction against this trend at the moment. But we must not, as Catholics (a word which means not just “universal” in terms of geographical extension, but kat’holon “according to the whole”) react against this trend in such a way as to fall into the opposite error. Faith is made concrete and credible through good works, works of epieikes a word which our second reading translates as “forbearance” but also means gentleness and kindness.
Historically, because of our minority status, we Catholics in this country have not been immersed in the social fabric as deeply as, for example, the Anglicans or the Methodists. We need to remedy this as we seek to re-evangelise our country, to step out of our sacristies as St John XXIII put it, and give practical witness to the effects of faith on the human heart in what Pope Francis taught us to call the peripheries, that is, among those excluded form prosperity, power, and indeed basic human dignity.
Indeed, reflection on this need has led me in these momentous weeks in the life of the Church to wonder whether we cannot begin to discern a design of providence in the succession of pope so ver the last quarter century. Pope Benedict was perceived as a pope of the head. This was in fact false: the last words of this great intellectual were a simple, heartfelt and indeed childlike prayer: Jesus, ich liebe Dich, “Jesus, I love you”. But these days perceptions often count more than less simplistic realities. Hence the popularity in the media of Pope Francis, often presented as the antithesis of Benedict. Many Catholics were disconcerted by aspects of his papacy (myself included at times), but perhaps it was necessary to demonstrate more clearly to the world that the Church is not indifferent to the sufferings of human beings. In his social doctrine Francis was in no way out of line with the teachings of his predecessors. It is a pity that his somewhat unconventional words and actions encouraged many of those who needed to listen to him on these points to dismiss his urgent appeals out of hand.
It is my hope, and the first weeks of the new pontificate have been encouraging in this regard, that Pope Leo XIV will provide us with a much-needed synthesis of the religion of the heart and that of the head. Our new Holy Father has shown already a teaching style that is clear and intellectually engaging, soundly rooted in the Catholic tradition as befits a son of St Augustine, together with assurances that he will continue Francis’ commitment to advocate for the excluded, even when it means having the courage to confront the powerful. Let us pray for him, as he already begins to face criticism from both camps in our divided world and Church, as he seeks to be a unifying leader who teaches us to rise above the distorting ideologies of left and right, by seeking Christ in all things with both heart and head.
True Wisdom consists in seeing that these two facets are ultimately one in Christ: in Illo Uno unum, words from St Augustine which Pope Leo has chosen as his motto: One in the One (Christ).
And that perception in the end can only be the fruit of prayer. The very word Oratory teaches us that: “My house shall be called a house of prayer”. The Holy Spirit dilated St Philip’s heart not as a result of human cleverness, or even strength of character, but because Philip responded to the ordinary prompting of the Holy Spirit in a way which made room for the Spirit’s extraordinary gifts and grafted them onto the extraordinary natural gifts of Philip’s character.
St Benedict in his Rule describes his monasteries as an officina, a “workshop” where the qualities necessary for sanctity, are honed and polished. The vocation of the Oratory, open to the world and knowing no bond but mutual love, should be to prove that however praiseworthy, the monastic cloister is not the only kind of workshop where that art of growth in holiness may be practiced. The heart of a saint can only be formed by the unmerited gift of God, but the human heart must learn to respond to that gift, without claiming any of the credit. Philip himself in one of his sayings, summing up the Catholic doctrine of grace in one sentence,“My Jesus, you know that I can never do any good unless you help me”. His nights of silent prayer in the catacombs are the secret of his greatness.
May he teach his sons and all of us that secret. May he teach us to pray with joy, and to persevere in prayer even when the joy momentarily fails us. May he teach us to respond to the Holy Spirit, so that each of us leaves behind those things which hinder our realising that in Christ everything human is united to everything divine, so that we in Him may find the true Wisdom which makes us whole and undivided, heart and mind, one in Christ and one with each other. In this way, we may become the seed of the unity which God in Christ has established as the destiny of the human race. And being one in he who is One, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, may we know at last unending joy.
Lux sanctae laetitiae, Light of Holy Joy, pray for us.
Cor flammigerum, Heart of Flame, pray for us
