4th Sunday Year C 2022

 

 4^th. Sunday (Year C)     

 (Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; 1^st. Corinthians 12:31 – 13:13; Luke 4:21-30)

 

 

In our first reading the young Jeremiah, a somewhat frightened and unwilling prophet it would seem, was called by the Lord:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.

And, despite his protestations of youth:

            Ah, Lord GOD!   Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth

he was told:

Prepare yourself and arise, and speak to them all that I command you.  Behold, I have made you this day a fortified city and an iron pillar, and bronze walls against the whole land -- against the kings of Judah, against its princes, against its priests, and against the people of the land.

From that you see that when God chooses someone for a special work of whatever sort, He prepares and enables them to do that for which He is choosing them.  Let us now look at Jesus, beginning in Galilee the work for which He had been sent by His Father:

He came to Nazareth and went according to His custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read (from) a scroll of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

He handed the scroll back to the attendant, sat down with the eyes of all looking intently upon Him, and said:

            Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing!

In modern parlance one might say that that reading from prophet Isaiah was the Messianic brief Jesus had been given, and we are about to learn what Jesus’ understanding of His calling was.  We are told that, on ending that prophetic reading, Jesus then went on to speak in such a way that:

When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.  They rose up, drove Him out of the town, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl Him down headlong. But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.

They tried to ‘hurl Him down headlong’ -- headlong and backwards -- down one of the steep parts of the hills surrounding their village, where nests of swallows can still be found.  George Adam Smith tells us you cannot see Nazareth from the surrounding country ‘for Nazareth rests in a basin among hills; but the moment you climb to the edge of this basin, what a view you have!  Esdraelon, Carmel, the Valley of the Jordan with the long range of Gilead, the radiance of the great Sea, thirty miles in three directions, a map of Old Testament history!’

Make no bones about it, People of God, Jesus did not inspire such anger and resentment by a slip of the tongue, so to speak.  Not at all!   He heard many in the synagogue praising Him before being silenced by the poisonous question, ‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph’.  This was a paradigm for the best that Jesus – as Messiah and Son of God – could expect!!  These were His own people, not proud and exclusive Judeans who scorned them for both their accent and their proximity to pagan towns and influence; not the influential Scribes and Pharisees who despised their Galilean ignorance of the Law and their traditional practices; these were the presumably humble and simple faithful in Israel who had been praying for God’s messianic blessing for centuries!

Jesus answered them immediately with supremely purposeful words that might disabuse them:

Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.

Surely you will quote Me this proverb, 'Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in Your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'"  

To lay bare in such a way the personal attitude of those present might have seemed enough, but no, Jesus went straight on to infuriate them even more by exposing the ridiculous national and religious pride which tethered them to those Judeans, Scribes and Pharisees who held them is such low esteem as members of the People of God:

Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was closed for three and a half years, and a severe famine spread over the entire land.  It was to none of these that Elijah was sent but only to a widow in Zarephath, in the land of Sidon.  Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed but only Naaman the Syrian.

How is the mission of comforting and salvation foretold by the prophet Isaiah in those words read and accepted by Jesus, to be reconciled with what He subsequently said? For reconciled they must be, if we are to have some true understanding and appreciation of Our Saviour, and His work for us today.

The eventual rejection and even the crucifixion of Israel’s Messiah and God’s own Son are revealed as being deeply embedded and even cherished in the People of God’s own hearts and minds as witnessed by these supposedly devout synagogue-goers of Nazareth who had known and lived with Jesus from His infancy, who had worked with Him, or had Him and Joseph work for them; people whom Jesus from childhood had been taught to look up to with respect!

Today there are many people like those at Nazareth, with secret attitudes restrained by only skin-deep levels of social awareness and conscience, ready to burst out into violence under minor provocation: people ready to join any mob or demonstration ‘for the love of it’: yelling ‘racist’ with, at times, convincingly hateful intent; blocking roads and toppling statues; anti-whatever is considered too authoritative or institutional, too traditional or ‘stupidly’ normal!  In all, people deeply uncultured not because of intellectual ignorance, but by personal arrogance and spiritual pride.

Dear People of God, do not be led astray by such ‘evangelists’ of modern thought and morality!  To live in today’s world -- which the celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking warned was in danger of destroying itself in the next 100 years -- as true Catholics and Christians, as children of God, and members of the Body of Christ, we ourselves need to be dis-abused by Jesus’ word and actions.

St. Luke’s Gospel today tells us that no one’s sincerity and fidelity can be presumed.   Humble and persistent personal prayer and sacramental worship, along with sincere selflessness, are ever-more necessary for us in our endeavours to witness to and promote Jesus’ ‘Good News’ in our wilfully godless society of today.  And we can only do that if we have truly firm confidence and trust in God’s saving and loving grace, grace unfailingly present in the worship and sacraments of the Catholic Church which is His Spouse and our Mother, grace whereby He is preparing blessings beyond any earthly measure, for all who will ultimately and eternally find themselves sitting at the wedding feast of heaven.

What is grace, however?  Christian grace is a gift, a blessing of the Holy Spirit, and as such is HOLY, leading us to do God’s will, for our fellows’ good on earth, and our own spiritual and personal fulfilment and eternal salvation, that is, life in Jesus for the Father in His heavenly kingdom.

Saint Paul waxed lyrical in our second reading about the Christian virtue of charity, translated as ‘love’ in modern parlance; but what is the love Paul speaks?

Such 'love' is not an emotional feeling; it is not a sexual need; it is not a complaisance; it is not even a merely human commitment; it is a transcendent Christian virtue properly called ‘charity’, because it is a participation in God’s own personal Being and eternal life; in our human context, it is a response to God’s call leading us to seek His good pleasure for one’s self, His great goodness for our fellows, and above all, it is a thanksgiving and commitment to the service of, and supreme delight in, His greater glory.

On this Sunday Jesus -- raising high His standard as He entered upon the public mission for which He had been sent by His heavenly Father for our salvation -- spoke plain words that scandalized those members of His own synagogue whose religion was tainted by their desire for popularity; so too today, we must, as Christians, understand the truth about what is so popularly misconstrued by so many around us.

Jesus’ words and actions could be hard as well as gentle: He would help but never cajole, He wanted obedient love not popularity, He had come to redeem not excuse, to raise up human beings, not to indulge their weaknesses (Luke:12:49):

I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

For Jesus holiness was simply and solely, totally and wholly, love for His Father and fellowship with all our brothers and sisters in Christ; He lived and died for His Father’s glory and for the fulfilment of the Father’s will for our salvation, though it cost Him the agony of death upon a Roman cross.

Much good is done in the public sphere today, such ‘goodness’, however, is not Christian charity: great efforts are made and much money spent to improve public health, but that does not prevent living children having been and still being aborted in their millions now; loving relationships are always publicly acceptable, most even laudable, but that does not prevent much sexuality being publicly practiced for selfish and even degrading reasons; education is considered of great, perhaps, the utmost, importance, but knives are now much more common and are murderously used by young people; infants and children are taught nothing about God, and they are thereby taught that men and women such as they see every day around them are the best they can hope for, that nothing is right or wrong, good or bad, unless others think so, unless the police or the law say so.  RIGHT OR WRONG IS ONLY WHAT PEOPLE THINK.    Mental health is also said to be so important, and seriously so, but while psychology admits that people can suffer from what may be paranormal, what is supernatural and beneficent – God and His love for us -- is inadmissible and ignored.

Dear People of God, today we have been invited to – and you have come to – participate in what is supremely spiritual and God’s most sublime testament of love for us: His enduring Word, His abiding Gift of the Spirit, and His only begotten and most beloved Son’s perennial and eternal offering of His own Self-sacrifice of love for His Father and for us.  May  His blessing come down upon you, ever abide with and sustain you, to heaven's portals. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3rd Sunday Year C 2022

 

 Third Sunday of the Year(C)

(Nehemiah 8: 2-4, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 27; St. Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21)

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Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we have in our Gospel reading today an incident that seems to have occurred shortly after the marriage feast at Cana where Jesus had performed His first miracle, having received His mother’s blessing for the inauguration of His Messianic mission.

That first miracle meant so very much to Jesus: it was not of His own choosing, but, if I might so speak, it was recommended to Him by His heavenly Father at His mother’s prayer; and it promised the ultimate triumph of His Messianic mission by foreshadowing -- at that local wedding celebration -- His heavenly Father’s infinite goodness and generosity as Host at the eternal banquet of the beatific family of God.  

Here, in words spoken by Our Blessed Lord Himself, Saint Luke wants us to understand, that all things had thus been fittingly prepared for this most symbolic and important synagogue and Christian pronouncement:

TODAY, this (supremely important and Messianic) Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.

Why does the Evangelist insist so emphatically that Isaiah’s prophecy was brought to its fulfilment by Jesus reading the prophetic passage during that Sabbath assembly in the synagogue of Nazareth on this very day?

It seems to me that here St. Luke is picturing something that St. John declared in direct words at the beginning of his Gospel (1:6-11):

A man named John was sent from God.  He came to testify to the light so that all might believe through him; (for) the true light, which enlightens everyone, was in the world and the world came to be through Him but the world did not know Him.  He came to what was His own, but His own people did not accept Him. 

What John – considerably later in life -- expressed as a mature, you might say dogmatic, theologian, Luke here expresses as an evangelist, eager to draw attention to facts of Jesus’ human experience, facts about His Personal human relationships with His mother and His own townspeople; and in doing so he gives prominence to the ancient hopes and expectations of God’s Chosen people.

Those words of Jesus:

Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing,

are immensely important for all of us today who read the Scriptures searching for greater hope in God to strengthen us as disciples in the fight against sin, and above all, for love leading to eternal life with Jesus in the family of God.

Jesus Himself once said to the Sadducees:

You are misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God; have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?  He is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matthew 22: 29-33);

We are thus assured that the Scriptures are always capable of present-day fulfilment in the lives of those who are humble enough to patiently wait and prayerfully listen for Him in the course of their every-day Catholic and Christian lives; and many are the saints of Mother Church whose lives were formed or transformed by such awareness and responsiveness to God speaking to them personally in the Scriptures, such as St. Anthony the Great whose memory we have just recently celebrated.

There is much else to be noted in our Gospel reading which is also most appropriate for us today.

Salvation, it tells us, begins ‘at home’, among those fellow citizens of Jesus at Nazareth and co-members of the local synagogue and the Chosen People.  Likewise, any spiritual renewal for Mother Church today must begin, first and foremost, deepest and most lovingly, in the hearts and minds of all her apparently faithful children standing as Catholics and Christians before our modern world. 

For too long the awareness of the individual ‘devout’ Catholic’s responsibility for the good name of Mother Church and, indeed, for appropriate witness to our Catholic Faith in God, has been downplayed to merely human endeavours to make Church-going popular, and to an appreciation and acceptance of people, not as God’s loving creation, as brothers and sisters in Christ, and possible supernatural children of God the eternal Father, but uniquely as individuals with human rights not including responsibilities; to the extent that a welcoming and accommodating relationship with others is now regarded as ample justification for a change in or break with ones response to God’s law, and even to the denial of God Himself: witness all the ramifications of modern sexual expression: gay marriage (I am not speaking in any way against same-sex friendships), sex and gene modification, abortion advice and contraception facilities, and the ever-growing lobby for the easy procurement of life ‘as one likes it’, and for death ‘on demand’.

In today’s Gospel Jesus stands before us putting first-things-first for all believers:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to bring glad tidings to the poor.  He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, (and) to let the oppressed go free.

In our modern context that means that any and every renewal in Mother Church must begin with a renewal of our relationship with Jesus, our God and Saviour, the Light and the Glory of our lives; and that renewal has to be a deepening, a ‘bettering’, as Jesus Himself said to the Samaritan woman shortly before today’s synagogue event:

The hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship Him.  God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth.  (John 4:23-24)

All human beings are – we know by faith and experience – sinners; a priori, we accuse none as personal sinners, and likewise, we excuse none as being worthy to take what should be God’s place in our life.  Some Jews once asked Jesus (John 6:28s.):

‘What can we do to accomplish the works of God?’  Jesus answered and said to them: ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in the One He sent.’  

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus, and our relationship of faith in Him and love for Him, is absolutely essential.  We can only do good in our world for our fellow human beings in so far as we share in that Spirit of the Lord by ever-deeper, closer, oneness with Jesus.

Today’s Gospel has more absolutely essential teaching for all seeking to be and become better disciples of Jesus; in one, word:

Today, this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.   

 

TODAY!  That one word has its very own resonance for Jesus:

 

It is said: “Oh, that TODAY you would hear His voice: ‘Harden not your hearts as at the rebellion.’” (Hebrews 3:15)

What was done at the rebellion?  They heard God’s voice but they did not welcome and embrace it as God-seekers, or believers; but as worldlings they PROVOKED Him and TESTED His words:

            And we see they could not enter (into His peace) for lack of faith. (v. 19)

Scripture assures us that God speaks to all human beings in accordance with their ability and willingness to hear and learn from Him ... blessed, indeed, are those who, on hearing His ‘still, small, voice’, calm their inner turmoil for just long enough to begin to learn from Him and gradually follow Him; for He is not only the light and strength of our earthly lives, He is the supreme joy and peace of our spiritual and eternal being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2nd Sunday of the Year C 2022

 

 2^nd. Sunday of Year 2022 (C)
(Isaiah 62:1-5; 1^st. Corinthians 12: 4-11; St. John’s Gospel 2:1-11)

 

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You will all, surely, remember one or several of the numerous passages in the Gospels where we read that Jesus chose to ‘take with Him Peter, James, and John the brother of James’ apart from the other Apostles.  Jesus did that because Peter would ultimately become the leader of the Church Jesus would leave behind to spread -- in His name -- His saving teaching and to offer His sacramental grace to the whole of mankind; and James would be the first of the Apostles to suffer martyrdom for the name of Jesus, under the Roman-appointee, King Herod Antipas.

But what about John, the young boy in the midst of those two mature and pre-destined men? Perhaps today we may be allowed to try to seek some appreciation and understanding of the reason for and the purpose of Jesus’ choice of John.

Mature men are – by definition -- already formed in both their manhood and their personality to a large measure, though they can subsequently become fully committed and truly loving disciples.  John, however, was not fully mature: he was still receptive to and impressionable under personal influences and, obviously, much more so when in close proximity with Jesus’ divinely human Personality.  St. John’s Gospel might therefore offer us, quite uniquely, an intimacy of access -- John’s very own -- to Jesus that could encourage us to forget ourselves and, intuiting something of Jesus’ Personality, whole-heartedly love His very Self, along with John. And today’s Gospel reading is an excellent example of John’s opening-up-of-Jesus for us in that way.

A wedding was taking place in Cana to which Mary had been personally invited as were, it would seem, Jesus and His new disciples being members of the local community.  During the course of the rather long and somewhat indeterminable celebration we are told that:

         The wine ran short and the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

 

Obviously, Mary was not just ‘concerned’ about the lack of wine; she was expecting, or at least hoping, that Jesus might be able to do something about it.  Jesus, on the other hand, was surprised at His mother’s concern; indeed, being somewhat puzzled at her attempt to involve Him in the matter He said to her:

          Woman, how does your concern affect Me? My hour has not yet come.  

Mary, however, was not to be put off:

            His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever He tells you.”

That surely was moral pressure!   For Mary – very well known to all as Jesus’ mother – publicly, even though you might say, in a confidential way, advises the servants (who will most certainly talk!) to be ready to do whatever Jesus might tell them.

Jesus had not intended to tell them to do anything, but now those servants were looking to Him, waiting for Him, to say something, to do something!!

So, here we are now, ourselves being made aware of an intimately personal dilemma Jesus was experiencing!

When, as a very young man, close to the officially recognized beginning of male adulthood, and present at an ‘obligatory for Joseph at least’ feast in Jerusalem, Jesus had become aware of a man’s responsibility before the Law with regard to its obligations and duties.  Fascinated, Jesus had remained behind in Jerusalem in the Temple listening to and talking with the teachers while the Nazareth caravan had left for home, leaving Him, as it were, lost to Mary and Joseph.  He, however, confessing His heavenly Father had refused to apologize for what Mary thought had been a wrong done to Joseph and herself.

Now, many years later, after having been confessed before John the Baptist by the voice of His Father from heaven, and having prepared for immediate entry upon His public ministry by vanquishing the Devil in his desert lair, that bond of supremely cherished love and sovereign obedience between Jesus and His heavenly Father manifested all those years ago, was never at any risk of now being made contingent upon, or adapted to conform with, merely human standards or expectations, not even those of His mother Mary.

We should, therefore, most humbly attention to and try learn from every single word of Jesus, even the very least; indeed, we must also, at times, notice and try to appreciate His Gospel silences which could have been occasions of His, perhaps most intimate, Filial prayer.

Jesus was not concerned about the couple’s shortage of wine, that is, He had no intention whatsoever of using powers given Him by His Father for anything but His Father’s purposes, ‘Woman how does your concern affect Me?’

However, although Jesus was not much embarrassed by Mary’s concern as such, He was nevertheless puzzled by her subsequent actions:

            His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever He tells you.”

How could she, preaching obedience to the servants ‘Do whatever He tells you’, herself be so insistent about what she wanted Him to do? She had never behaved in this way before, and that, as I said, was puzzling for Jesus.

John tells us nothing, and that very nothingness is one of those silences of Jesus I just mentioned that we should carefully attend to, for when Jesus was puzzled, He would turn to but One, His Father.

Jesus was always -- literally always -- and most intently, aware of and responsive to His Father’s will,  And just as all those years ago -- although in no way apologizing for having remained behind in Jerusalem -- He had nevertheless returned home with Mary and Joseph and, through all the intervening years been obedient to them.  So now, Jesus learned again from His Father that, by embracing His mother Mary’s concern for the young couple and their guests, He, Jesus, was being offered the opportunity to use, most appropriately, divine power for the truly divine purpose of evoking the ultimate wedding feast of all in heaven by foreshadowing His Father’s infinite goodness.

The heavenly Father never forgot Mary’s Calvary-like self-sacrifice at the Annunciation: ‘Be it done unto me according to Your will.’  Here Mary’s concerns for the couple were merely incidental to the truly reward and gift the Father was about to bestow on Mary. The Father wanted to have His Son-made-Man -- setting out on His Messianic work for which He, the Father, had sent and blessed Him -- to begin that mission with His mother’s blessing also. Therefore, He made Mary’s concern the apparent cause of the blessing He planned:  she, through such concern, would apparently lead her Son to work His first miracle as Messiah, and that wonderful privilege would serve most fittingly as her blessing upon her Son’s subsequent life’s work.

Jesus, God made Man in Mary’s human flesh and blood, would thus begin His earthly mission for which He had been ‘sent’ by His heavenly Father, with a double blessing, divine and human: the Spirit given Him by His heavenly Father, and Mary’s blessing leading Him to foreshadow the glorious fulfilment and joy of the wedding feast of heaven through the aspirations, anxieties, and final gratitude of two young friends of Mary at the success of their wedding celebration.

Jesus’ miracle would be totally divine, even symbolically, for there would be more wine, better wine, than Mary could ever have conceived of for the newly-wed’s; and it would be a miracle rejoicing Jesus’ most Sacred Heart to the utmost: giving Him truly sublime delight in foreshadowing His Father’s glorious generosity at the divine and heavenly banquet of the family of God, gathered together by the Spirit in the name of Jesus at the table, and before the Person, of the Father of all.

Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So, they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So, they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from (although the servers who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him:

 

Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now!

Dear People of God, today you have not been taught any particular doctrine of Catholic divinity (as Pope Benedict did so beautifully) nor exhorted to any particular Catholic moral attitude or practice (as Pope Francis does so diligently) because ultimately, whatever we think, whatever we profess or do, will only bear fruit to the extent in which it is penetrated by our personal and humble experience of and response to Jesus Himself as revealed to us by His own Divine Words in the Scriptures and opened-up for us by His own Most Holy Spirit.

I fear at times that too many disciples of Jesus are too desirous to know facts, to have information, to be able to answer many questions ABOUT JESUS; whereas what is supremely necessary and uniquely fulfilling is personal knowledge of, personal love for, personal fullness of satisfaction with, personal commitment to, JESUS alone.   Take therefore to heart these most beautiful words of His:

 

I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from God. (John 16: 26-27)

 

Baptism of Our Lord Year C 2022

 

BAPTISM of Our Lord (C)

 (Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts of the Apostles 10:34-38; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22)

 

There was an atmosphere of tense expectancy among the crowds thronging to John by the banks of the Jordan: there was something about the man -- his solitary life-style, his obvious asceticism, and his fiery words resonant with spiritual authority – all of which made him seem like one of the great prophets of old -- most especially Elijah -- of whom the present generation of Jewish faithful had heard traditional memories from their fathers, tales always told and heard with awesome respect.

Indeed, there was something special, something very different, about John the Baptist; he was undeniably brave in condemning royal scandals and Lawlessness, and there was a yet more mysterious something about him when he spoke about God and His mission for John himself and His purpose for Israel’s immediate future, all of which was causing many of them to think that he might possibly be the Christ, the promised Messiah, for whose coming Israel had been praying for centuries.

Although John did his best to dampen people’s expectations of him, nevertheless, they still came crowding to him for his baptism, and they were so centred on the person of John that they probably did not notice at all an unknown young man quietly joining the queue moving forward for baptism.  Nevertheless, John was about to show that this hitherto unknown young man was not unknown to God; indeed, he was the essential core of what was to be God’s ultimate purpose for Israel.  For, when that young man was actually receiving John’s baptism:

heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, "You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased."

 John saw the dove and he recognized Jesus, for God had told him that:

One mightier than he (John) was coming, Who (would) baptize (the people) with the Holy Spirit and fire.

John might even have been permitted to hear those words the voice from heaven spoke to Jesus after John had baptized Him; nevertheless, whether or not John did hear the words, he most certainly saw the Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus, and would, undoubtedly, have immediately recalled what had happened to Noah in the beginning:

Noah sent the dove out from the ark.  Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.  (Gen. 8:10-12)

Noah had realised that mankind’s punishment had come to an end when the dove returned to the Ark bearing the olive branch in its beak, for that was a sign that the waters of the flood were retreating and land was once more to be seen: land waiting to bring forth fruit again for those saved from the punishing flood.  Likewise, when John saw the Spirit descend like a dove on Jesus it is highly likely that he was prophetically privileged to appreciate that mankind’s ancient servitude to sin – against which he, John, had spent his prophetic life campaigning -- was coming to its end and that true Israelites would soon be enabled to find, once again, acceptance and peace with God through this mysterious young relative of his, Jesus, now standing before him, dripping water and engrossed in prayer.  John knew well those words of Isaiah which we heard in our first reading:

Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!  I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.   He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands shall wait for His law.

Indeed, it was with such a One in mind that he had told the waiting people:

I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

The Son, of Whom the voice of the Father declared His soul delighted in, was -- as the Word of God -- One with the Holy Spirit in the glory of the Father; He was therefore able to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit in His human nature.  Therefore, as Jesus,  the Messianic leader, He would shortly ‘deploy’, so to speak, that, His human fullness of the Spirit of Holiness, Wisdom, and Power, for the establishment of the Kingdom of God: in His imminent encounter with and triumph over the devil in the desert, before entering upon His definitive public ministry in Israel for the salvation of both Jews and Gentiles  and the foundation of His future Church.

We learn from words of Jesus recorded by St. Luke (12:49), words spoken shortly before His final and supreme encounter with the Satan on Calvary, with what dispositions Jesus received His baptismal endowment of the Spirit:

I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

Jesus, as I said, received in His own humanity the fulness of that Spirit He would subsequently pour out over human kind through His Church.  The hearts and minds of those called to faith in Jesus could only be purified of their sinfulness by His gift of the Holy Spirit, to be not only with them but in them, ever purifying and sanctifying them.  And in that work of purification He would indeed be a Spirit of fire, preparing the way for new life and growth.  Thus, purified themselves by Jesus’ Gift of the Spirit, the Apostles would then begin to fulfil that secret longing of Jesus to ‘send fire on the earth’ for which, having risen from the dead, He expressly equipped His Church (Acts 2:1-3):

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.

When John the Baptist had spoken of the work that Jesus’ baptism would accomplish, he had said, as you heard:

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.

That was how he, the greatest of Old Testament prophets, understood the image of fire.  However, that is an understanding we can appreciate more fully in the light of the subsequent work of Jesus here on earth and of His Holy Spirit in the life of the Church.   The Spirit would indeed ‘burn the chaff’ in the hearts of His chosen ones, and the greater their obedience and docility, the more they would allow Him a free hand in their lives, the greater would be the blaze of purifying love with which He would consume them.  For the world at large, however, for those stumbling and hurting themselves in the darkness of sin, He is the Spirit of Love and of Truth, a gentle tongue proclaiming Good News as Jesus promised His apostles (Matthew 10:20):

It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.

People of God, let us learn from the baptism of Our Lord something of the nature of our vocation.  If the Spirit of Jesus is to be heard by the world around us, a deeply sinful world; if He is to be heard by them in the manner of that beautiful word-picture painted by the great prophet Isaiah:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation (Isaiah 52:7);

and if, indeed, we are to help our world encounter Jesus as He Himself wanted to be found by them:

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18),

then, People of God, we must implore the Spirit of Jesus to work in us as a purifying fire: purging us ever more and more of our multi-layered and long-disguised-and-indulged sinfulness, and enabling us to commit ourselves more and more whole-heartedly to the Lord our Saviour, and to the furthering and fulfilment of His work on earth.  That is the only spirit of sacrifice, the only testimony of fraternal love, that can make us true disciples of Him Who sacrificed Himself for our sins and the sins of the whole world.

Let us not, in these days of widespread Godlessness, self-confidence and self-satisfaction, trust in our own presumed zeal and good intentions, for what is needed most of all today is not that we, as individuals, show off ourselves as good people by doing good things; nor that we, as a body, continually try to come up with new ideas, new gimmicks, to attract people; but that the Spirit of Jesus Himself finds a welcome into the hearts of the men and women of our day through our sincere service of and humble witness to Mother Church’s authentic proclamation of Jesus’ Good News, and by our own deepest prayers and humble endeavours to allow the Spirit to work fully and freely in us, leading us along the ways of Jesus for the good of our brethren and for the praise and glory for our Father in heaven.

                                      (2004, amended 2010, not given anywhere.)

 

 

The Epiphany 2022

 

 The Epiphany                                                                                                   (Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

 

It is commonly thought that the technical terminology of some Church documents and theological writings is not only devoid of meaning for ordinary Catholics, but also conducive to their spiritual aridity.  And yet, because that terminology has been finely tuned over many, many centuries, by some of the greatest minds and the deepest hearts among the disciples of Christ, it expresses, most subtly, beautiful truths about God.  Those well-honed and beautifully polished truths are well able to kindle ardent flames of heavenly love and glowing words of divine praise from faithful men and women still to be found who, in even these most modern times, are able to quieten their multitudinous thoughts and distractions long enough for them to dispassionately listen to, thoughtfully appreciate, and, gradually and most gratefully, learn to love, the teaching of Mother Church.

Our God is unique and transcendent in all perfections, such is the teaching of both Christian philosophy and Catholic dogma: He cannot be contained within any limits because He is infinite: He is the Almighty, the All Holy, whose sovereign Power sublimely expresses His incomparable Wisdom and sustains His supreme Goodness. 

In line with such appreciations of God we find in the Gospel reading today that the Magi first became aware of the proximate birth of the Christ through the appearance of an extraordinarily bright star in the heavens.  They set out to follow its lead bearing incense for the heavenly and most holy Being announced by this phenomenon, and their scholarly expectations and spiritual appreciation of the Child they were seeking were to be confirmed by a chorus of angels singing to Bethlehem shepherds of humbler degree:

            Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. 

The Magi expected to find the One they were seeking among the highest on earth in Jerusalem, the city where the great God of Israel had chosen to dwell, and at the court of him who was the present Rome-favoured king of this Chosen People and builder of the Temple which was one of the wonders of the Roman world.  In line with this expectancy, they had also brought with them a second gift: royal gold.

The Magi were well received by Israel’s king -- Herod was his name -- and he, after having summoned and enquired of his most learned priests and sages, encouraged the Magi in their search for the Child with an oracle taken from the age-old Jewish scriptures:

You, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you shall come a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.

The Magi therefore confidently proceeded in their search for the Child by continuing to follow the heavenly star of great beauty in accordance with the ancient oracle and royal encouragement given them in the holy city of Jerusalem where the One to come was foreknown and, it would seem, reverently desired and eagerly expected.

However, since no limits can be set to God’s perfections, although He is indeed limitlessly great in majesty, He is also limitlessly lowly in humility.  Therefore, when the Magi eventually arrived at the spot over which the star itself seemed to have stopped, they saw, to their surprise, that it was nothing more than a cattle shelter containing a manger, in which:

They saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.

This was not what they had expected to find, and yet, taking up and offering their gifts, they found them wonderfully providential: frankincense for the holy, and gold for the great, but also myrrh for the weak who need to be embalmed in death, and for the lowly and rejected who need to be succoured and comforted in their pain:

Nicodemus took the body of Jesus, and bound It in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. (John 19:39-40)

They brought Jesus to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull.  Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it; and then they crucified Him.  (Mark 15:22-24)

People of God, today we celebrate the Epiphany, the manifestation of something of the glory and majesty of Jesus.  However, I hope that, having come to some appreciation of the technical terminology used in the Church’s teaching at times, you are now aware that the glory and the power, the majesty and the beauty, of Jesus in His perfect humanity, in no way excludes you, because those perfections extend, so to speak, down as well as up: as God He is the greatest, but He can also make Himself the least; supremely majestic, and yet there is none so humble.  In the Eucharist here at Mass, as man He offers Himself to be our food, and yet on every hand as God He supports the whole of creation and is worshiped by myriads of angels in heaven; He now reigns in majesty and bliss and yet none suffers what He Himself has not experienced, what He is not willing to compassionately share and spiritually succour now.  In His omnipotent power, He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end of all things; in His wisdom He pervades the heights and the depths, He surveys all times and seasons, past, present, and to come, and, above all, He knows our minds and hearts in all their twists and turns wherein even we ourselves can be at a loss. All this He can do because of His great love, the love whereby He originally made us in His own likeness, the love whereby He remade us when He sacrificed His only-begotten Son for our salvation, and endowed us with His own most Holy Spirit.

People of God, let us understand aright the essence of this divine celebration and manifestation which is the Epiphany; our God is unique, infinite, and transcendent, in His perfections; and yet all His perfections are able to be summed up by these three words of St. John: GOD IS LOVE.  Words which we alone on earth can appreciate.

For those still daunted and somewhat put-off by the scholarship required for the doctrinal expression and defence of God-given truth as well as its theological understanding and development, let love -- rightly appreciated and understood -- explain all: because the mutual embrace of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is LIFE ETERNAL, which supports the total grandeur of cosmic creation, all life and being here on earth, the heavenly powers, and which, above all -- through Jesus born of Mary -- inspires all beautiful human love, spiritual  aspirations, heavenly hopes, experience, and expectations.

Divine love alone embraces all that Mother Church teaches, all that the Scriptures contain, and all that the human mind can learn from Jesus and -- under the gift and grace of His most Holy Spirit – all that we can become, for the glory of Him Who is the God and Father of us all.