8th Sunday Year C 2022

 

 8^th. Sunday of Year (C)

(Sirach 27:4-7; 1^st. Corinthians 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, those words of Jesus are once again taken from His Sermon on the Plain as presented by St. Luke.  I would like to think that you will remember that last Sunday we considered an earlier section of the same Sermon on the Plain urging us to total commitment to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives, to the extent that we cannot at any point say ‘Thus far and no further’.

 

Today’s section is, however, less directly spiritual; it begins with the words Jesus told them a parable, but it is not a parable such we normally hear from Jesus, for there is no story, and the adages it contains are more or less of traditional human wisdom:

 

Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?

A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.

People do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles.   

From the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks: a good person produces good, an evil person produces evil.

 

The general thrust of those adages is to provoke a right answer to the question ‘where is helpful guidance for right-living to be found?’    From someone who is blind?  From one whose sight is more impaired than your own?  From one whose way of life is the opposite of what you seek: fruit that is, from what is … to use the correct word … rotten?    Something admirable, desirable, from what is harmful and unproductive?

Where, indeed, can we find help to open up our heart and life to total love for and obedience to the Holy Spirit, to Whom, as we learned last week, no one can faithfully think of saying, ‘Thus far and no further!’

Mixed up among those adages in today’s Gospel reading are words which probably refer to Jesus Himself, words thus opening the way for Jesus’ very own wisdom and guidance:

 

No disciple is superior to the teacher; when fully trained, every disciple will

be like his teacher.

And that personal wisdom and teaching of Jesus does indeed follow on immediately after today’s Gospel reading (Luke 6:46–47):

 

Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command?  I will show you what someone is like who comes to Me, listens to My words, and acts on them;

 

And Jesus then goes on to tell them a real parable about the wise man who built on rock and the foolish man who built on sand.

And so, dear People of God, this is our situation today: we had, last Sunday, Our Lord’s personal teaching taken from St. Luke’s Sermon on the Plain immediately before today’s Gospel; and immediately after today’s reading, there is more of Jesus’ own personal guidance from that same Sermon on the Plain; but what we have for our Gospel reading today is just those adages.

However, remember those very adages are mentioned by Jesus Himself and are now contained in holy Scripture, and thereby they are sanctified over and above their own native, human, worth.  Let us examine that fact somewhat.

Last Sunday Jesus urged us to open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our lives.  How?   For ordinary people, such as that crowd of Israelites and Palestinians who had walked many, many, miles to hear Jesus-- or quite possibly just to see one so famous as He was -- Jesus begins by calling to their minds the wisdom that was already available to them: traditional wise sayings, from locally recognized and admired, revered, personalities; or from passing Scribes, or even from well-known rabbis. 

Transferring things to our days, dear People of God, Jesus seems to be suggesting that whoever is – like that crowd of Israelites and Palestinians in our Gospel -- seeking soul-satisfying help, help offering their personal awareness a deeper sense of understanding and peace of soul; all those who have some understanding and sympathy with these words of the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell found after his death on his desk:

The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious wild pain – a searching for something transfigured and infinite;

for all people wanting to salve an indefinable need and vague longing, and who are not yet directly in Jesus’ orbit, so to speak, there is indeed something readily available to you, some salutary help that can sustain you for the moment, and prepare you to finally be able to recognize, appreciate, and embrace the saving, the life-giving, words of Jesus Himself.

For Jesus once said:

                         

Whoever chooses to do His (God the Father’s) will, shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own; (John 7:17)

 

and I am saying today, that those words of Jesus can be well understood as truly meaningful for all who are painfully aware of the emptiness and frailty or their own life and life-style, of the evil seeping and soaking everywhere in the society and world around them; for all who are seeking and grasping for what is truly good, for the betterment of the lives they are wanting to live to the full; and for their own greater awareness of, and response to, whatever is beautiful and true; those words of Jesus are essential and most meaningful:

 

Whoever chooses to do His (God the Father’s) will, shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own;   

To all who are thus wanting to turn from lies to truth, from what merely appears and pretends to be, and turning to whatever is real, sincere, and available to them from human sources (exemplified by the adages cited by Jesus);  to all those able to learn from the glory of God touchable in the beauties of earth about them and shining in the splendours of the heavens above them; to all those, help will be given from God to sift what is profitable for them from all the human treasures of great literature, transcendent music, inspiring art, and whatever results from and truly expresses the wonderful potency and glorious responsibility of native humanity still remaining in our world today. 

That help will be given them, I say, in order to enable them to progress further to Jesus Himself Whose life, love, and legacy, alone are salvific, life-giving, and purifying from all sin; the transcendent fulfilment of whatever is salutary for men and women of good will in our world today.  Transcendent indeed, because Jesus is the very Son of God; yet our fulfilment too, because He is sublimely Perfect in His humanity:

                CHRIST the KING, PERFECT GOD and PERFECT MAN,

sent by Him Who is the one, true, God; Father and lover of all that he has made; the God of fleeting creation and eternal salvation. 

                            

 

 

  e then gpes pn

 

7th Sunday Year C 2022

 

 7^th. Sunday of Year (C)

(1Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23; 1 Corinthians 15:45-49; Luke 6:27-38)

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 My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, when we seek to understand our Blessed Lord, we must always bear in mind that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways.  Consequently, we should beware lest we foist our own attitudes and ideas onto Him; and, if we should ever think it necessary to understand His words in any way other than that of their clear and obvious meaning, then we must always have a reverential fear lest we betray His holy wisdom, by indulging our own partiality.

That said, it is a fact that Jesus, at times, did speak in such a way as to shock His hearers into thinking about, not just hearing, what He was saying.  Sometimes He seems to have deemed it necessary to provoke, or even offend, His listeners in order to make them seriously think about His teaching, rather than just passively listen to His words.

The Gospel reading we have just heard may have induced such passivity in some who might, perhaps, be inclined say that today’s reading was very nice.  Indeed, it was ‘nice’ as regards expressing some beautiful aspirations or thoughts, but did it not also contain words that might seem to be as equally disturbing if not as provocative, as His words at His home-town synagogue, or the ’woes’ in last Sunday’s gospel?   For example, what is one to think about the words:

Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back?

In order to understand Jesus aright we must turn to Mother Church, our guide and support along the Way, and she sets before us today in the first reading King David as an admirable example of what loving our enemy means.

For all that David reverenced Saul as the Lord’s anointed King, he in no way trusted him, and had no intention of falling into the hands of such a person, which is why he took great care to put a considerable distance between the King and himself before revealing his presence:

(he) stood on the top of a hill afar off, a great distance being between them.

Only at such a distance did David think it safe to make Saul aware of what had, and what had not, just happened.  Notice too that although David reverenced Saul as God’s anointed, nevertheless he roundly accused him of his personal, evil, actions:

Why does my lord thus pursue his servant? For what have I done, or what evil is in my hand?  Now therefore, please, let my lord the king hear the words of his servant: If the LORD has stirred you up against me, let Him accept an offering. But if it is the children of men, may they be cursed before the LORD.

David showed truly Christian love in his dealings with Saul, but in no way was he willing to put himself at the mercy of Saul; and Mother Church’s choice for our second reading today is of great help here, for St. Paul tells us:

The first man, Adam, became a living being; the last Adam (Christ) a life-giving spirit.  The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven.  Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly One.

David showed a ‘life-giving’, truly Christian love, charity, for Saul when he spared him; but he did not ‘love’ him in the commonly-used sense of that much-abused word today because he did not, and could not, trust the man.

Now today, of the many who refuse to accept the guidance of Mother Church, some turn to the Scriptures as the only source of teaching for Christians, and will accept only the obvious and literal meaning of the words they read there, because any other understanding must, necessarily, come from some other -- and to their mind, invalid or inadequate -- source.  Therefore, to remain faithful to such a Bible-only approach to Christian faith and practice they would understand Jesus’ words:

            To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also

quite literally; and so, they might well think that, ideally, David in our first reading should not have been fleeing from Saul, but should rather -- trusting in God -- have allowed Saul to apprehend him!    Such Christians are spiritual people indeed, but somewhat light-headed.

Quite the opposite are the great majority in our modern society, who are, at the very best, leaden-footed spiritually; they acknowledge the authority neither of Mother Church nor of her Scriptures, and to their minds Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel passage is sheer madness:

Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. 

For, how can such words be relevant to, or applicable in, modern society, where there are so many liars and con-merchants, so many drug addicts and drunkards, so many care-free vagrants who have no scruples whatsoever.  How can a father, working hard to support his family, give to everyone who asks?   And again, from a social point of view, if people just allowed themselves to be mugged in the streets without trying to keep what was being stolen from them, where would our society be?  Thieves and blackguards, young thugs and budding bullies, would feel free to get their money from anyone they might choose to pick on in the street, with the result that there would no longer be any human society, just a modern jungle with might considered to be right, cunning supplanting consideration, and instinctive lies being easier than truth and its attendant difficulties.

I just want to recall for you now, how Judas Iscariot, pretending to be a most perceptive disciple, tried to turn Jesus’ teaching against Himself:

Then Judas the Iscariot, one of His disciples, and the one who would betray Him, said, “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?”  He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.  Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of My burial.  You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.”  (John 12:4–8)

I would suggest, dear People of God, that in our Gospel reading today, Jesus -- far from preaching madness, and far from being provocative in order to bring about change -- is trying to guide us, lead us, into thinking through His words to His teaching, that we might perhaps, in that way, come to realize and appreciate a most important spiritual truth. 

Why does He choose to speak in that way?  Because: we cannot have God given us on a platter, we have to want communion with God; that is, we needs-must want to understand, want to love, and to live for, Him supremely; and such blessings are only bestowed on those who desire them most sincerely and are willing to strive wholeheartedly for such communion.

Jesus is, therefore, speaking today to those who desire to know and love Him more; not to provoke, as at Nazareth, but in such a way as to urge them to strive, search, and pray, for ever greater understanding when things seem obscure or even dark, for ever greater faith and trust when that darkness brings along with it an unwonted coldness that would threaten the warm spark of love in their own heart.

What then is He wanting us, today, to fathom out for ourselves when, moved, puzzled perhaps, by His words, we are, nevertheless, thus urged on by His Spirit within us?

Jesus, I suggest, is trying to make us realize that His Holy Spirit must be able lead us anywhere; and therefore, that there should be no set limits in our loving and obedient response to Him whereby we might cry out ‘Thus far and no further’.   Moreover, Jesus wants to help us appreciate that our relationship with Him, by the Spirit, is to be a relationship that is not only ecclesial, but also and always personal, and indeed, sometimes, possibly unique. That is, He does not always and necessarily ask of us the same as He seeks from others in the Church.   In the most important and essential issues, the Spirit moves the Church as the one Body of Christ; at other times however, He may will – for His own specific purposes – to move, use, an individual as a distinct member of that one Body, as He has done with His saints over the ages, for example our own, modern, St. Therese of Lisieux, unique and distinct most certainly, yet loved and admired by all.

As we have borne the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man,  St. Paul told us.

That is, we have to -- it is our heavenly calling to – become more and more like Jesus.  Now, that is not to be done by following pat formulae or human imaginations; only the Spirit of Jesus can form us, individually and personally, into an authentic and distinct likeness of Jesus.  Consequently, we have to learn to recognize and respond to the Holy Spirit, given us by Jesus in Mother Church, when He tries to move us, as individual disciples of Jesus.  Moreover, though individually distinct, all of us are also living members of the One Body of Christ, and it is essential for the integrity of the whole Body that the Holy Spirit be able, by His divine wisdom and grace, to move us – both as one and individually -- in such a way as to harmoniously continue and further the work of salvation inaugurated by Jesus.

Tragically, there are many in Mother Church today who are afraid to follow the Guiding Spirit of Jesus in their lives: they prefer to do what is popular, to seek what promises to be successful, to profess what is politically correct.  In such cases, however, they should remember that Jesus, too, at times found it necessary to ponder, pray, and struggle even to the sweating of blood, to understand and embrace His Father’s will:

Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will. (Mark 14:36)

Jesus learned from events to recognize both His Father’s working in others, and His Father’s will for Himself.  For example, when Peter, without hesitation, and in the name of all the Twelve, said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” Jesus recognized that His Father had chosen Peter and that He wanted Jesus to do the same, for which reason, Jesus answered Peter saying (Matthew 16:17-18):

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in heaven.   I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.   

We, likewise, have to follow Jesus and try to recognize, understand, and obey God’s Spirit at work in us, seeking to form us personally in Jesus for the Father and for the Church.  And we must also recognize that He, the Spirit, may choose to lead us, as individuals, just as Jesus taught Peter (John 21:20-22):

Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on His breast at the supper, and said, "Lord, who is the one who betrays You?"  Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?"  Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me."

So, in our Gospel reading today, Jesus is not saying directly and with full intent that here are some things you must do, literally and no matter what; rather is He trying to lead us into a right attitude in our relationship with and response to His most Holy Spirit, working always in Mother Church and in each of us as much as we will allow Him: an attitude of unconditional and loving surrender to His guidance.

It is not permissible for us to set limits that would say ‘thus far and no further’ to the Spirit’s authority and inspiration; for He invites each and every one of us -- as a child of God -- to follow His guidance, obey His will, and in that way allow ourselves to be formed in the likeness of Jesus for the Father, and also to be used by the Spirit for the good of the Church.  If therefore, the Spirit does ask of you, personally, in any particular situation:

To do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you; to him who strikes you on the one cheek, to offer the other also; and from him who takes away your cloak, not (to) withhold your tunic either; (to) give to everyone who asks of you, and from him who takes away your goods not (to) ask them back;

then, indeed recognize that He is wanting that of you at that point in time, in that particular situation, for the good of the Church and for your personal formation as a disciple of Jesus; but it is not, necessarily, what He is wanting from others; and it may not, indeed, be His permanent purpose for you.

That we learn to have a permanent attitude of listening for, and humbly responding to, the call of the Spirit in our life is immeasurably more important than any individual, passing, actions on our part – however meritorious they may be.  As human beings, and as disciples of Jesus and children of Mother Church, it is not of the greatest importance that we always get things right, that we never leave ourselves open to the  criticism or blame of men; far, far more important is it that we learn to listen ever better for the Spirit speaking within us; that we become more able to hear Him clearly when He does so speak, and become ever more prepared to unhesitatingly respond by following His lead along ways that give glory to God, help our neighbour, and exalt Mother Church.  Those ways are the only ways that truly lead to heaven because they are chosen for us by the Spirit of Jesus, for the purpose of forming each of us in the likeness of the ‘heavenly man’, and Mother Church herself as the perfect Bride of Christ, offering and commending His salvation to the whole of mankind.

6th Sunday Year C 2022

 

6^th. Sunday of Year (C)

(Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1^st. Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; St. Luke 6:17, 20-26)

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Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, whose heart turns away from the Lord.

Jeremiah had a great deal of experience with duplicitous men: kings and religious authorities, ordinary people of faith or no faith; and his judgement of ‘human beings’ generally was based on that experience.  But his judgement was based even more on his awareness of the blessings that God had already given Israel and was preparing to bestow a yet greater one on them (Jeremiah 31:33):

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people.  

However, though the Law was, indeed, in their minds, written on their parchments, and meant to be written on their hearts, many of the children of Israel had, in Jesus’ days ‘turned away from the Lord’, so that when He came among them to be their Saviour and make them children of God, He was crucified.  And we heard in our second reading Saint Paul -- Jesus’ specially chosen one to proclaim His Gospel to the nations -- berating some members of the Church he had founded in Jesus’ name in the Greek city of Corinth, using words not unlike those of Jeremiah:

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ we are the most pitiable people of all.

Paul said that because certain individuals were saying that there was no resurrection of the dead!  Obviously, they did not rightly understand Jesus as the Christ, perhaps because they were Christian converts of Sadducee origin' indeed, even former members of the synagogue in Corinth, where Paul had first proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, before going on to found a Christian Church there; for St. Luke tells us in his Gospel that Sadducees had opposed Jesus towards the end of His public ministry:

Sadducees approached Jesus saying that there is no resurrection.

They had then tried to confound Jesus with a trick question about seven brothers, one wife, and the Law of Moses, but to their imagined conundrum Jesus answered:

You are misled because you do not know the Scriptures nor 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: 29-32)

Dear People of God, the Old Testament dispensation and its Scriptures had been given to show God’s Chosen People, to teach them of the fact and about the nature, of sin in men’s lives: that sin separates sinners from the one true God Who is the All Holy One, as it had alienated Israel from the Father Who had deliberately chosen them for His own People by calling them out of the slavery of Egypt and giving them their own land flowing with milk and honey.  Correspondingly, the whole purpose and aim of the new dispensation  which Jeremiah prophesied -- the new and eternal covenant to be offered by God to Israel and through Israel to the whole world -- would bring not only forgiveness of sins, but also the sanctification of all who would believe in the Good News of Jesus Christ, which was able to purify and free mankind from their primordial slavery to sin by the Gift of most His Holy Spirit Who would enable them to rejoice as children of God, new-born in Jesus Christ as members of His mystical Body, for the praise and eternal glory of the Father of all.   

You are aware that St. Matthew tells us of Jesus’ celebrated Sermon on the Mount; possibly, scholars say, reported, presented in that way, by Matthew for his Jewish-Christian Church congregation, because of their life-long familiarity with the Law of God given on Mount Sinai to Moses.  Today, however, St. Luke’s Gospel gives us a like sermon of Jesus but presents it as His Sermon on the Plain or Plateau, that is, a sermon given at the people’s level to the people actually with Jesus and hearing Him, an account shorter and less Jewish in character than St. Matthew’s presentation of it as a sermon given to Moses alone on the very top of Mount Sinai

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount begins with the words, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’, rather impersonal and legal, whereas Luke’s Sermon on the Plain begins:

Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of Heaven is yours; blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.                              

That crowd gathered around Jesus on the Plain had come far and wide to hear Jesus and to learn from Him: they were poor, in need of Jesus’ help, ‘hungry’ for His teaching and truth, they were actually weeping for their sins, because they had come to a prophet Who called on them to repent and actually enabled and inspired them to do just that.   Above all however those people were to be made aware of what awaited Jesus Himself and how they themselves might be called upon to share in it with Him as true disciples:

Blessed are you when people hate, exclude, insult, and denounce you, on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!  Your reward will be great in heaven!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ St. Luke’s Sermon on the Plain is directed to us Catholics and Christians living today, in times of pandemic and resurgent paganism, where millions, far from seeking out Jesus for the true wisdom of life, are deliberately turning their hearts away from the One True God and the Christ Whom He has sent, and rejoicing in what they foolishly consider as their new-found freedom: to do what they want, as and when they will; to enjoy their own chosen pleasures as and how they will; to flourish before men, secure in their power, popularity, and possessions; and eventually, to contentedly anticipate -- if not exactly a well-earned rest -- but certainly a gentle entry into the restful peace of untouchable oblivion.

BUT! our Gospel recalls to our minds once again the spirit of those words of Jeremiah, ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, whose heart turns away from the Lord’, by continuing further with Jesus’ own words of warning (not cursing):

Woe to you who are rich, who are filled, who laugh now; woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.

Yes indeed, woe to all who turn their hearts away from the Lord in their search for the good things and comforts the god of this world offers to all who will – as Jesus would not -- bow down and serve, worship, him; woe because:

You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts.  For what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:15)

 

 

5th Sunday of Year C 2022

 

5^th. Sunday of Year (C)

     (Isaiah 6:1-8; 1^st. Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11)

 

Today, my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we can learn from the Scriptural readings something about the spiritual life of a faithful disciple of Christ, as distinct from the ‘expectations’ of pseudo-Christians and the secular world around us.

We heard in the Gospel reading:

(Simon) and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken; and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men."

Just as Simon and his companions used a net to catch fish, so Jesus would -- He said -- use Simon, and with Simon his companions, to catch men.

Notice that People of God, because very many today dislike the thought of salvation depending not only on God’s goodness to us in Christ, but also, through the Church; they prefer to think that if there is a loving Saviour-God they should be able to strike up a direct personal relationship with Him or with Jesus the Saviour: why should they need to feel indebted to and grateful for a universal Church?  Moreover, they are positively antagonistic to the idea that they should have to obey a human authority such as the Pope, the Vicar of Christ.

And yet, for all that, it cannot be denied that Jesus did indeed say to Simon:

            Do not be afraid; from now on you will catch men.

That unwillingness of many to accept the idea of the One True Church of Christ, their denial of Peter established by Jesus as the one Rock and Shepherd serving and maintaining the oneness of His sheep in His one Catholic (universal) Church, is an expression of the sinful pride of modern man, and of the pseudo-religious spirit abroad in our times.

In the first reading we heard how Isaiah had a remarkable vision of God in the glory of His holiness and majesty:

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.  Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one cried to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!"

Such a vision would be enough to fill any human being with awesome fear and humble reverence.  But we are told that Isaiah also:

Heard the voice of the Lord, saying: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"  Then Isaiah said, "Here am I! Send me." 

Does that not seem to be presumptuous on the part of Isaiah?  Does not the worldly picture of a good Christian in such a situation involve the humble recital of words such as “I am not worthy”?

Let us now turn to St. Paul and observe his behaviour, for he tells us that:

Jesus appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.  After that He was seen by over five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that He appeared to James, then to all the Apostles.  Last of all, as to one born abnormally, He appeared to me.

Think now how Jesus understood the word ‘Apostle’ which He bestowed on the Twelve. For Jesus loved to repeatedly say of Himself that He had been “sent by – was the ‘Apostle of’ – His Father”!

Jesus Himself only Personally chose and appointed the Twelve as His Apostles to proclaim His Gospel of Salvation to the whole world.  He did send out 70 others to places He Himself was shortly to visit in His public Ministry, they were also called Apostles later on, but not by Jesus Himself.  As former Pope Benedict so beautifully says, the ‘Twelve’, personally chosen by Jesus, were to be sent on their world-wide missions as ‘specialists in Jesus’, basing himself on this episode in St. John’s Gospel (1:35-39):

The next day John (the Baptist) was there again with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God’.  The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.  Jesus saw them following Him and said, ‘What are you looking for?’  They said, ‘Rabbi, where are You staying?’  He said to them, ‘Come and see.’  So, they went and stayed with Him that day.  Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter was one of the two who followed Jesus.

Only the Twelve were called to such personal, daily, fellowship with Jesus of Nazareth. Paul, for his part, was personally chosen by the heavenly Lord Jesus Who sent the disciple Ananias to heal Paul blinded after the Lord’s apparition to him:

The Lord said to (Ananias), ‘Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of Mine to carry My name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites, and I will show him what he will have to suffer for My name.’ (Acts: 9:15-16)

Paul was the first to admit that he did not have the supreme authority of Peter, and that he was not one of the original Twelve.  But whatever his detractors thought or said, Paul would not shrink before them: he always confidently asserted, “Jesus, appeared to me also “.   Paul was, indeed, an ultimate Apostle, commissioned and sent by the risen Lord: in Paul’s case, however, called and sent by the heavenly Risen Lord -- to proclaim the Gospel he received through revelation of Jesus (Galatians 1:12). He was in no way simply a representative of the Twelve (Galatians 2:7-9):

When those who were reputed to be important saw that I (Paul) had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter to the circumcised, when they recognized the grace bestowed upon me, James and Cephas and John who were reputed to be pillars gave me their right hand in partnership.

Paul being sent to the Gentiles, arrived at Corinth with that Good News, able to declare with full confidence in God, not men: “No matter what some of you may think, I am an Apostle; indeed, I am your Apostle” (1 Corinthians 4:15):

For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

And so it is, that in our readings today we have not only heard of the great prophet Isaiah pushing himself forward “Send me!”, but also of Paul fighting vigorously  and repeatedly to have himself recognised as an Apostle: the Gospel he preached and the authority he exercised came from the Risen Lord Himself.  He even went on, in his second letter to these Corinthians, to sing his own praises as he compared himself to other apostles, not with the Twelve, but with all those others spoken of as apostles in the early Church:

Are they ministers of Christ?  I speak as a fool, I am more: in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often.  (2 Cor 11:23)

Dear People of God, notice how wonderfully close Paul was to Jesus!  He probably knew nothing of the words the Lord used when sending Ananias to restore his sight, but he lived and appreciated his calling in exact accordance with Jesus’ very words!  He went exclusively to the Gentiles – and to those Kings and Israelites among the Gentiles – and boasted when he considered it necessary to vindicate his Apostolic authority; but he boasted only of the sufferings he had embraced for the name of Jesus!  Jesus knew His man and Paul loved the Lord Who, he so firmly believed, had died for him!!

This man is a chosen instrument of Mine to carry My name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites, I will show him what he will have to suffer for My name.’

Today the popular picture of Jesus and of a good Christian is of someone who is nice, always good, never nasty, never pushy, never fighting for self in any way; always smiling at children and patting dogs, always speaking soothing words and totally incapable of condemning sin or punishing evil-doers.  In other words, the world’s picture of a Christian is colourless, insipid and negative, and so the Gospel is robbed of all challenge, of all its power to inspire and strengthen.  Even the good works done by such Christians for others are tasteless, because they are human good deeds done for human purposes and human satisfaction; since they are not directed towards God’s glory, they remain within the orbit of this world, and cannot renew the world.  Ultimately, indeed, they are condemned to become ordinary and meaningless, just as the words “I forgive” can become trite when they are not spoken in response to Jesus’ prayer to God (“Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive ...”), but rather offered meaninglessly and spoken tritely to those who are not in any way either interested in, or asking for, forgiveness.

Since I am saying that the comfortable picture of the good life painted by lovers of this world is insipid, do I thereby say that Catholics and Christians should become extremists?  By no means!  Let us look again at the “pushy” prophet Isaiah, and the “self-assertive” Apostle Paul. 

In the first reading, Isaiah who said, "Here am I. Send me!", had had his sin taken away.  He tells us that:

One of the seraphim (from before God’s throne) flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.  And he touched my mouth with it, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged."

So, you can realise that Isaiah had in no proud sense been pushy: God was preparing and encouraging him for a work He had in mind for him, and Isaiah had to learn to speak with confident zeal in answer to God’s inspiring call.

Look again at St. Paul.  He was fighting to establish his own authority indeed, but only so that the Gospel truth he had proclaimed to the Corinthians might not be brought into disrespect or doubt by others with more apparently attractive Jewish-Christian credentials, and who were preaching a Jewish version of the Gospel which was failing to appreciate, and fully respond to, the new wine that Jesus had brought.  Therefore, Paul was not fighting for himself, he was fighting for the authentic Good News of Jesus, for his new converts whom he would not allow to be saddled with the old, worn out, Jewish prescriptions; he was, indeed, fighting for Christ and the glory of God the Father.

Our readings today, People of God, therefore encourage and guide us to authentic spirituality as disciples of Jesus.  We are not to conform to, settle for, the flabby, colourless, “goodness” of those who want to win the approval of modern society and accommodate Christian doctrine to modern morals; people who want, above all, to avoid the Cross of Christ (witness the Church in Germany!).  Yet neither are we to seek to make a name for ourselves, striving to be dynamic and contradictory, flaunting authority, and ignoring normal sensibilities.  No, we have to despise both those attitudes: we must not be so weak as to seek the world’s good pleasure; we must not be so proud as to set our own standards.  In all things we have to seek to know, love, and obey Jesus: we cannot hide behind ignorance (ignorance is bliss!!), nor must we pretend love (mere words and fine gestures), for only as sincere disciples of Jesus, obedient to His guiding Spirit in our lives, will we be enabled to become true children of our heavenly Father.