4th Sunday of Easter Year B 2021

 

 4^th. Sunday of Easter (B)

(Acts of the Apostles 4:8-12; 1^st. John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18)

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I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

In the oldest parts of the Bible the word ‘shepherd’ is bound up with the idea of nomadic life.  Nomads lived above all as shepherds, moving their flocks or herds from one pasturage to another.  The prophets of the OT always tended to look back on Israel’s early years when the people were nomads as the ideal period in her history as God’s Chosen People, because – like nomads – true seekers of God should never be settled, fixed, attached to any particular place or situation, but be always in search of God, ever listening for His voice and prepared to follow wheresoever it might lead them.

Jesus presents Himself in today’s Gospel as the true shepherd sent by His Father to lead His flock of believers on their journey through life to the rich pastures of eternal beatitude before His Father in heaven.  Let me quote a passage from H. V. Morton about shepherds in Palestine:

Everything (The shepherd’s work) is done by word of mouth – not by our principle of droving.  The sheep dog is used not to drive sheep but to protect them against thieves and wild animals.  One reason why the sheep and the shepherd are on such close terms in the Holy Land is that the sheep are kept chiefly for wool and milk, and therefore live longer and exist together as a flock for a considerable time.  Also, the shepherd spends his life with them.  He is with them from their birth onwards, day and night, for even when they are driven into a cave or sheep-fold for the night he never leaves them.

We can understand from that picture just how absolutely important and quasi-personal is the relationship between the shepherd and his flock: the sheep have to be in the flock and in tune with the shepherd in order to find food and protection, because the shepherd not only leads the flock in search of fresh pastures but he also guards it from animals which would slaughter and men who would steal.

With that, therefore, in mind we can recall the following words from the Song of Solomon (1:7):

Tell me, You Whom my heart loves, where You pasture your flock, where You give them rest at midday, lest I be found wandering after the flocks of Your companions. 

Those who love Jesus, cannot be loners, they have to be members of His flock, members of those fed by His Word and His Flesh and Blood, members of His Church:

            Tell me, O You Whom my soul loves, where do You pasture Your flock?

Jesus is the ultimate, the sublimely unique Good Shepherd, Who, as the letter to the Hebrews tells us (10:12s.):

Offered one sacrifice for sins and took His seat forever at the right hand of God; now He waits until His enemies are made His footstool. 

Knowing that He was indeed soon to leave His disciples and go back to His heavenly Father at Whose right hand He now makes constant intercession for us:

Jesus, when they had finished breakfast, said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Feed My lambs”.  He then said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Tend My sheep.”  He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”  Peter was distressed that He had said to him a third time, “Do you love Me?” and he said to Him, “Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You.” (Jesus) said to him, “Feed My sheep.” (John 21:15s.) 

That three-fold repetition of the same question and answer was Jesus’ SOLEMN CONFIRMATION of Peter as leader of  the Apostles and head of His Church on earth, so that there will be one flock, one Catholic and universal Church, belonging to the one Good Shepherd; under the leadership of a shepherd who is himself also a sheep, but one expressly appointed and endowed by the Risen Lord to bear the Keys of the Kingdom, one whose supreme privilege and most solemn duty it is to lead the flock in such a way that it might become God the Father’s chosen instrument to: 

            Make all His (the Lord Jesus’) enemies a footstool for His feet.

And when that will have been achieved, Peter himself, the leader chosen for that work, tells us (1 Peter 5:6):

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

for Peter knows himself to be shepherd of the flock only to glorify the Chief Shepherd and -- in the power of the Spirit -- to prepare a people for His coming in glory.

Why, however, are so many nominal Christians apparently content to be found where the Woman -- in the Song of Solomon -- says she could not bear to be, alone and self-satisfied; or, in her own words (1:7):

            Wandering (here and there) after the flocks of your companions? 

The answer, People of God, is: the mystery of sin; and that involves ourselves in both personal fault and public failure.  For sinners though we all are, as believers and disciples we are called into Mother Church and chosen there to form the instrument which the Father specially intends to:

            Make all His (Jesus’) enemies a footstool for His feet.

Despite that glorious vocation we are not allowing the truth of Jesus to shine clearly in and through our lives; with the result that some of those apparently content to be separated from the flock of Jesus shepherded by Peter, are not able to recognise the fullness of the truth about the Jesus because of our continuing failure to bear right witness to the truth and beauty of His Name.  For Jesus said quite unequivocally:

            Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice. (John 18:37)

Let us therefore pray most urgently, People of God, that we ourselves may be able so to listen to the voice of Our Lord that it may penetrate into and resonate ever more deeply within us, transforming our personal lives so that, His voice, His truth, may become more persuasively perceptible in our proclamation of, and daily witness to, His most Holy Name.

I am not speaking here about any dramatic endeavours, certainly no histrionics; I am not even thinking of deliberate efforts to witness -- of set purpose -- before others, certainly not of publicly arguing with anyone.   For the essence of Christian holiness is that we have to receive before we can give, we can only give what we have humbly received.  I am just, therefore, thinking of our receiving, thinking of our daily-increasing heart-felt love of Jesus, of our humble and eager obedience to His will, and our most sincere gratitude to God the Father for His great goodness to us in Mother Church… because THAT is the ‘ammunition’, so to speak, that the Spirit wants us to provide for Jesus our Lord, with which to ‘footstool His enemies’, and bring those sent to Him by His Father into  the glorious oneness of the Spirit of Holiness, guiding the Body of Christ, for glory of God and the salvation of His People.

To that end, we – His witnessing disciples -- must have ever-greater desire and ever- deeper longing to personally re-discover, hear afresh, and respond more faithfully to, the Person of Jesus abiding in the teaching and the Sacraments of Mother Church; that Jesus Who constantly seeks to communicate and share with us:

First of all, through our conscience: ‘when he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking’ (Catechism 1777).   People of God, seek to consult, learn to listen to, and try to follow, your conscience in simplicity and humility, and gradually you will come to hear and more clearly recognize, appreciate, and more lovingly obey, God thus speaking most intimately with you and to you.

Secondly, through our intimacy with the Scriptures of Mother Church, as, with Mary, we ponder them, lovingly and frequently, in our heart:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work; 

Jesus said, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God;’”      

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end for which I sent it. 

(2 Timothy 3:16-17; Matthew 4:4; Isaiah 55:11)

And, finally and most fully, the voice of Jesus the Christ our Saviour to be heard in the sacramental worship of Mother Church as she communes directly with her God and Lord, above all in the Most Holy Eucharist; and, in no small measure, through Christian fellowship in Mother Church:

Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.  (Matthew 28:20)

Whoever listens to you listens to Me. Whoever rejects you rejects Me. And whoever rejects Me rejects the One Who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16)

That great mystery of human sinfulness -- which does not only occasion, more or less unwittingly, the obstruction and/or distortion of the beauty of Jesus’ ‘Good News’, but can even  provoke and lead to the deliberate rejection of God’s great goodness and mercy contained therein -- is the reason why our blessed Lord Himself had to die: His supreme sacrifice alone could save us.   

And that brings me to a complementary aspect of our Gospel reading today:

This is why the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life in order to take it up again. 

Just recall words from our second reading:

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.  Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him.

It is, therefore, absolutely important for us to fix our hope on Jesus: not just for our own selves, but for the whole world.  For, as you heard, Jesus, risen from the dead said:

I have other sheep, not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 

Therefore, if we are indeed sheep who rightly belong to His fold, then “hearing His voice” we must recognize that His words, “I must bring them also”, mean therefore for us, “we must bring them also”.  How?   By living out to the full our ultimate and most sublime vocation by fixing our hopes on Him and allowing His most Holy Spirit to form us in His likeness, for: 

We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.

That work will only approach completion to the extent that we Christians and Catholics become humble enough to allow the Spirit of Jesus to rule in and shine through our lives, that we may thus give authentic witness to Him before the many who are now in the flocks of those ‘companions’ of Jesus mentioned in the Song of Songs; the many who, indeed, have not yet come to any spiritual awareness of and responsiveness to Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and are to be found consorting -- unwittingly perhaps -- with those who do not know Him or even oppose Him.

All that demands a deeply serious, loving and committed, spirituality: a continuous walking with Jesus in all the steps we take, the decisions we make, the thoughts we entertain, and the hopes we treasure.  We, His disciples, have to learn from Jesus’ Spirit how to sacrifice ourselves with Him in Mother Church: not, generally speaking, in His sacrifice of body and blood, but, most certainly and not less importantly, in His sacrifice of loving obedience and trust in His Father’s loving Providence, His daily praise and thanksgiving, His patience and strength under trials and temptations, together with our very own humble contrition.  Note however, that all such efforts at personal sincerity and spiritual commitment to Jesus in all the nooks and crannies of our life will gain for us who make them the most wonderful blessing of the Father’s special love even here on earth:

Jesus answered and said, “Whoever loves Me will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.  (John 14:23)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, to quote Peter (Acts 4:12):

There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name (than that of ‘Jesus’) under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.

Isn’t it wonderful, therefore that we, simply by whole-heatedly rejoicing at the presence of Jesus and the Father within us, can contribute so much to salvation of those who are called to become true children of God?

 

 

3rd Sunday of Eastertide 2021

 

 3^rd. Sunday of Eastertide                             

(Acts of the Apostles 3:13-15, 17-19; 1^st. John 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48)

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My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, once again we have a beautiful Eastertide apparition of the Risen Lord Jesus to His disciples which we are privileged to share with them in Mother Church thanks to her holy Scriptures.

Jesus appeared to the Eleven in Jerusalem as they were gathered together discussing the report of two disciples who claimed to have met the Lord Jesus -- risen from the dead -- as they had been on their way to Emmaus.  To prove that they were not mistaken they had told the Apostles about the meal they had shared with Jesus, just like the meal they had all shared together at the Last Supper.   The Apostles gathered there in secret in Jerusalem were amazed to hear what had transpired on the way to Emmaus, and, as they were considering together what it all might mean, suddenly Jesus Himself was standing there in the room with them.  Despite His greeting:

          Peace be with you,

they – thinking they were seeing a ghost -- were terrified and frightened to such an extent that Jesus went straight on to say to them:

“Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?  Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."    And as He said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.  

Jesus had no recriminations for His Apostles, just an assurance about the reality and truth of what they were actually seeing and experiencing.

Thereupon, He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures, just as they had heard He had done for those two disciples on the way to Emmaus.

Now let us turn our attention to the Apostle Peter in our first reading today, addressing the devout Jews gathered in the portico of the Temple in Jerusalem immediately after he, Peter, together with John, had made a man, lame from birth, walk upright for the first time:

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, Whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go.  But you denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you.  The author of life you put to death but God raised Him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.

Peter was taking great care to do precisely what the Risen Jesus had commanded His Apostles when He said that:

Repentance and remission of sins should be preached in (Jesus’) name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

Peter, who had wept so profusely over his own denials of the Lord, was immensely grateful that Jesus, appearing so unexpectedly in that upper room had no words of recrimination but only a peaceful greeting and comforting exhortations to confidence; and he, Peter, was now trying to follow his Master’s example:

          Now I know, brothers that you acted out of ignorance.

Peter was, indeed, following the example of his Master so closely that not only did he not condemn those who had been led into sin, but he even refrained from condemning those who had been responsible for thus leading them astray:

Now I know, brothers that you acted out of ignorance just as your leaders did.

However, since for disciples of Jesus there can be no repentance without sin being acknowledged, therefore he, Peter, was trying first of all to lead his fellow Jews to recognize and acknowledge their sins as he himself had so broken-heartedly acknowledged his own public betrayal of his Lord and Master.  That done, no recriminations, no accusations, just what the Apostles themselves, above all, what Peter himself, had received from Jesus, understanding and forgiveness:

Brethren, those things which God foretold by the mouths of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.  Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.

Indeed, Peter then went on to add some further encouragement, saying:

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment.

There we see something of the beauty of the Church and there we realise why we call her Mother Church: because she uses the Scriptures, given into her care by her Lord, for our refreshing, that is, for our comfort and strengthening, for our consolation, and enlightenment.

People of God, the Church has too often been accused of preaching hatred of the Jews, and we should notice that there was no hatred in Mother Church’s earliest response to the Jews through her supreme leader on earth, Peter the Rock who, having openly declared the guilt of both People of Israel and their leaders, also went on the say:

Brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers;

and was able to look forward to times of refreshing coming from the presence of the Lord.  Notice what is happening in our days, however.

Our Blessed Lord’s whole life and dreadful death was for one purpose only, God’s supreme glorification through mankind’s repentance for sin committed and grateful acceptance of forgiveness given, in Jesus by the Spirit.

Moreover, the very first thing our Risen Lord did on appearing to His Apostles hiding for fear of the Jews in the upper room, was to open their minds to understand the Scriptures and say:

Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, and THAT REPENTANCE FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS WOULD BE PROCLAIMED in His name to all the nations.  You are witnesses of these things and I am sending forth the promise of My Father (the Holy Spirit) upon you (to cloth you with power from on high).  (Luke 24:46-49)

And again, in St. John’s Gospel this time, the Risen Jesus immediately equips His Church to take up her supreme task:

Jesus breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.   Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them; and whose sins you retain are retained.  (John 20: 22-23)

But we, today, we hear so little of forgiveness of sins being officially proclaimed as necessary in our modern context of a supremely sinful and proudly sinful world society.   We hear of brotherly love, a better and fairer world for all, and much other such pious moralism, but so very, very, little that is immediately pertinent and necessary to protect Christians and Catholics in a world blatantly ‘pushing’ sins of choice as popular standard bearers in a cohesive rebellion again previous Christian values and standards, now abandoned or totally rejected.  The whole ‘modern’ world is proclaiming sin as natural and therefore morally acceptable, while we Catholics and Christians hear merely ‘official’ platitudes which are ‘right’, we know, but which are not the Christian message necessary for our times, especially with regard to believers who have not yet experienced years of witness to and public practice of, the faith of our fathers and the background of our culture.

Now, our great hope, as Christians, is for the return in glory of the Lord when He will establish God’s Kingdom here on earth and finalise God’s triumph over all evil.  That will indeed be -- as Peter said -- a time of refreshing.  However, even now, we can already enjoy a time of refreshing from the presence of the Lord: for all devout Christians recognize and revere the presence of the Lord in the Scriptures, particularly in the New Testament Scriptures; while, perhaps even greater refreshing is offered to us Catholics who can participate in the Eucharistic sacrifice and feast by receiving the very Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion.

So, from the readings set before us today by Mother Church, we have learnt something about ourselves as Catholics: we should be here in Church, not simply out of duty, not simply out of obligation, but for our refreshing as disciples of Jesus!

We heard St. John, also speaking to us for our refreshment today in the second reading:

(Jesus) Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.    Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

Now, anyone who is sincere in his or her desire to serve the Lord will, inevitably, be only too well aware of their own failings, or their own inclination to sin at times.  It is therefore comforting to hear John explain what makes a true disciple of the Lord, for he tells us that, although there are people who think themselves - and are often thought by others - to be true disciples of Jesus because they have warm feelings for Him and can speak effusive and/or enthusiastic words about Him, nevertheless, in so far as they pay no close attention to His commandments,  they are mistaken about themselves, and no sure guides for others. 

We may be sure that we know Him if we keep His commandments.

And, today, dear People of God, a unique aspect of Christianity is largely overlooked, if not deliberately ignored:

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

That is the only conditional part of the prayer taught us by our Blessed Lord but it is of momentous importance, because too many Christians today allow themselves to be influenced by – and even at times profess admiration for – those who ‘get their revenge’, or to make it seem a little better, ‘get even’.  Dear people, there can be no point of honour for a Christian to go so deliberately against Our Lord’s teaching; and any attempt to justify such retaliatory behaviour can only ruin one’s own chances of forgiveness by God.

God’s commandments are the very core and centre of Jesus’ own relationship with His Father, and of His Father’s love for mankind:

I do not speak on My own, but the Father Who sent Me commanded Me what to say and speak.  And I know that His commandment is eternal life.   (John 12:49-50)

God’s commandments are eternal life and express divine love; and because Jesus understood, appreciated, and appropriately accepted them as such He was able to redeem all mankind.  Consequently, such commandments must not be manipulated and adulterated – by pseudo disciples of the Lord -- for the human expression of pretentious, and ultimately false, love and deadly pride.

Whoever loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.  Whoever loves Me will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, may we leave Church today gratefully strengthened and bountifully refreshed for the service of, and witness to, Mother Church who is so divinely wise as to cling resolutely to her Scriptures and to her earliest and most firmly established traditions and teachings in the face of all modern flights of intellectual froth and proud fancy (not true scholarship) or tides of popular, emotional feeling (not true devotion).  And being thus herself obedient to her Lord and His foundation truths, she has not failed us; indeed, she has called us, in His Name, to come here obediently today and rewarded us with the most sublime nourishment and comfort for our souls.

 

2nd Sunday of Eastertide Year B 2021

 

2^nd. Sunday of Eastertide (B)

(Acts of the Apostles 4:32-35; 1^st. John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31)

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There are wonderful truths contained in our readings today, but their beauty can only be recognized by those who possess, by the grace of God, that faith of which Jesus spoke when He said to Thomas 

Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed  (John 20:29)

St. Peter in his first letter, which Mother Church recommends for our reading this Eastertide, tells us  

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who in His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance that is imperishable, kept in heaven for you who… through faith are protected by the power of God for salvation. (1:3-9)

Faith is indeed a wonderful gift: through faith we have been given a new birth to a divine life and are shielded by God’s power for the gradual the fulfilment of that Faith which has only one and supreme purpose, our eternal salvation as children of God.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our Faith invites us to become CHILDREN OF GOD.   That is the relationship of Faith: a childlike trust in, love for, GOD-OUR-FATHER.  In all our relationships of prayer or devotion with the individual Persons of the Father, the Son become our Saviour, and the Holy Spirit, that spirit of trust, confidence in, and love for God-our-Father is utterly basic and absolutely essential. There are overtones with the individual Persons but these are always expressive of that basic childlike awareness and response to God-our-Father. Catholic and Christian Faith can never be understood, interpreted, correctly if that foundational childlike awareness and response is disturbed, disorientated or threatened.

Nevertheless, many today have difficulty with what they wrongly think pertains to faith; they are not satisfied, for example, with today’s words of Jesus: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."   They want to believe in something they can see here and now.  Faith, to them, implies delay; whereas they want more or less immediate experience.  That is a large part of the success of modern TV soaps, which are continually moving every few minutes from one dramatic scene to another.  With a classic novel you may have to read for hours of gradual development and build up before you come to a climax.  Today, many cannot wait that long, they want a continuous flow of easy climaxes, not only on TV., but also in life and also in their religion of choice.  Jesus’ words and teaching are therefore, for many of our contemporaries, unpalatable and difficult: hard to swallow and easy to reject.

Peter, however, had no such difficulty with the teaching of His Lord.  For Peter, the words of Jesus were sacrosanct, and so he wrote in his letter to these early Christians:

Though you have not seen Jesus, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him.

I would now like to remind you of another aspect of that faith by which we live, and through which, as Peter tells us, we have hope.  We heard in the Gospel reading:

Jesus said (to His Apostles), "Peace be with you!  As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you."  And with that He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

In other words, Jesus came among us for the one, ultimate, divine, purpose: to free us from servitude; not just from Egyptian overlords as was the case with Moses and Israel of old, but to free the whole of mankind from its universal servitude to SIN:

Repent and believe the Good News I bring.

And that is why, dear People of God, our Risen Lord first of all equips His Church to serve His Spirit and bring to fulfilment His one purpose of salvation from sin and death for all men and women of good will.

Our readings today show us who, as Christians and Catholics, we should love,

The community of believers was of one heart and mind.

Everyone one who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God and every one who loves the Father loves also the one begotten by Him;

And in that oneness of mind and heart, loving Jesus and the Father, they consequently hated the ‘sin of the world’:

Whoever is begotten by God conquers the world; and the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

Another aspect of our faith from today’s readings is also to be noted, the words are those of the Apostle of love, St. John (I John 5:2):

This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands.

However, such words are from faith and for faith, whereas, as I have already insisted, modern people love experience; they find faith distasteful, saying, for example, that somehow God’s commands prevent them loving.  They prefer to give expression to the immediacy of (whatever) love, whenever it strikes them.  They are much more at ease with their idea of the immediacy of love than its perdurance, faithfulness, reliability and patience; after all, the words they use speak of “making love”.   Their immediate love for their children shows itself by giving them all they want, together with the self-indulgent hugs and kisses, never chastising, training, or teaching, always seeking the immediate reward of childish joy and giggles.  Such people likewise say it is love which motivates those who promote euthanasia, abortion, and the right to a dignified death by one’s own hand and at one’s own choice.  And so, the idea of John that we can only truly love our neighbour by loving God first of all is not acceptable because it does not give us any immediately appreciable feelings of ‘goodness’.

‘Sin’, that only God can truly heal, is now rejected in favour of ‘sickness’ which is humanly treatable: society today seeks in that way to take on God’s work: people do so want both self-approbation and the approbation of others that they are willing to reject as icy-cold God’s long-term commands, and loll about on the beach of immediate self-satisfaction and general approbation anticipating the presumed success of popular treatment through easy-to-hand worldly ideas for what is spiritually totally beyond their ken.  And of course, all that takes place with the inevitable result that sickness and death continue to reign in ever more degrading disguises, causing ever more unimaginable pain.

However, the words of St. Peter do not speak only of a faith which does not yet see, because he continues:    

Even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Because we, who believe, are already being prepared for and enriched with the blessings to come, we can experience, here and now, what Peter calls “an inexpressible and glorious joy” in the practice of our faith.  In other words, in faith we can already experience here on earth  some measure of the joy of divinely personal experience and love.  In the words of St. John of the Cross, try to put love -- your personal heart and mind’s intention -- into your practice of the faith and you will find love: experience a personal relationship with God of “inexpressible and glorious joy”.  Let me give you an example.

At the Easter Vigil we heard the story of our father Abraham journeying with his son Isaac to a place the Lord would show them where Abraham was to sacrifice his beloved son to the Lord as he had been told to do.  You can imagine the deep grief and deadening sorrow in Abraham’s heart as he walked along with his son by his side who was asking him; “Father, I am carrying the wood for the sacrifice, but where is the victim to be sacrificed on the wood?”  “The Lord will provide” his father answered.  They arrived at Mount Moriah and there Abraham prepared to offer his son in sacrifice to the Lord.  But the Lord did indeed provide: “Do not harm the boy” Abraham was told, and turning round he saw a ram provided by the Lord, to be offered in sacrifice instead of the boy Abraham loved so much.  Imagine what joy filled the heart of the old man as he returned home with his beloved son by his side.  Now Isaac, the son to be offered in sacrifice, was a figure of Jesus whom the heavenly Father would send to offer Himself for us in sacrifice on Calvary.  But what about Abraham?  Was he, somehow, a figure of the Father in heaven?  Indeed, he was!  Think of the joy, then, of our heavenly Father this Easter on receiving back His beloved Son, glorious in His Easter rising.  And then realize what joy you can give to the Father by offering your participation in this Mass, by offering Jesus back glorified to His Father, to be at His Father’s right hand for ever in heaven.  Try to delight in giving such joy to your heavenly Father: do what only you can do; personally offer Jesus back to your heavenly Father here in this Mass, and you will begin to experience something of that “inexpressible and glorious joy” of which Peter spoke.

People of God, there are two aspects to our faith: obedience and joy, the one protects us and the other delights us.  God wants to receive the one and give us the other because obedience is meant by Him to lead to a personal relationship of total fulfilment for us.  Indeed, ultimately it will lead to a Personal relationship in Jesus with the Father that will be overflowing with fulfilment for us in the Holy Spirit.  That is already beginning to take place if we live our faith with personal commitment and love, and that is why Peter says today:

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter Sunday 2021

 

Easter Sunday 2021

(Acts 10:34, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9)

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On this Easter morning we are gathered to rejoice in the Lord for the glory and beauty of His Personal triumph over sin and death and for the wondrous salvation He has thereby won for us.

 

If we look back to our human origins, we can learn there something of the true significance of what, at first glance, would appear to have been the utter degradation and revolting ugliness of Our Lord’s sufferings and death on Calvary.

 

God had been wonderfully generous to us at our creation: making, forming, us in His own image and likeness to rule over all that He had made in a way that would give glory to His most holy Name and provide for all our needs.   There was, therefore, a close, ‘instinctive’ bond of friendship between God and our forebears, and indeed, God even used to walk in the garden of Eden conversing with them:

 

The Lord God (was) walking in the garden in the cool of the day (and) called out to the man … (cnf. Genesis 3: 8-9)

 

There had been only one restriction to Adam’s total freedom in the garden, and that had been established when God, from the very beginning, had told him:

 

You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  From that tree you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. (Genesis 2:15)

Notice first of all, People of God, that ‘knowledge of’ means real, ‘physical and full knowledge of’, not merely ‘theoretical awareness, philosophical knowledge of’.  Therefore, the prohibition was made by God because such fruit would prove most seriously harmful to Adam, ‘eat of it and you shall surely die’: one who deliberately turns away from God, by that very fact, cannot share immortality, which is essentially divine, with God.

Adam’s appreciation of God’s goodness was in no way diminished by the warning he had been given, since there was nothing in the Garden which called for Adam to have such knowledge of evil nor was there any good being withheld from him by God, Who urged Adam was  to cultivate and care for the garden in every respect.  Indeed, we learn next how harmonious and lovingly considerate was God’s relationship with Adam, for God, having taken careful note of Adam’s situation, decided (cf. Genesis 2:18-23):

 

It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suited to him.  So, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.   The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The man said, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman’ for out of man this one has been taken.”  

Thus, from the sympathetic closeness of the bond between Adam and God, Eve herself was formed.

However, the serpent managed to poison Eve’s mind by insinuating that God’s command forbidding them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had been made out of oppressive authoritarianism, and thus the nature of the bond between God and the couple He had created became strained before being ultimately determined by the issue of obedience: for Adam, weakly opting to go along with Eve in disobedience to God’s warning/command, thereby inevitably lost his participation in God’s immortality and became subject to death and suffering for mankind as a whole.

That, dear People of God, is why Jesus declared so very frequently that He had come among men not to do His own will but the will of Him Who had sent Him:

         My food is to do the will of Him Who sent Me.

         I do not seek My own will, but the will of the Father Who sent Me.

        I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him Who            sent Me. (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38)

Jesus made many more such assertions so that we might most surely recognize the root of our human sinfulness and suffering.

Thus, there are two most important points for all disciples of Jesus to appreciate from the very beginning: first of all, there can be no true love for God in one given to disobedience, for disobedience is the root of all our evils and the cause of our alienation from God: we cannot ‘pick and choose’ between disobedience now and obedience later, in our relationship with God.   Secondly, the obedience we owe to God can never truly be cold or automatic, for that is a disfiguration of its original and most authentic nature … for obedience is essentially the truest expression of human, child-like, love for and total confidence in, God our Father.

Now, bearing in mind what we have learnt about our origins, let us look for the glory and the beauty of Our Lord’s obedient Passion, Death, and Resurrection brought about on Jerusalem’s mount of ignominy, Calvary.

We were told in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles that:

They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree.

How wonderfully beautiful!!   The beautiful fruit of God’s good tree in Eden – which, following the Serpent’s deception of sensuous Eve and his exploitation of Adam’s indecisiveness -- had become a stone of stumbling, is now most wonderfully transformed by Jesus’ obedient self-sacrifice into the life-enhancing, life-enriching, life-fulfilling, fruit of divine bounty now offered to us in the Eucharist!! Supremely desirable indeed for the gaining of wisdom: not merely cold knowledge of good and evil, but wisdom sublime and divine; a saving transformation symbolized, most beautifully for us disciples of Jesus, no longer by a snake pierced through and lifted up high on a pole as under Moses, but by God’s most beautiful fruit hanging on a tree of loving choice.

What delight in His Father, what love for us, enabled Jesus to hold His head high throughout those atrocious torments on the Cross?  Of that we are told in the Psalter:

Blessed is the man (whose) delight is in the law (the command) of the Lord … He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. (Psalm 1:2-3)

 Later we read (Ps. 110:5, 7.):

         The Lord says to my Lord, sit at My right hand while I make Your enemies your            footstool. … At Your right hand is the Lord Who crushes kings on the day of His            wrath, Who judges nations (yes, Father, for Jesus always does what pleases You) ...         Who drinks from the brook by the wayside (signifying Your Gift of the Holy Spirit);         and thus, (like the tree planted by streams of water) holds high His head. 

 How wonderful!!  Yet:

        They put such a Man to death by hanging Him upon a tree,

where, of God’s infallible prescience and love, He was destined to become the fruit of salvation, the fruit of Calvary, not, as at the serpent’s, suggestion to be sneakily grasped, but lovingly intended by the Father Himself, to be taken and received with faith and humble Eucharistic gratitude:

 

Take this, all of you, and eat it, this is My (Son’s) Body which will be given up for you.

          

When the serpent deceived Eve he had promised her that:

 

When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, who know both good and evil.

Our blessed Lord and Saviour, on the other hand, opens our eyes to the full truth of our situation when He offers us the strength of His grace together with a call to repent, warning us that only those who humbly believe in Him and in His Father’s merciful goodness will be able to receive with profit the full fruit of His sacrifice and the wisdom of His Most Holy Spirit.

People of God, today we should, as Catholics and Christians, wholeheartedly rejoice!   Rejoice in God’s infinitely beautiful wisdom that extends throughout all His creation and all ages shaping all our human destinies; rejoice in His omnipotent and universal might, that manifests itself in a Son willing to suffer the loss of all in order to conquer sin and to save His Father’s chosen ones; rejoice in the goodness of Him Who knows no evil and suffers no evil, and Who -- in His only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ and by His Most Holy Spirit -- is become our Light and Life, our Joy and Peace, uniquely able to transform all evils to His greater glory and our eternal salvation.

Rejoice, rejoice, indeed, but also pray today, our world is so dramatically turning away from God to the worship of human wilfulness: ‘might is right’ still holds sway, but today, ‘might’ yet more imperiously lays claim not to direct physical power to enforce, so much as to sheer stiff-necked wilfulness to guarantee what is wanted wherever ‘persuasion’ is impossible: for might today lies in numbers: for our modern democracy is always and only most fully content, satisfied, and acceptably-satiated with ‘popularity’, sustained by as many as possible voters however young, regardless of integrity, truth, beauty and authentic fulfilment.

Yet again, let our rejoicing be truly Catholic and Christian, for human wilfulness, though perduring to self-destruction can never thwart the ultimate will of God’s goodness to us triumphant in Jesus, radiant in ‘shareable-glory’ for all who turn to Him with loving obedience and total and humble confidence.