Canon Pat Browne: Homily on Feast of the Assumption and the riots

Parish Priest Canon Pat Browne gave the following homily at Holy Apostles, Pimlico, central London yesterday.

I got a text this week a few days after the riots began. It said: 'Tottenham has signed a new Italian Striker - Grabatelli!' Grab-a-telly?

Humour is one of the ways we deal with tragedy. And tragedy it was!

What happened within the last week in our city and in our country? What got into so many people? Some certainly were the usual suspects who always take an opportunity to rob or steal but many were young people who have never been in trouble before. The young ones are too young to be sent to prison but now they will have a criminal record blighting their hopes for a successful future. Who can put them right while they are still young? How do we reintegrate them into society? What is their place in our land now?

The looters were by no means all young people - or poor. Even those who describe themselves as poor are wearing footwear and designer gear at prices that I have paid out for footwear or a piece of clothing.

No! This was greed and opportunism - a throwing out of all morality and sense of what is right and wrong and what it is to be decent.

How do we get parents to take responsibility for their children - their children of all ages? How do we get the kids themselves to have some sense, decency and to be aware that there are consequences to all our actions - good and bad. How do we ourselves behave?

I was in Sainsbury's yesterday shopping. I loaded up my trolly, went to the till and paid; went down to the car park and loaded it all in the boot of my car and then spotted two packets of casserole mix not in the shopping bags. Had I paid for them? I checked my receipt. No! Nothing there. It was only £1.76. I was in a hurry. It's not much. Do I have to go the whole way back? Sainsburys get enough out of me. And so it went on.

I went back upstairs and paid. The woman on the till remarked: "Good to see there are a few honest people left!" As she said this I thought: "What if I hadn't paid, then in my own way too, I would be no better than the looters, stealing. Some Bankers did this, looting hardworking people's pension funds. Some MP's did it, looting the public coffers for money that was not theirs. And you did it, anytime you took something at a cut-down price when you knew it had 'fallen off the back of a lorry'!

No! Let's not make demands of other people about decency and honesty if we are prepared to be decent and honest ourselves. Let us role model, practise what we preach! Let us uphold the 10 commandments - put God first and love your neighbour!

Did you know there are eight hundred thousand children in this country who have no contact with their fathers. Some 900 children are excluded from school every day. Let me be the first to say there are single parents doing a magnificent job on their own and bring up law-abiding and decent kids. But look at the kids that are in trouble. It can be no surprise to us to find that a huge proportion of these are numbered in that 800,000 who have no father in their lives. Kids need two parents where possible. They need strong male role models as fathers - to love them, be there for them, to set boundaries to teach right and wrong and to discipline them when they misbehave.

As parents, please be on the side of teachers. Don't rush in to complain every time your little darling has been reprimanded. We must re-establish discipline in our schools. If we do not, it will not be what we have seen this week that will come back to haunt us; it will be far worse events in the future.

Today's Feast of the Assumption is a reminder to us that a creature - Mary - a human person, like ourselves achieved the greatest prize of all - Heaven itself - Life with God forever. Resurrection after life in this world and death. No, I am not going off the topic of the riots. Stay with me on this. This feast reminding us that what we've got here is not all there is. God offers us eternal life.

The Bible makes a lot of The Last Judgement. We will be rewarded or punished for the way we have lived our life here on earth. Who will judge us? God? Yes, maybe. But we, you know, we determine our own judgement. Every day I make decisions - decisions to be for that day 'My Better Self' or 'My Worst Self'. We have the capacity for either; and we choose. When I make a decision I am either setting my face, the direction of my life, towards God or away from Him.

In our society today we make a lot of having freedom to choose. Well, God respects this. We do choose our own fate and destiny. All God does, is rubber stamp our choice and allow it. By our decisions, our actions we choose heaven or hell - to create it here on earth and to go to it afterward.

All of Mary's decisions in life from the big ones like saying yes to the Angel Gabriel and not running away from Calvary, but staying with her Son to support him, to the smaller ones, like disciplining her child and teaching right from wrong - did she ever give him a smack on the legs for being naughty? Would the Sinless One ever have pushed the boundaries and needed to be disciplined? But let's not go there at this Mass. That is another debate. My point is - all of her decisions set her face and her steps in the direction of God. And so, when her life reached its end here in this world, he lifted her graciously to his world of eternal life.

Isn't that what all of us here hope for at the end of our days?

So let us be like her. Say NO to the our Worst Selves. Say YES to our Best selves - every day. Our lives will be the happier for it. We will be easier to live with. Society will benefit. We will be better followers of Jesus, and we too, like Mary, will inherit eternal life.

Pat Browne ©