26th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Ezekiel 18:25-28; Philippians 2:1-11; St. Matthew 21:28-32)

Throughout the history of Israel there were two great religious institutions: prophecy and priesthood. Originally, they consisted of God-given or God-called individuals; but, over many centuries, they developed into two great authorities each demanding the obedience of true Israelites: the Law of Moses, and the sacrificial worship of God in the glorious Temple of Jerusalem.

In the times of Jesus, the Law of Moses – its interpretation and practice – was the realm of the Pharisees and their Scribes; and they considered their traditions,  assembled over hundreds of years, to be inviolable.  They were the ‘accepted’ teachers of public piety and propriety for the ordinary people; accepted, that is, above all on the basis of their strict observance of material aspects of the Law’s requirements, which the ordinary, poor, people had neither time, money, nor intelligence to understand or observe.  Having seated themselves on the throne of Moses, as Jesus said, the Pharisees were not looking to God for a Messiah to come – despite the witness of many prophets – who, they feared would ‘usurp’ their proud position of supreme exponents of God’s greatest gift to Israel, the Law of Moses, by His own authentic fulfilment of God’s Law for the whole of mankind, both Jews and Gentiles.

The Temple authorities, on the other hand, were the regulators of sacrifice in Israel. Sacrifices had to be offered to the One and only God of Israel in the one and only acceptable place for traditional sacrificial offerings by Israelites whether  living at home or scattered abroad in the ‘Diaspora’.  The Temple authorities therefore – given their own often-indulged natural tendencies – were very rich and much inclined to visible manifestation of their own self importance.  Such wealth and pomposity made them -- the Sanhedrin -- ideal representatives of Israel as regards dealings with the occupying power of Rome, men of like mind and heart: always hungry and eager for greater glory and more money. 

Dear friends in Christ, Jesus was sent to offer peace and bring about unity for all who would believe in Him; peace, that is, for the new People of God, and unity in the new Church of God, to be set up by Jesus and His Apostles, a Church embracing both believing Israelites and believing Gentiles on an equal basis; and our Mass this day embraces both the prophetic and priestly traditions of ancient Israel, for the one sacrifice of love that we offer in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, is also the source of His Gift of the Spirit of God, the ultimate source of holiness for all disciples of Jesus.

In our Gospel reading we heard Jesus deflating the pompous Temple authorities in Jerusalem:

When John came to you in the way of righteousness you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did.  Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your mind and believe him.

John the Baptist had great authority with the people of Juda, throngs of them sought baptism from him in the river Jordan; and even Jesus Himself, having heard of what John was doing in the name of Israel’s God, left His home at Nazareth to witness what John was doing. The chief priests and the elders of the people, however, did not accord John any honour, despite his general renown as a remarkably brave witness to God before kings and potentates, and despite the very special reverence in which he was held by those who were truly ‘seeking the face of the God of Israel’.

It was now the same with Jesus.  Jesus had just cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem by driving out of its perimeters all those conducting business and deriving profit in the precincts of what was meant to be a sanctuary of prayer where God’s own Name dwelt in splendour.  Jesus publicly taught the people, healing many of them, and had been acclaimed by enthusiastic children with the words, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’.

When, on the following day, Jesus returned to the Temple, the chief priests and the elders confronted Him saying:

            By what authority are you doing these things?

The only authority officially recognized by those Temple authorities other than their own politico/religious authority was the forceful authority of the occupying Roman power; and they were not looking for anyone purporting to be sent by, come in the name of, God, as Saviour for Israel.  They alone could save Israel by their political skills when dealing with the Roman power.

However unwillingly, there was one other authority the Temple authorities had to recognize, and that was the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees whose traditions for the interpretation of the Law of Moses were used to denigrate and deny, the possibility of there being any other spiritual guidance for the people.  The Scribes and Pharisees also – just like the Temple authorities --- were  not looking for anyone purporting to be sent by, come in the name of, God, as Saviour for Israel, the Law of Moses was supreme for the Godly governance and guidance of Israel, it was exclusive to Israel, and they were the traditional interpreters of that Law.

Jesus was not wanted by the holy ones, ‘the do-gooders’ and woke-ones’ of those days; nor was He wanted by the Temple authorities, those in power.

He is not wanted today either.

Today’s politicians are intent on seeking popularity and influence by ‘universal credit’ policies … ‘do what you like doing, be what you want to be’… but don’t forget to thank us!!  All those do-gooders do, indeed, some measure of worldly good , but they do it out of fear of death, not out of love of God.

Christian teaching and Christian saints have always said that we should love God above else… because God was and is  acknowledged, by those who have closely experienced Him, to be good and forgiving, and His truth has always been always seen to be supremely beautiful.

Advice by this world’s do-gooders always proclaims that one must avoid death above all else, death is the ugliest, worst experience of life … it is not a gateway to heaven  they assert, but they have no corroboration.   Christianity, on the contrary has the historic testimony of the life and death of Jesus, and the experience -- in Mother Church -- of His Resurrection and of the Gift of His Holy Spirit, ever with her and in her believing children for over 2000 years.

Dear People of God, Jesus is not wanted by our Western world which today delights in its sinfulness, but JESUS IS WANTED by all faithful Catholics world-wide.  Today’s Holy Mass is our supreme witness to Jesus: for we love Him, and we need Him and His most Holy Spirit to make us ever-more one with Him, for the glory of the most wonderful Father-of-us-all Who gave His only-and-most-beloved Son to save each one of us, by His death-on-earth for us.

25th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Isaiah 55:6-9; Paul to the Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16)

 

In our Gospel reading Jesus was teaching us about the kingdom of heaven, in which He pictured for us a most benevolent landowner trying to help local workmen in their needs. The landowner obviously represented the heavenly Father … and on realizing that, we should immediately listen to, and most carefully learn from, what he says and does, because in this parable Jesus is trying to help us come to know better and love more His heavenly Father; the Father for love of Whom, He Himself -- Jesus our Saviour and Redeemer -- embraced the Cross of Rome’s hatred, Israel’s disdain, and modern man’s indifference, with total commitment and sovereign peace.

How did Jesus therefore portray His heavenly Father in human terms for today's very ordinary everyday people?

First of all, the landowner was, and Jesus’ Father is, solicitous for and concerned about, ‘his’ people.  The landowner went out at 6am., 9am., 12noon, 3pm. and 5pm. looking for men without work, for workers needing employment to sustain their families.  Jesus is saying, ‘My Father is concerned like that, about humankind’s well-being on earth, and most of all, about the  salvation and eternal blessing of all who are My disciples, His adopted sons and daughters.

Jesus also told us that His heavenly Father is just: for He told us in the parable how the landowner took the trouble to agree with those he sought to hire about the generally accepted wage rate for the work to be done … and for the men hired later he promised to give them ‘what is just’.   You can also trust My Father, says Jesus, for the landowner kept meticulously to his promises regarding the wages to be given.

The parable’s teaching however, despite the fact that the landowner makes all possible efforts to do the good he envisaged –– is not really pleasant reading because we ourselves can understand and sympathetically feel something the disappointment felt by the earlier workers on receiving no more money than the latest comers.  And that shows that we are not fully in tune with the God and Father we worship and want to love totally in and with Jesus.

We cannot, however, I hope, in any way go along with the anger of those first workers, their antipathy towards their fellow workers who came late, nor their deep resentment as regards the landowner himself. 

Our first reading from the prophet Isaiah could have served as a warning for us when it said:

Our God Who is generous in forgiving says, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.’

There is not just a ‘world of difference’ as we would say, between God’s thoughts and ours, but rather:

As high as the heavens are above the earth … My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.’

‘My thoughts’ and ‘your ways’ ….

The landowner showed equal concern for all the men he had gone to so much trouble to hire.    At the end of the day, however, on receiving their wages, the early workers showed us – by their very first words – the poison in their hearts:

You’ve made these last one’s equal to us.

That was the very essence of their complaint ... the evangelist’s explanatory words ‘they thought that they would receive more’, are not their words!   What was really bugging – as we would say -- the first workers, was that:

You’ve made these last one’s equal to us, (whereas they should have got less than us).

And the humbling aspect of all this is that we – good Catholics and Christians though we try to be – can instinctively feel a sliver of sympathy with that attitude of the early workers:

            ‘They (the late and last comers) should have got less than us’

Dear People of God we can now understand better how Our Lord once (Mark 9:19) felt constrained to say:

            How long shall I be with you?  How long shall I put up with you?

God’s judgements ultimately are not such as to involve comparisons between human individuals’ endeavours: ‘this one has done more or less than that one’; God judges each of us according to our own deeds on this earth and ultimately, on the quality of love, earthly or heavenly, that has ruled, guided, and determined our lives.

Consider calmly and humbly, deeply, dear fellow disciples Our Lord,   what love – for your Father, your Saviour, your Guide, YOUR GOD – what love for Him  have you learnt from His Son’s life and death, what love have you allowed His most Holy Spirit to kindle in your heart for your Father in heaven?

Dear People of God, learn from Saint Paul … so very, very close to Christ,  and so alien to the ‘woke-ism’ poisoning today’s society …

            For to me, life is Christ, and death is gain!

The owner of the vineyard felt a deep compassion for those who had – through no fault of their own – been idle (and worrying?) for almost the whole day.  What good would a mere one hour’s pay be for their needs and those of their dependants? 

This is the picture which Our Lord wishes to give us of His heavenly Father Whose decisions in our regard are always motivated by His loving compassion.   That was how the work of our salvation began.  Mankind was under the cruel bondage of sin and could in no way help themselves, so God took pity on them and sent His beloved, only-begotten Son, to save them, as the owner of the vineyard had compassion for the workless labourers and their needy families.

But there is something else in the parable.  It gives us the picture of a Lord and God Who is just to all, good and gracious to all; but, to certain ones He is especially merciful.  God offers salvation to all men; His blessings and graces are amply sufficient for all; but for some chosen souls His mercy is boundless and overflowing.  Here we are introduced to the mystery of Predestination.

This mystery of our personal predestination is a very great mystery of love, not subject even to the disposition of Our Lord Himself, as Jesus said to the sons of Zebedee, James and John who asked … or whose mother asked … for places of privilege in His Kingdom:

My cup you will indeed drink, but to sit at My right and at My left is not Mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.      (Matthew 20:23)

What is ahead of each of us?  How are we to respond, to co-operate best with, so that His will be fulfilled in us, that we might thus attain to the place He, in His great love, has prepared for us and to which He calls each one of us, each and  every day, year in, year out?

St. Paul writing to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 6:12) says:

            All things are lawful for me but not all things are beneficial.

The way to life is narrow, how are you and I to walk best along that way?? 

That is a liturgy which each one of us alone can celebrate, and if we do not celebrate it, then there will be one harmonic – known to, and listened for, by the Father -- missing in the great symphony of praise rising from Mother Church to the throne of God.  These are the events, the happenings, in our lives which though they may seem ordinary enough to other people, nevertheless, we – as did Israel of old – can rightly know them, unmistakeably, as the effects of God’s great goodness towards each one of us.

Therefore, let us all, with the Church and in the Church, thank God for all the marvellous things He has done for us in Christ … and that, of course,  we do best of all here at Mass and through our reception of Holy Communion.

However, in that context, let each one of us ever treasure, meditate on, give thanks for, all those blessings which God has lavished upon us as individuals.  For in them we are granted an opportunity to see what God wishes to do for us in the future; there, is foreshadowed the outlines of that beautiful and unique relationship which God wants to have with each one of us.

Such a constant faithful and trusting relationship with God can become a fount of joyous hope and grateful love bubbling up throughout our lives.  And when we reach our end on earth, we will join the family of the blessed in heaven finally freed from their straightened earthly circumstances, possibilities, and powers, and endowed with a previously unknown ability to lose ourselves in a mind-surpassing and soul-absorbing act of gratitude and praise before God.

24th Sunday Year A, 2023

 (Ecclesiasticus 27:30-28:7; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35)

 

Our Gospel reading today is very familiar, but don't let that fact lead you into a semi-dormant ‘'we've heard all this before’' attitude of mind; for today’s short passage from the Gospel -- inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit -- leads us to a fount of purest water.  So, let us direct our particular attention to the first two verses of the Gospel reading:

Peter approached Jesus and asked Him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?"   Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times”.

Why did Jesus give such an enigmatic answer?

Because He intended to show Peter the abhorrently evil root of any wilful refusal-to-forgive, of any and every nurtured-desire-for-revenge.

Not seven times, but seventy-seven times, those words are to be found first in the book of Genesis (4:23-24), in one of Israel's most ancient traditions:

Lamech said to his wives:  "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my utterance!  For I have killed a man for wounding me, even a young man for bruising me.   If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times."   

According to the Scriptures, Lamech was the great-great-great-grandson of Cain, and in the verses preceding the words I have just quoted we read of great progress being made in the quality of life for the family of Cain: a city had been built by him, and we heard of livestock being raised, of artisans making tools of all kinds from bronze and iron, and -- for times of public rejoicing and personal pleasure -- there were players of harp and flute.  As we would say today, the economy was flourishing.

But, with the growth of prosperity and greater opportunities to seek and find not only what was necessary and good but also what was pleasurable and even addictive, there came also an alarming growth in wickedness and sin.  Cain the original sinner had begged God’s protection lest he himself be killed in revenge for his murdering of his own brother Abel, an action he learned to regret.

However, when we look at his great-great-great grandson Lamech, we find him actually glorying in and boasting about the fact of his having killed a man for merely wounding him, indeed, even killing a young man or boy for simply bruising him.  Lamech’s criminally insane pride culminated in his boast that whoever crossed him would pay for it, and that he alone, Lamech -- not God! -- would decide both the price to be paid and the person to pay it.  He vaunted the irrevocability of his decision and the inevitability of its fulfilment by invoking the traditional tribal and family reverence for the founding father by those words:

If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.

Devilish pride, coupled with a vicious and vengeful attitude, characterised Lamech:  that was the way he ruled his family.  And he was not alone in that, for the society of which he was part developed along similar lines until, eventually, it called down its own destruction by the God-sent flood.  Lamech – the end or ‘culmination’ of the Cainite line -- had become a ‘pus-laden’ boil of pride and violence in the old, pre-flood, world.

Now we ourselves -- or at least some of us -- have ‘in our days’ seen, and are still hearing of, Lamech-like things in Russian aggression – or rather in Putin aggression’ – and in, for example, Sicilian Mafioso society, Mexican gang-rule and drug culture, the handful of old IRA intransigents in Northern Ireland, and going back via Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and Idi Amin, we can still recall with horror Stalin's horrendous cruelty towards his own people, and Hitler's totally  consuming hatred for all things Jewish. 

Awareness of such depths of human depravity can, perhaps, help us appreciate more seriously something of the importance and the significance of Jesus' reply to Peter’s  somewhat jocular exaggeration :

Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?  

And, if that is the case, we may also learn to gratefully admire, and deeply rejoice in, the vision and insight of Jesus Who knew both the heights of divine wisdom to be found in but a few words of Sacred Scripture, and also the depths and horrendous possibilities of human frailty and sinfulness, if subject to Satan’s unchecked poisonous administrations. 

Peter and the Apostles had been cleansed by the word Jesus had spoken to them and they were to receive new and heavenly life by the Holy Spirit Who would be poured out upon the Church after their Lord's Death and Resurrection. In the meantime, they were being trained to proclaim and proffer His redemption to the whole of mankind, which, despite its own native frailty, was to be re-destined and endowed-anew for heavenly fulfilment in the Church of Jesus to be built on the Rock of Peter’s witness and the fidelity of the Apostles’ proclamation.  The flood-waters of destruction and death which destroyed the gross wickedness of Lamech and his world, were never to be repeated.  Many men would and will continue to destroy themselves by their headlong pursuit of power and pleasure, but the Flood was to be replaced by a far greater outpouring of waters, this time the healing waters of grace, the most sublime juice dripping from the perennially-fruitful-tree of Jesus’ Cross.  Jesus wanted Peter and the Apostles -- as He also wants us -- to realize that they must have total, absolute, confidence in the presence in their own lives, and in the Church, of the intransigent forgiveness and redemptive-power of Him Who loves us as none but He -- our only True Father -- can, by sending His Son to become-one-of-us-for-us, and by His most sublime Gift of the Holy Spirit of Truth and Power.

We are all sinners redeemed by Jesus, and even the best of us are only earthenware vessels, as St. Paul says:

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us  (2 Corinthians 4:7);

and, on the basis of that natural fragility and God-graced humility, forgiveness ought to be an absolutely basic, and therefore characteristic, Christian virtue. Unforgiving vengefulness constitutes for us a most outrageous sin and comprehensive defeat at the hands of Satan, as we heard in our first reading:

Forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.

If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath (harbours resentment); who will forgive him his sins?

That is why Jesus, on being questioned by Peter who mentioned the number seven which, for the Jews, was a number of completion and perfection, replied so firmly:

            I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

This sort of thing goes back to the very beginning, and reaches to the very heart of man, Jesus is saying.  Recognize the signs of your adversary, Satan, whose deceits of old brought about the destruction of those he led astray into pride and viciousness, Lamech above all.  For you are called to be – in Me -- a new creation, and the perfection of that new creation must so great that seven can no longer declare, only seventy-seven can suggest, anything of the supreme wonder and beauty of the heavenly life, which can even begin here-on-earth for you and all My true disciples.

The devil is still at work, dear friends in Christ; still trying to undermine and disfigure God's new creation and your souls too; but, having seen in Lamech whither Satan would lead you, be firm against him and strong in Me and, by My Spirit in you, be prepared to forgive whoever may have -- wherever and whenever -- wronged you,

            Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.  

23rd Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20)

 

Dear fellow Catholics and Christians I must make clear for you today that our Gospel reading was written by St. Matthew for his Jewish-Christian community of the first century.  The general guidance given there is for all Christians; but the detailed and specific procedures quoted by St. Matthew were given by Jesus to Jews who, as a nation, had been prepared by God for some two thousand years in order to be able to understand and practically appreciate that teaching.  Such formal details were not intended by Jesus -- indeed are hardly possible and most certainly not obligatory -- for Catholics and devout Christians in our modern, sinful and adulterous, societies.

Let us first of all have a look at what I have just called the ‘general guidance’ for all Christians and basic to Christian morality:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.

Such was Jesus’ consistent attitude in such matters: don’t let things fester, have it out in the open; if possible, put it right without delay, with all honesty and humility.  

Such an attitude and such a solution was possible for meticulous former Pharisees or Sadducees – Matthew’s suggested Church congregation – who’s emotions were closely geared with their legal minds; and Scripture gives us the supreme example of Saint Paul literally following Jesus’ teaching by openly rebuking Saint Peter for dissimulation (Galatians 2:11-15)!

Nevertheless, for today, when people’s emotions are much more free-ranging and for immediate self-expression, it is not likely to be a generally accepted or acceptable procedure.

Jesus, however, had a much more comprehensive teaching than that specified by St. Matthew for his Church congregation; it is a teaching that Jesus committed to Saint Peter for the future Church of which he, Peter, would be the chosen head; a teaching which totally eliminates grudges nourished or retaliation planned for harm thought to have been done:

If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your  Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14-15;  cf. 18:22-35)

That truly radical, unique, and even still today, most astounding, demand of Jesus as regards fraternal charity among His disciples, made in those words for St. Peter’s personal  guidance, develops teaching first mentioned in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: revenge is not allowed, and if cherished is unforgiveable, for all believers in Jesus.

Think on that, dear People of God, for all gangs feed on revenge; even world-wide religions allow their supporters to practice, and pride themselves on, vengeful justification of their faith; and ‘little men’ and ‘poisoned women’ of our modern world, like to think of getting-their-own-back for offences real or imagined.

Today’s words of Saint Paul -- our Blessed Lord’s gift-to-the-nations --  are most relevant here:

            Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another.

For Christian society, such love is  both the foundation and the fulfilment of the Christian way of life, as  St. Paul teaches the nations:

For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function; so we, who are many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. 

Love is the fulfilment of the law.  (Romans 12:4-5; 13:10)

I cannot now go on to talk with you about the nature and beauty of that  Christian love, but nevertheless we have already, dear People of God, revealed a panoramic view of the wonder of our Catholic (for precision’s sake!) faith: the power and strength, the beauty and holiness, the life-bestowing goodness and soul-cleansing truth, of God’s fatherly love for us in Jesus!

Before closing, however, let me just take-up for you that expression ‘fatherly-love’, because our first reading from the prophet Ezekiel told us of God insisting on a moral duty for Ezekiel himself that concerns all Christian parents.

As Christian parents whose marriage is dedicated to God, any children they may have are regarded as gifts from God to be loved, nurtured, and brought up for His glory and their ultimate salvation and blessing.  For that purpose Catholic and Christian parents have authority over their children which is God-given and which no government can negate; an authority before men which also begets a responsibility before God, because He has appointed them as watchman for the house of God which is their Catholic and Christian family home.  May their exercise of that personal God-given authority and power-for-good be for them a most loving work, joyful privilege, and life-long cause of heart-felt gratitude.

22nd Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27)

 

Today’s Gospel revealed how ‘deadly’ serious Our Blessed Lord was when calling upon His disciples, then and now, to take up the Cross and follow Him.     So serious is that Gospel message that, in order to help us appreciate something more of it, I propose to re-order today’s short reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, putting first what was last, and what was last, first, changing the word order slightly, but not the meaning, nor any of the words.

 

I urge you brothers, by the mercies of God, do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect; (thus, may you be able) to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.

 

We can thus appreciate more clearly the nature of our spiritual worship of God.  It is TRULY CHRISTIAN: that is, it is both human and divine.  Human, by our endeavour to renew our minds by discerning and doing the will of God in our physical pilgrimage through life; and divine, in so far as, having thus been perfected by the Spirit of Jesus, we have become able to offer the living-and-dying sacrifice of ourselves in the truly spiritual worship of loving commitment to, and total trust in, God.   Oh! dear People of God, how utterly important it is for us to thus:

 

Be transformed by the renewal of our mind, that we may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.

 

Our ‘good life’ is not to be a mere living-out of generally accepted, popularly approved, morals and manners … so many non-believers today pride themselves on doing that!!   No, we Catholic Christians are called to know (through our Catholic Faith and the Scriptures) and love (whole-heartedly by the grace of God’s most Holy Spirit) the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and in Him, to learn how to know and love God the-Father-Who-sent-Him as our own Father, now calling us to walk in Jesus as His adopted children.

 

Our Christian faith is, indeed, a call to personal love of God, and how ironical it is that the adulterous and evil world of today likes to understand its boasted faithlessness likewise as a gateway to ‘modern expressions of emotional commitment’ – promiscuous, of course, to benefit all its votaries dedicated to  adventures and discoveries along the highways and byways of such ‘loving’ – so much better adapted to modern ‘man’, they claim, than the Christian vocation of love which -- being divine -- is able to embrace and ultimately totally transfigure what is human and temporal, into what is divine and eternally fulfilling; in one word, into something Christ-like, through a discipline that requires but obedience and humility from man!!

 

Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God.

 

Just recall Our Blessed Lord in last Sunday’s Gospel.  Having previously heard Bartholomew (Nathanael) call Him ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of Israel’, He had regarded such words as being too much based on too little; on the other hand, however, when He heard Peter declare ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ He immediately, without the slightest hesitation, recognized His Father speaking in and through Peter, and totally committed His own life-and-future- death’s work in obedient response to His Father’s recognized involvement.

 

That, dear People of God, is a sublime example of St. Paul’s inspiring exhortation today, ‘Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God’.   As Jesus Himself said:

 

Father, the world has not known You; but I have known You!

 

And Jesus’ whole desire and prayer is that we -- though weak and ignorant human beings of ourselves -- may, as His true disciples come, in His Church and by His Spirit,  to that humble ‘discernment’ which St. Paul had in mind.

 

How we are to be thus transformed, and how our mind is to be thus renewed, can only be learnt by humble discipleship from the font of traditional wisdom contained in the teachings of Catholic spirituality.  It is not something we can do of ourselves, for it is a precious gift of God; but it is something for which we can dispose ourselves to receive from the goodness of God, by entering upon the ways of traditional spirituality distilled for us over two thousand years.

 

Thanks to the liturgical wisdom of Mother Church -- using old treasure to reveal what is new and sublime -- we are given the essential elements for such spiritual renewal in today’s responsorial psalm (63):

 

            My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God!          SEEK, LONG FOR. GOD.

            Your kindness is greater than life; my lips shall glorify You.   THANK HIM.

            You are my help, and in the shadow of Your wings    ASK FOR GOD’S HELP.

               I shout for joy.                                                                  and REJOICE IN HIM.

            My soul clings fast to You.           PERSEVERE, BE PATIENT and FAITHFUL.

               Your right hand upholds me.                                  and CALMLY CONFIDENT.

 

Dear People of God, you have there, in that one psalm reading, a compendium of spiritual guidance fit for a saint or a soldier of Christ: one, that is, chosen by the Father to give Him grateful thanks by witnessing to the holiness, or fighting for the glory, of His Son’s Name among men.