4th Sunday of Lent 2022

 

                                     4^th. SUNDAY OF LENT (C)

(Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; St. Luke 15:1-3, 11-32)

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My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today we are encouraged to rejoice on this Sunday called ‘Laetare Sunday’, and so it is up to me now to show you something worth rejoicing about; indeed, something we should be continually bringing to our minds and cherishing most gratefully in our hearts.  That ‘something’ is encapsulated in those words of the father to his elder son:

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. 

Because human beings are sinful there are situations or questions which can only be understood through suffering.  Sin is in the world -- whether it be known or unknown, acknowledged or unacknowledged -- and because it necessarily brings suffering and death into human life, it cannot long remain totally undiscovered or unsuspected.  That is at the root of the old adage that one never truly appreciates something or someone until you have lost it, which is the guiding principle of our Gospel parable today, which begins with the words:

                Then Jesus said, ‘A man had two sons’.

Immediately its hearers are put under a slight tension of anticipation as to what might distinguish these two sons; one is older the other younger, that is just a physical fact of itself, but our Lord uses it to explain why He received sinners and ate with them to the displeasure of the Pharisees and their Scribes, and that is why we have before us two sinners being reconciled by their loving father.

It would appear that the younger son did not fully appreciate his home experience as a privilege because we are told that he said to his father:

                Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.

No doubt the father asked him why he was unsettled, but he got no answer so far as we know; perhaps the boy was jealous of his elder brother as the privileged first son, and, ashamed of such sin in his own heart, said nothing, but felt he just had to leave.  

The father went along with his son’s request and divided his property accordingly.

After a few days the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.

The elder son, on the other hand, does seem to have had greater appreciation of his father and awareness of his own responsibility as the first-born, elder, son.  He seems to have understood something of the worthiness of his father and his own duty to reverence and serve him.  He lived in that respect unselfishly and, duty-well-done had certainly given a measure of dignity to his life thus far, which his younger brother most certainly did not have.

However, he too had some sin hidden in his heart waiting to manifest itself at the first opportunity, and it raised its head when his younger brother came back to a ‘right royal’ welcome from his father.  We are told that the older son on hearing the rejoicing:

Became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. 

His filial obedience and dutiful service had been, it would seem, not so much a response of humble love for his father, as a very deep awareness of and careful solicitude for his own future freedoms: and now he was jealous of the whole-hearted welcome – witness the fattened calf – given to his brother’s return.  Perhaps he himself, despite his years of faithful service, had never been able to evoke anything wholehearted in response to his own careful exactitude in compliancy with his father, an exactitude totally resistant to any overflow of generosity.

Whatever it might have been, it caused him to forget his customary respect for his father:

He said to his father, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.  But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughtered the fattened calf!’

Notice immediately, however, that the old man was very understanding, and responded in such a way as to make it quite clear that his elder son should have an awareness of the special appreciation in which he himself was held, and where his ultimate fulfilment and happiness were to be found.  His father said to him:

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.  But now we (you and I as one, as we most truly are) must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.

He calls the elder ‘My son’, while in the same breath referring to the younger, despite being the cause for such heartfelt rejoicing, simply as ‘your brother’.

This parable of Jesus is unique in that it speaks directly and intimately of a father’s personal relationship with two very different sons, and I have no doubt that speaking of the father in this parable Jesus was irresistibly drawn to portray something of His own love for, and appreciation of, His heavenly Father; for it is truly a parable not about a Prodigal Son, for there are two sons; but a parable about of His own Father’s love for sinful men.

My dear People of God, there is nothing whatsoever in life that can compare with the dignity and glory which is already ours as disciples of Jesus -- the only-begotten and eternally beloved Son of God – disciples called, in Him, to become members of the heavenly Father’s family, His adopted and beloved children, for all eternity. Correspondingly, there could be no greater tragedy in our lives than that we should lose such an incomparable privilege and destiny: Esau sold his birthright as first-born to his younger brother Jacob for some bread and a quickly consumed stew of lentils; and, despite a subsequent heart-rending plea of to his father Isaac, forfeited all:

“Father, bless me too!  Have you only one blessing, father?  Bless me too, father!”  And Esau wept aloud. (Genesis 25:31-34)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Father’s love for us, is His love for-us-in-Jesus:

The Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from God (John 16:27).

That is the essential constituent of our being as God’s adopted children, just as Jesus describes His own earthly being and experience within the same framework of a relationship with the Father:

I came from the Father and have come into the world.  Now I am leaving the world and going back to My Father (John 16:28).

Originally opening up the possibility of such a relationship for the Chosen People we were told in our first reading that:

The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today, I have removed the reproach of Egypt (the servitude in Egypt) from you.’

The reproach of our modern world is yet more virulent than that of Egypt, therefore keep in the front of your minds and close to your hearts those words of St. Paul in our second reading:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold new things have come.  And all this is from God (the Father) Who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ.    

Being reconciled to God means that we have become, in Jesus, children of God, called to heavenly life, eternal life.  However, just as the Israelites, after long years of slavery in Egypt, found the prospect of freedom somewhat alien and unattractive, so too, those who today live in the world, surrounded by the world’s pleasures, cannot readily imagine the freedom of the children of God which Christ is offering; the joy, hope, and peace of those called to become, as Paul said, the goodness of God, can seem totally unreal.

St. Paul in our second reading told us that:

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  So, we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The elder son in the parable had had a somewhat similar office of reconciliation to fulfil with regard to his younger brother, and he seems to have failed in that duty; therefore, perhaps we can learn from his mistakes something that will be of help to us, and through us, of help to those who, lapsed or lapsing from the faith, are on the way to becoming slaves, captivated by the promises and pleasures of this world.

According to Middle East culture and Jewish traditional values, such an elder son would hold the position of mediator in a family crisis.  When the younger son asked for his inheritance the responsibility and obligation of the elder one was clear to the first-century listener: the old father should have been asked to leave the matter in the hands of his elder son, because the younger boy did not really mean what he had said; the elder should then have demanded that his younger brother apologize to their father.  However, the elder son had –over the years -- shown too little personal appreciation of and love for, his father as to be able, now, to influence his brother’s youthful selfishness; nor was it enough to help the older brother himself rise to the occasion and give positive help when his brother first began thinking of leaving home with his patrimony.  Ultimately the elder brother, like his younger sibling, regarded his father impersonally: not indeed so coarsely as his brother, for whom his father was primarily the one in charge of the money; but nevertheless, as we learn from his own words, as little more than a distant and authoritative figurehead, and he seems to have been quite content to see his younger brother go off with his share of the inheritance.

Of course, the fact that he was not pleased when his brother returned home is understandable, I suppose very few brothers would have been pleased to see such a wastrel back home again.   The elder brother would only have been able to embrace his brother’s return out of deep love for his father … and he seems to have had difficulty in accepting his father’s extreme joy at his younger son’s return home.  Again, that is understandable, for this father’s joy, being the expression of the unique love of a truly exemplary father for his lost-and-returning child, was almost unimaginable, due to Jesus’ love for His heavenly Father overflowing into His portrayal of this earthly father.

We see this yet more clearly in the father’s somewhat pathetic attempt to promote a special bond of mutual concern with his elder son:

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.  But now we (that is, you and I together) must celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life again.

Ultimately, however, the elder son had shown too little personal appreciation of, and love for, his father, to have been able to influence his brother’s selfishness; he was, consequently, also quite unable now to appreciate and respond to his father’s one, self-revealing, word of appeal:

we -- both of us together, you and I -- must celebrate, because your brother has come to life again.   

In this, the elder brother is like many Catholics today who will obey the commandments of God and Mother Church consistently enough, but who can never stir up enough zeal to give open and personal witness to Jesus and the heavenly Father, by their joy and delight, their peace and their hope, in the Faith; and thereby they fail Jesus, themselves, and their neighbour.

Many, especially young people, find such passionless obedience -- given, they think, more out of fear than zeal -- unattractive; if they have intelligence and some understanding of life, they might admit that -- though faulty -- such obedience is both reasonable and wise; but, finding it unattractive, they are prepared to totally ignore it.   Failure to delight in the Lord is a fault in the believer.  Such a failure is not simply due to being undemonstrative by nature, but also to an insufficiently committed, perhaps lazy, spiritual attitude.  For delighting in the Lord is not a matter of blind emotion or natural excitability; rather true delighting in Jesus flows from a habit of faithfully remembering, deeply appreciating, and gratefully acknowledging one’s blessings.

The Psalmist applies this human, psychological, fact to religion when he tells us:

Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord!   Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!   Remember His marvellous works which He has done.  (105:3-5)

People of God, I suggest to you, on this ‘Laetare Sunday’, dedicated to spiritual rejoicing, that you would do much to avoid repeating the elder son’s failure, if you learned to truly rejoice in our faith.  By that I mean that we all should try, first of all, to look honestly at ourselves and learn to recognize the many blessings we have received over the years; and then also begin to look forward to the promises given us concerning our future in Jesus; after all, can it be that ill-educated, grossly miss-led young fanatics, are the only ones who can commit themselves totally to a heavenly future they believe in because  their 'god' encourages them to do the thing they most enjoy, expressing hatred, and exacting revenge?

Finally, having, in that way, become prepared, ready, and willing, to speak more freely and sincerely of the sure delight we have in the faith, of the comfort and strength it affords us in the present life, and of the joyful and confident hope it inspires in us for the life to come, we all will -- in accordance with St. Paul’s words -- be graced to transfigure our old, private, obedience into public confession and praise, since:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come!  And all this is from God (the Father) Who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ.              

                                                    (2022)

3rd Sunday of Lent 2022

 

3^rd. Sunday of Lent (C)

(Exodus 3:1-8,13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9)

 

 

In this country many in Mother Church still – despite the fact that persecution shows signs of bearing its claws again -- have a very comfortable understanding of God and their relationship with Him: He is good, merciful, forgiving, and, above all, our Father.

In reality, however, for many such believers, those are empty words, for they consider His goodness to be such they can make requests regardless of whether they are for the spiritual good of themselves or those they love or want to help; and they imagine that the fact that He is merciful and forgiving, means that He won’t punish us for our sins if we just occasionally use the word ‘sorry’.  For after all, He is our Father, and therefore He – along with today’s publicly admired ‘good parents’ – must indulge His children.

Although some may think I am exaggerating somewhat unpleasantly, that is the attitude in which, I believe, many Catholics today live out their relationship with God: they treat Him as One almost irrelevant as regards the determining of their life-style and personal character.  And yet, they regard themselves as acceptable Catholics and, indeed, as somewhat special people, because they are still attending Church, whereas very many people today in our proud and pleasure-seeking West do not believe in God and never enter a church. 

Those who have given up practicing their Catholic and Christian faith still ‘like’ Jesus as a man for the most part, but they do not believe in Him to be God since ’God is redundant’ they say: ‘we can explain all things without Him; He does not interfere in any way in our world, look at all the suffering going on around us, and what He does He do?’

However, we who do believe, we who are serious in our desire to know and love God in Jesus, and serve Him by the Spirit of Jesus, find a truer appreciation of God when we look at our first reading today where Moses was drawn by curiosity to approach a blazing bush in the desert:

I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.

God called to him, apparently from the middle of the bush:

Come no nearer!  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.

And, what is more, He said it in such a tone that:

Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. 

Obviously, Moses knew what ‘holy’ meant, and he was ready to learn more.  Curiosity and holiness are, it would seem, incompatible; for not even Moses was allowed to draw close to God out of mere curiosity.   That Moses was ‘afraid’ to look at God, however, being much more appropriate to the situation, did win God’s approval and He allowed Moses to draw closer to hear His word, because reverential ‘fear’ is an essential component of ‘love of God’!  And this is the teaching we heard in the psalm reading:

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is (the Lord’s) kindness toward those who fear Him.

All that shows quite clearly that our God is not a soft and easy touch as many so fondly imagine.   

That appreciation is confirmed when we turn our attention to the second reading taken from St. Paul’s letter to his converts at Corinth.  There, he recalls how God had led Israel through the desert with miracles -- above all the stupendous crossing of the Red Sea -- and many other subsequent blessings of protection, food and drink, in times of great need.  And yet, despite all that, Paul concludes:

God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.

He then goes on to draw a lesson for us from this rejection by God of many members of the Chosen People:

Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we should not crave after evil things as they also craved.

What were these evil things that Paul says so angered God: they worshipped their stomachs, delighted in sexual revels, they tried to put God to the test in their lives with a defiant: ”if He doesn’t give some sign, I won’t believe” sort of attitude; and then, of course, they were great grumblers.  Paul insisted once again for the benefit of his converts in luxurious Corinth and for us today:

These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come. 

The true God, is no soft touch!  He is not One Who will allow us, like spoilt children, to remain at the level of infantile pleasures, for He intends to raise us up to maturity in the likeness of Jesus, as His own true children. Heaven, most certainly, is not for spoilt brats who like to pretend they can be just care-free little dears enjoying themselves in Daddy’s wonderful world.

However, some might still be thinking that those are only readings from the Old Testament and from the writings of St. Paul, whereas Jesus Himself was different.  Let us now, therefore, turn to Jesus as we heard Him speaking in our Gospel reading.

The Jews had tried to stir up hatred of the occupying Roman forces and trouble for Jesus by asking Him about the fate of some Galileans killed by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, as they were offering sacrifices to God.  Jesus, however, would not be so easily deflected from His main purpose which was the sanctifying His people’s relationship with the God of their Fathers, not leading, or sharing in, a political confrontation with Pontius Pilate and the Roman power; and therefore, He replied:

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?

He then immediately went on to recall a very tragic and provocative incident that had only recently occurred.

With us these days, it is customary to refer to sufferers of regrettable accidents as being now most certainly at peace and happy, somewhere above, after having been so unfortunate on earth. That was not the way Jews of ancient times reacted, for they tended to think that there must have been some secret sin in the lives of those tragic sufferers which would account for their untimely deaths.  As for Jesus, His own attitude was in contrast to both the religious attitude of His Jewish contemporaries and to our modern humanitarian outpourings, for He neither judged the dead nor did He indulge any banalities such as many of our politically-correct, overly-sentimental expressions of condolence, for He simply went on to say:

Those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think that they were more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem?  By no means!  But I tell you, if you do not repent you will all perish as they did! 

From such a vignette of readings you can, perhaps, begin to appreciate how alien much modern clap-trap piety about “God’s goodness”; modern words – heavy in emotional content but little serious and prayerful thought -- about the dead now looking down from above on those left behind, though heaven is not to be mentioned; and, finally, those ‘heartfelt thoughts’ – a popular modern coinage-- without any mention of ‘prayers’ for the dead!  How alien indeed such tokens of sincere love must be both to Jesus and God Himself Who are deliberately excluded.

Now, I am not denying that God is good.  Far from it!  He is GOOD; indeed, He alone is good, as Jesus Himself said, but He is not good in the way our sinful world imagines Him to be.  God is good FOR OUR BETTERMENT, good to those, who, as Jesus said, repent. That is, God’s goodness is geared first of all towards our repentance and then, further, towards our sanctification; it is not the goodness of indulgence, indifference, or imbecility.   Jesus’ first message as He began His public ministry had been:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:14-15)

That word “repent” was, and is, absolutely essential.  Only human beings can repent: it is part of our unique likeness to God that we can learn to recognize, reject, and hate sin.  No one who fails to repent for sin can be acceptable to God, as St. John tells us:

God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth...  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.   (1 John 1:5 ff.)

Jesus had been sent by His Father to plead for and to save those who were sinners, worthy of God’s punishment, just as the fruitless tree in the Gospel parable deserved to be cut down.  Jesus’ parable-plea to His Father, however, was:

Leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.

That is, Jesus, of set purpose, would pour out His blood in the agony of His crucifixion to fertilize our lives, giving us another and final opportunity to learn to repent and bring forth fruit for God, fruit acceptable to Him.  And, to those who do repent, God is quite unimaginably good; for, having purified them through the blood of His very own Son, He then goes on, as St. Paul expressly assures us, to bestow upon them blessings unlimited:

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?  (Romans 8:32)

Paul then intones (8:34-9:1) one of the most beautiful songs to God’s great goodness that could ever be conceived, a song that makes all modern sugar-daddy imaginations seem, as they truly are, sick and utterly unworthy:

Christ (it is) Who died, and Who, furthermore, is also risen, Who is even at the right hand of God (and) makes intercession for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written: "For Your sake we are being killed all day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."  Yet, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

People of God, may that love of Christ pierce us through and through; may it be seen in us as humble repentance for our sins, as loving zeal for God’s glory and the well-being of Mother Church, and as sincere fellowship with all men and women of good will.  The love of Jesus is being offered us still today: indeed, His Precious Blood -- poured out for us on Calvary -- continues to be sprinkled over us throughout our lives through Mother Church’s sacraments, that we may bring forth fruit ever more befitting God’s great goodness and mercy.  Without repentance, however, He will be found to be no soft touch; for He is a holy God Who, in response to the gardener’s words and Jesus’ saving plea, has warned us:

If it does not (henceforth) bear fruit, you can cut it down.       

2nd Sunday of Lent Year C 2022

 

2^nd. Sunday of Lent (C) 

(Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28-36)

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My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us look closely at Abraham -- our father in faith -- and learn to appreciate anew the wonderful goodness of our God.

We heard that originally God spoke to a man called Abram saying:

I am the Lord, Who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land (of Canaan) to inherit it.  

Abram had been born and brought up as a believer in pagan gods; however, when the Lord called him, Abram heard and listened and -- in obedience -- left his home and patrimony, giving his life over into the hands of the Lord.  It seemed almost impossible to Abram that he, with his relatively small household and few retainers, could take possession of this whole new land as the Lord had promised him, and so we read that Abram said:

Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?

At this juncture we are about to glimpse something of the great goodness of our God, for He next told Abram to prepare for something with which he was quite familiar:

"Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."  (Abram) brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.   

Because Abram was born a Chaldean the Lord told him to make preparations for a Chaldean treaty ceremony, and the animals He called for were all those that could be properly offered in such a sacrifice.  When the sacrifice was fully prepared, the Lord and Abram would then enter into a treaty by passing between the parts of the slaughtered animals and between the pigeons, each of them invoking a similar fate for themselves if they were to break the terms of the treaty they were agreeing. That was a common form of treaty-making in those days.

Although Abram had already left the country of his birth in obedience to the Lord, nevertheless, his fidelity and trust needed to be strengthened and confirmed by further testing: the sacrificial animals had been prepared but the Lord did not appear; and vultures, quickly becoming aware of the lines of carcasses, began to make attempts to feed on them.

            When the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

Time passed, and though Abram was able to prevent the vultures eating that evening, he was not able to frighten them away completely: they were content to just watch and wait.  With the sun declining and still no sign from the Lord, Abram became weary from continually having to watch for the vultures and:

Behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.

Abram was being tested to his limit, but not beyond it, for ultimately:

When the sun went down and it was (fully) dark, behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

The smoking fire-pot and flaming torch represented God passing through the pieces as a signatory to the covenant:

The Lord your God is a consuming fire,

is how Moses would later speak of God in the book of Deuteronomy (4:24).  Thus did God reassure Abram that he would indeed take possession of the land promised him.

With Abram’s treaty-offering to God, all the different kinds of acceptable animals represented not only Abram himself but also his descendants promised by the Lord.  Those descendants would be attacked by the nations, as shown by the fact that:

            Vultures came down on the carcasses.

Abram, however, driving those birds of prey away signified that his faith and obedience would continue to win protection for his people.  This was always recognized in Israel as we hear in  Psalm 105:42-44:

The Lord remembered His sacred promise to Abraham His servant.  He brought His people out with joy.  

We, dear People of God, are not of Abram’s family in the flesh, but Abraham’s family from a multitude of nations, Mother Church: and Abram’s falling wearily asleep in darkness -- tested and tried to the full thwarting the birds of prey while still waiting faithfully for the Lord of the covenant – can be seen as an early foreshadowing of Jesus Himself fighting to the very last moment of His earthly life to destroy the devil’s lordship of sin and death over all humankind, both Jews and Gentiles:

When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"  (Mark 15:33-34)

before peacefully breathing His last, He said:

            It is finished!  (The work is completed, the covenant established!) (John 19:30)

Let us stop there for a moment and think, wonder, and admire.  The Lord had taken up a pagan Abram; Abram, however, was no ordinary man, because he had faith and commitment enough to hear and immediately obey the Lord, leaving all that he had thus far known -- his parental family and friends, his lands and his anticipated future -- and go off, in blind obedience to the Lord Who had called him.

He would travel far in obedience to the Lord, and the Lord, in order to give Abram such confidence for what was a still distant future, had used a covenant setting with which Abram was familiar.  Oh, the goodness and condescension of our God!

Later, when Abram was ninety-nine years old, however, God willed to re-establish a covenant with him, and his family by fleshly continuity, Israel, making use of His own covenantal form, not like the earlier pagan form, because Abram was now to become Abraham of the nations:

For My part here is My covenant with you: you are to become the father of a multitude of nations.  No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham.  For I am making you the father of a multitude of nations.  I will give to you and your descendants the whole land of Canaan and I will be their God.  For your part, every male among you shall be circumcised: that will be the sign of the covenant between Me and you.

And many, many centuries later, the same compassionate and understanding God, Who in order to give us -- Jews and Gentiles, men and women of all times and places, a multitude of nations -- confidence and strength, courage and hope, in His promises, willed to establish with us the ultimate and truly sublime covenant, using a form that human-kind could best understand and appreciate, by sending His only begotten and most beloved Son among us – perfect God and perfect Man -- to offer Himself for us on the Cross of Calvary, and after dying on that Cross, to rise again from the dead and ascend into heaven still clothed in the human flesh He received from Mary the virgin, though now glorified.   In that way – and at what an unimaginable cost to both Father and Son!! – have we been assured that whoever believes in Jesus and obeys His word as Abram had originally obeyed the Lord, will themselves become, in Jesus the Son, children of God: knowing and loving God now – even here on earth -- as our heavenly and eternal Father!  A divine privilege that neither Abram’s original obedience nor Abraham’s great dignity among the nations could ever have won for us.

People of God, try to appreciate, rejoice and trust, in Jesus’ unfailing, covenant-care for His Church foreshadowed by Abram’s centuries-long watching over his personal family Israel, and by Abraham’s covenantal fatherhood for a ‘multitude of nations’ which is Mother Church, who in our Mass urges us to remember and recognize ‘Abraham our father in faith’.   We should realize how very important it is for us to renew our personal Christian and Catholic confidence and faith in Jesus, through a deepening awareness and appreciation of the Spirit of Jesus abiding in Mother Church, and Who is constantly striving to form us her children into our Saviour’s likeness through all the events and circumstances of our lives as faithful disciples of Jesus.

The fact that today we live in a society where, as described by St. Paul in the second reading:

Many walk -- of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping -- that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:  whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame; who set their mind on earthly things;

the fact of being surrounded by many who have nothing but contempt for the ideals and aspirations so much loved and admired by faithful Christians:

Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, any virtue and (all that is) praiseworthy; (Philippians 4:8)

that can indeed be a depressing experience; nevertheless, it is most important for us today, to find comfort and develop our strength by rejoicing in the glory and goodness of Jesus, the God and Lord of Abraham and the Saviour of all mankind.

Yes, let us rejoice in Him because even here on earth we, with Peter, John and James in our Gospel reading, are able to see some faint reflection of the heavenly glory of the Lord:

As Jesus was praying, the appearance of His face changed, and His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.  A voice came from the cloud, saying, "This is My Son, Whom I have chosen; listen to Him."

From Heaven above, there is the Voice of the Father sounding from the covering cloud of the Spirit’s presence and testifying to His beloved Son; and on earth below, Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets witnessing as servants to the One they had foretold and foreshown as the Lord and Saviour of us all.  As of old, the torch of fire passed between the offerings of Abram so too, the glory of the Lord will indeed descend not only on Peter, John and James present at that scene, but upon all those today who are Jesus’ faithful Catholic and Christian People and form part of His offering to the Father.

My dear friends, the Father has called us to Jesus Who has made us His own by the Gift of His Spirit; and in the power and strength of that Spirit we must follow Him as did Abram of old follow the Lord Who called him out of the darkness of paganism.    

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with His glorified body.

People of God: our destiny is glorious for our God is great: the Father has called us, our Lord and Saviour Jesus has prepared the way for us, and the Holy Spirit is with us.  Let us, therefore, rejoice in Him and confidently take Paul’s exhortation to heart:

            Stand fast in the Lord, beloved.

                                                                  

 

 

 

First Sunday of Lent 2022

 

1^st Sunday of Lent (C)

(Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13)

 

 

Since the Lord Jesus came to lead us in the fight against sin and death, against the devil panoplied in power and pride, it was fitting that He allowed Himself to be tempted for our sake, so that His triumph over the devil might win for us grace to work -- with and in Him, by His Spirit -- for our own salvation and the glory of the one God and Father of all, Who originally created us and eternally loves us.

Now, if we look carefully at Our Blessed Lord’s temptations in the desert in today’s Gospel reading, we can recognize the broad outlines of temptation faced by humankind everywhere; for the devil tempts men, women, yes, and even children, first of all, through their earthly appetites, just as he tried to do with Jesus when he said:

            If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.

They are many who succumb to this first sort of temptation as they pander to their appetites for food, alcohol, sex, and pleasures and satisfactions of all sorts.

Nevertheless, there are others who will overcome, or at least resist for a time, this “common” sort of weakness, until the next big hurdle -- the pretensions of power and authority -- brings them crashing to the ground:

The devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.  And the devil said to Him: All this authority I will give You, and their glory, if You will worship before me.

Some very few, however, might not succumb to even such temptations, being neither overwhelmed by sensual pleasures, nor eager to exercise power or authority over others; indeed, not even seeking to be seen as most talented, acknowledged as most capable, admired as most popular.  And yet -- because all human beings are, in one way or another, sinful -- these remaining few will, ultimately, succumb to the last temptation experienced by Jesus in the desert:

(The devil) brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.”

There we have the temptation most closely corresponding with the devil’s own character: spiritual pride, that is, self-serving, self-proclaiming, egotism.

And so, we have these three: pleasure, in its myriad forms; and pride, both worldly and spiritual; those are the sins of humankind throughout their lives, before the shadow of death appears, threatening all with fear and foreboding.  That would, indeed, be the devil’s last temptation for Jesus Himself, a temptation which Jesus – as God-sent Saviour -- would conquer with love unheard of in mankind’s annals; till that moment, however, Jesus wills to help those who hear and will obey Him, live their earthly lives both profitably and joyfully as His true disciples, walking with Him along paths that lead to heavenly fulfilment.

But what about those who find their main pleasure in sheer idleness, despondency, and fear which inhibit so many by persuading them to hide themselves so that nothing can either be expected from them or asked of them?

In one sense this last failing is the worst of all.  For, what can be done with one who refuses to move?  Someone going in the wrong direction can be redirected; anyone who is faltering on the way can be encouraged and strengthened; and those who are seeking, but confess themselves to be puzzled and uncertain, can be enlightened; but what can be done for someone who has no desire to be, or to do, anything other than to remain undisturbed, to sit cosy, and hold tight?

The sins of pleasure are a perverted acknowledgement of the divine truth that creation is truly beautiful and we are not self-sufficient, for, without repeated injections of contrived and distorted pleasurable satisfactions, such sinners find themselves deeply unhappy and unfulfilled.  Likewise, the sins of pride are a testimony to our God-given human potential for advancement and improvement of all sorts: and indeed, at times, sinners of that sort show great human ingenuity and skill, expend enormous energy and endeavour, in order to satisfy that most foolish and insatiable of all passions: self-aggrandizement.   On the other hand, however, the idleness, despondency, and fear which can paralyse a human being and prevent him or her doing anything with their life, bears no witness -- either negative or positive -- to our human dignity or our divine calling; indeed, it tends to rob us of our authentic human character, since it is of the essence of human kind that, being made in the image and likeness of God, they are destined for fulfilment and called to seek and to find it eternally with Him.  And so, whilst the sins of pleasure staining our modern society are a clear sign that many are painfully aware of their own emptiness and need for fulfilment; and whilst the proud, likewise, give positive, albeit twisted and deeply vitiated, testimony to the calling and gifts with which mankind has been endowed; the inertia of the despondent and the fearful, on the other hand -- entertaining no hopes for fulfilment and  passively contenting themselves with the little they have – are witnesses to nothing other than the weak and the piteous state of our fallen nature.

Our readings today have shown us something of humanity’s sins and failings, and perhaps that has already helped to set us on the way to health by spurring us to hate our lustfulness and pride and to despise our despondency and fear.  Can they help us further in our needs?  Do they hold yet further guidance and grace for us?

Let us think back to our first reading and learning from it begin to appreciate and give expression to that most beautiful and praiseworthy virtue, gratitude, which springs up so naturally in the human heart, unless that heart has been rendered insensitive by the cares and concerns of deep-rooted selfishness. Gratitude is a beautiful virtue: its “innocence” gladdens both the recipient and the giver; for true gratitude is not, and cannot be, concocted; neither is it the virtue of one specially talented, for it wells up freely and spontaneously from the depths of our humanity.

The Lord brought us out of Egypt with strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders; and bringing us into this country, He gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.  Therefore, I have now brought you the first-fruits of the land which You, Lord, have given me.

One of the surest ways to find joy in the Lord is to be grateful for all the blessings of life, be they big or small.  Above all, try to offer Holy Mass, and your communion with Jesus at Mass, with gratitude to God in your heart.

Next, we can learn from St. Paul’s teaching in the second reading, for so often people make relations with God difficult for themselves.  They imagine God is demanding this and that from them when really, He is not demanding anything but only seeking to lead them, gradually, from wherever they may find themselves, further along the way to the fullness of happiness and eternal life. 

Now, you have come here believing – mind and heart – in Jesus; hopefully you have learned to appreciate and give expression to your gratitude for the salvation He opens up before you; now, learn from St. Paul and begin to confess with your mouth:

For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

People of God, here is something you can and should begin to do here at Mass!  Don’t just stand or sit with your mouth closed and your heart dull.  If you do not confess God here you will never confess Him outside, before others who do not believe.  If you put your heart into the Creed, the hymns, the responses at Mass -- if you confess with your mouth in that way -- you will be gradually led to speak up when the Spirit in you deems it is necessary, before those who do not believe, or even mock.  Don’t imagine for yourself seemingly impossible acts of public witness; try to praise God wholeheartedly, here and now, and He will lead you, gradually, to confess with your mouth before others when the Spirit asks it of you.  He will never demand what you cannot give: He will, if you are willing, lead and encourage you first, and then, only ask you when you are able.  Indeed, you will probably not even be aware that you are being asked, it will seem so natural for you to respond to the Spirit’s call when you have become accustomed to confessing with your mouth here at Mass.

Finally, we should have boundless confidence in God.  St. Paul reminded us:

Scripture says, "No one who believes in Him will be put to shame."   

The Israelites, miserable and weak slaves though they were, were led out of Egypt, despite the power of Pharaoh’s army, because they trusted in the Lord.  They went through the waterless and stony desert, because they trusted in the Lord who had spoken to them through Moses.  Moses was a man who, though born a Hebrew, had been brought up as an Egyptian.  The Lord had called and inspired him to lead Israel into freedom; and, because Moses had been sent by God and knew the Egyptians, under his leadership the Hebrew slaves learned confidence to trust their God and face up to their oppressors. 

Now surely, we can trust Jesus!  He is, indeed, the Son of God and yet, He is also most truly one of us; that is why He is able to lead us all the way to heaven along ways that, in His company, are no longer impossible for us.  Jesus is leading us heavenward, and that is why He is always wanting and willing to lead us on and up to higher, greater things.  That is why the idleness that wants only to sit cosy and hold tight is so unacceptable to Him.   For, despite all our fears, despite our natural weakness, God did indeed make us for Himself and in Jesus He has overcome for us all the trials and temptations that can obstruct our way.  Take confidence, therefore, and trust in the Lord; begin to sing the everyday psalm of gratitude and thanksgiving in your life, and you will find it a song that soon develops into an antiphon of witness and praise, springing spontaneously to your lips as you find yourself being led along ways that delight and fulfil you beyond all your dreams.  Then you will indeed thank God for your Catholic Faith which has helped you to believe in Jesus, our Lord and Saviour; to trust in the Spirit, our Advocate and Comforter; and to look forward in hope to the eternal vision and presence of Him Who is both our God and our Father.