5th Sunday of Easter Year B, 2024

 

(Acts 9:26-31; 1^st. John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8)

Dear People of God, it is important for us to realize that today’s Gospel reading is not recorded by the other three Gospels, only St. John tells us about Jesus’ discourse  to His ‘Last Supper’ disciples in which He said:

 I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser … you are the branches;

before going on to say, as you heard:

By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be                     My disciples.

From those words, it would seem that there was something not yet sure – fully secure, that is -- about the ‘discipleship’ of those committed followers of Jesus who had followed Him all the way from Gallilee to Judea and its hostile capital, Jerusalem  

Our second reading from St. John’s first letter, gives us some help, for there we read:

Whoever keep His commandments abides in God, and God in him.  And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit Whom He has given us.

The missing link between His faithful disciples who accompanied Him throughout His Public Ministry, and those same disciples Jesus urged at the Last Supper to ‘prove (yourselves) to be My disciples’ would seem to be the Risen Lord’s Gift of the Holy Spirit.   For they did, indeed,  ‘prove themselves to be authentic ‘disciples’ of Jesus and ‘Apostles’ worthy to be sent in His name to the nations, by obeying the Spirit of power given them after His Resurrection and Ascension, to  form them in the likeness of their Crucified and Risen Lord and enable them to proclaim His Gospel in His Name, and establish  His Church by their inspired teaching and preaching,  and the personal witness of their mighty deeds.

Whittled down in numbers by the snares of the devil and the trials and temptations of the modern ‘anything-goes’ world, It is easy for surviving, enduring , ‘going-to-Mass-on-Sunday-and-Holy-Day-Catholics’  to think of ourselves as ‘disciples’ of Jesus.   But we cannot allow ourselves to forget that Jesus required His apparently true ‘Last Supper’ disciples to prove themselves as fully authentic followers of Himself.  And so, each of us today should ask ourselves the question: ‘Have I proven myself to be -- in some measure -- a true disciple of Jesus, or am I a wind-bag full of nothing more than ‘the right words’, or merely a pretender, unable to decide and unwilling to suffer?

Dear friends in Christ, it is the Spirit Who establishes a personal relationship  between Jesus and His true followers, enabling  those who follow His -- the Spirit’s – lead, to abide in Jesus by obeying His commandments, and, by virtue of that relationship, to come to know that He – Jesus their Lord and Saviour -- abides in them.

And at this important juncture it is most important to realize that the Father commands us, Jesus commands us, but the Holy Spirit persuades, encourages, urges, guides, enlightens, strengthens and comforts us as disciples of Jesus.  He does not , however, command us, because His mission is to form us personally in our-own-truest personal spiritual relationship with Jesus, as an in-Him-child of God, for the Father.

And so, dear People of God, Jesus demands obedience from all His disciples, but above all He desires such commitment to be imbued with the intimate beauty of personal communion, whereby the ‘do-er’ of His will, delights in the awareness of His presence.

St. Luke presents the same teaching essentially in our first reading:

The Church was being built up; and, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

There we have the difference between those who love Jesus and think that Christians have all they need for their right understanding and imitation of Jesus in the Bible (perhaps more simply in the New Testament, or even, indeed, in the Gospels alone), and those who – like ourselves who in the God-given Church -- seek not simply to know the words Jesus uttered and imitate the things He did, but aspire above all to be formed by the very Spirit of Jesus in the likeness of Jesus.  We pray for, and invite, the Holy Spirit to guide us -- already members of Christ through faith and obedience -- way beyond, and immeasurably far above, any awareness of our own loving thoughts or strictness of our personal discipline, into a Spiritual, by-the-Holy-Spirit, conformity with Jesus.  For God desires that the full majesty and beauty of the Son-made-flesh be manifested in the most sensitive detail by the full complementary of a whole  family of likenesses formed by the Spirit in each and all the individual members of the Children of God – redeemed by Jesus -- for the glory of the Father of all goodness and truth.   No human being is infinite, and the truest spiritual likeness of Jesus can only be formed by a multiplicity of beautiful aspects, glimpses, likenesses and aspirations, of Him Who was, is, and ever will be, the only sublime human likeness of His heavenly Father.

People of God, God is holy, we, of ourselves, are not; God is good, we are needy; let us not, therefore, try to prescribe ourselves a ‘Jesus’ for our imitation, based on our own thoughts, no matter how studious or learned they may be, nor on our own aspirations or imaginations, no matter how pious they may be.  Rather let us try to just love the Lord proclaimed by Mother Church with all our heart, understand Him in her Scriptures to the utmost of our mind, embrace Him in her Eucharist with heart-felt warmth and sincerity, and then both humbly and prayerfully entrust ourselves to the Holy Spirit, beseeching Him to form us into a likeness of Jesus in Mother Church, as He most wonderfully formed Jesus Himself in the womb of Mary.

For we are all -- throughout our lives -- meant to be formed as other, mutually complementary, Christs in the womb of Mother Church, by the Spirit.  And after such a life-time gestation, our ultimate birth into heavenly life should be characterized first and foremost by a sublimely childlike cry of ‘THANK YOU, my Father, my God, and my All’!  A cry most befitting those worshippers who, as Jesus Himself revealed and John alone (4:23s.) reports, the Father desires above all:

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.   God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. 

4th Sunday of Easter Year B, 2024

 

I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD

On the television all those invited to participate in the various programmes  are presented as doing good: from those giving sex-adapting pills to children, and recommending assisted-dying for the sick or elderly; to those asserting that responsible parents should not be allowed to chastise their children physically at all …  no harassed mother allowed to slap her disobedient children, for that causes endless mental health problems (!) for children later on.   ‘Good’ committee members wanting and empowered to reward the  ‘good behaviour’ of prisoners under strict supervision by a reduction of their prison sentence have, and do still, show their ‘goodness by occasionally allowing even vicious criminals to be let loose on the general public  with the result that hundreds and possibly thousands of people (mainly women?) have already been murdered or seriously harmed when such apparently ‘good behaviour’ gives way to new temptation, desire, or fear.  And, the ‘goodness’ of such generous committees is not to be questioned.

Our modern Western or Western-influenced society has reneged on religion, especially the Christian religion which originally gave a rock-foundation for believing  society.  Official modern society no longer believes in Jesus because it thinks it has no need of Him: it does not want what Jesus seems (to them) to offer – obedience now and heaven much later on --  but it most certainly does want what modern society seems to offer: pleasures-a-plenty here and now, do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t harm other people, lots of technological possibilities for both good and evil, and certainly lots of excitement and sex.  Moreover, addicts of whatever kind tend to be thought of, exclusively,  as ‘sick’ people, thus supporting the demise of human will-power, human ability to avoid, even to reject the solicitations of sin.  And all that is seen as forms of modern ‘goodness’.

Jesus, however, said of Himself, and still says in and through His Church: ‘I am the good shepherd’; while the world nowadays says on the other hand, ‘we are doing good for everybody; a good, everybody appreciates, here and now’.  

Who are you to believe, O serious thinker?   What is your faith – and your experience – O People of God:

JESUS IS THE GOOD SHEPHERD!

It behoves us, however, as Christian believers. to try to understand as clearly as we can something of what Jesus meant by the word, ‘good’.

Jesus was sent by His Father -- and by His own filial desire  -- to become the Saviour of human-kind; that is, the Saviour of humanity bound by chains of sin and death.  That is what Jesus’ words ‘good shepherd’ involve: His freeing humankind from those chains which rob them of God’s original blessing of life and love as the crown of His creation and as His own true, adopted children.  And that Jesus did because He, as perfect God and perfect man, could love His Father – adequately -- as God, thus returning  His Father’s original-and-still-enduring love of men; and, as Man -- by His obedience through suffering-and-death -- make up for humans’ disobedience: disrespect for the majesty of God and disregard for the beauty of their own being -- a divinely endowed creation -- by the destructive-and-disruptive, wilful disobedience of sin, emanating from Satan’s own hatred of both God and man.

Jesus, the good shepherd was also characterised by His compassion, e.g. on the Five Thousand he fed after they had totally forgotten themselves listening to Jesus speaking to them about the Kingdom of God.  That compassion of Jesus also ‘pushed’ Him to revive the widow of Nain’s only son … possibly thinking about His own mother who would lose Him soon.  He also was moved with compassion to heal the man lying for 38 years waiting at the Pool of Siloam for a chance to be the first to enter the ‘moved’ healing waters.

His ’goodness’ also ‘pushed’ Jesus again  to love and admire the widow who, out of her poverty, put all that she had to live on into the Temple treasury  for love of God.   Notice there, dear People of God, that Jesus’ goodness as shepherd of His people was ordained above all to enabling, helping, leading this widow, and  His people, to love His Father, their God … and such heavenly love of God was not to be poisoned by sugar-coated human sympathy unable to appreciate the wondrous beauty of the widow’s gift … not of two small coins, but of total disregard of self before the beauty of God;  a gift given out of total love for God… not ‘excogitated’ by her own mind. but, as it were, wrung out of her whole being, by spontaneous and compelling, divinely-gifted, love.

One of Mother Church’s short prayers, is that we might worship God by imitating His  goodness; but in our modern world, ‘goodness’ is ‘done’ not out of a desire to imitate our heavenly Father, but out of a proud and worldly desire to show our own, human goodness.

Dear People of God, for us Catholics and Christians, ‘goodness’ is an expression of, fruit of, godliness, not of sentimentality.   God’s commands are not impossible for He ‘knows us and knows of what we are made.   But He also knows the beauty of the salvation Jesus has won for us, and the power of the Holy Spirit bestowed on us to lead and guide  us to that ultimate fulfilment.   You who are faithful disciples of Jesus know the goodness of God from your own life’s experience … these my words are nothing more than a reminder or gentle spur for your greater love of Him Who is our All.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year B, 2024

 

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

The two disciples whom Jesus had overtaken walking towards Emmaus, although their hearts had been burning within them as He opened the Scriptures to them, only finally recognized Him at the breaking of bread during a meal which they had invited Him to share with them.  On their receiving the bread He had blessed, He suddenly disappeared, whereupon they set off back to Jerusalem at once to inform the apostles that very hour.

Those same disciples, having reported their experience to the eleven apostles, and now joined by some others, were all gathered together secretly in that upper room for fear of the Jews, when Jesus appeared again and His first words (2 in Greek, 2 in Mother Church’s Latin version, 3 in our English version) were:

            Peace  to  you !

Those few words express the whole purpose of the Son of God becoming man for us!

However,  they still disbelieved for joy and were marvelling,

Jesus therefore set about proving to them the reality of His presence:

See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Touch Me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."

And then He topped that by asking for a snack!!

"Have you anything here to eat?"  They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.

The reality of His presence being thus settled, Jesus then got down to the main purpose of His presence with them.   First of all, He was not with them as He had been previously:

These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you.

In other words He was saying, “It is indeed I who am here with you now, but things are not exactly as  they were when I spoke those words to you a few days ago.”  Jesus had then been with them as any man is with his fellows; however, things had now changed – as the disciples well knew -- and Jesus was no longer present to them in that worldly way.

Let us now listen carefully to Him telling them just how different His new presence with them was, and learn just how He would make Himself present to all His future disciples.

First, He took great care to explain His presence in the O.T. Scriptures:

“Everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled."  Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

That was  the first part of Jesus’ purpose for coming: to open His disciples’ minds to understand the Scriptures!!

That presence of Jesus in the Scriptures might be called His first mode of presence to His Church after His Resurrection, because it begins with the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, as Jesus Himself said, ‘Moses wrote about Me’, and that presence will culminate in the soon-to-appear New Testament Scriptures about the historic Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, and the perennial Good News He proclaimed for our salvation.

Nevertheless, the supreme mode of Jesus’ real, Personal, presence for His future Church was made absolutely clear by the report brought by those two disciples who had been talking with the Risen Jesus on their way to Emmaus.  Their hearts and minds had been burning with joy and wonder as He explained the Scriptures, but it was not until the celebration of the Eucharist that they recognized Him:

            They told the Apostles how Jesus was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

That Eucharistic manner of Jesus’ risen-presence -- formally, and most solemnly, instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper with His Apostles -- now confirmed the veracity of the two Emmaus disciples’ report to the fearful Church in Jerusalem.

However, our Gospel reading today confirms the reality of yet another, a third, mode of His presence with-and-for His future Church:  the presence He had foretold with the following words recorded for us by St. Matthew (18:20):

Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them.  

Dear People of God, we can find Jesus, experience His presence, in varying ways: He is always present for us, for our understanding,  in the Old and New Testament Scriptures; He is also spiritually present for those assembled together to hear, learn from, and promote His Gospel; and supremely, He is sacramentally present in His Eucharistic- sacrifice-and-feast for those of faith, and Personally present for those who sacrifice themselves with Him at the Eucharist by their lives of devotion and commitment.

As Peter explained to those who had witnessed his cure of the lame man:

 And His (Jesu’s) Name -- by faith in His name -- has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given this man perfect health, in the presence of  you all.  (Acts 3:16)

Living by ‘faith in His name’ is the supremely authentic way of responding with personal  love to Jesus’ gracious presence in our individual lives, showing itself with a commitment of obedient and public witness to His word, as St. John told us in our second reading:

We know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.

Dear Friends in Christ, by signalling the various modes of His presence to-and-for His believers Jesus was preparing His Church for her great world-wide mission to proclaim:

            Repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name to all the nations.

The early Christians were still very closely bound up with their Jewish brethren in the synagogue; indeed, many still worshipped with them in the Temple and in the synagogue.

However, in our Gospel reading Jesus is preparing His Church for the future and it is essential that her proclamation be recognized as independent of her Jewish origins: those origins are never to be denied but they are not, henceforth, to be racially restrictive or spiritually definitive (Luke 24:47):

Repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all  nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.

2nd Sunday of Easter Year B, 2024

 

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

Jesus said to Thomas, "Have you believed because you have seen Me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.

What precisely was John’s thinking in that passage from today’s Gospel reading?

Having just reported Jesus as saying: ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed;’ he then himself added: ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book’.

It would seem that John is saying that he didn’t think it necessary to tell us ‘many other signs’  accomplished by Jesus in the presence His disciples because of Jesus’ words of solemn admonition to Thomas:

            Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,

But, if that is the case, why then, did Jesus perform so many signs?

John appears to be confessing that he, Thomas, and the other original disciples of Jesus, had been too weak in faith during Our Lord’s public ministry, and especially at His apprehension and crucifixion by the religious authorities, because they did not then have that key to a right understanding of the fulness of God’s revelation – Our Blessed Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension -- which is now ours through faith in Mother Church’s proclamation of Jesus.

In his first letter John again emphasizes  the supreme importance of resurrection-faith :

Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world … our faith. (1 John 5:4)

There he re-iterates his Gospel teaching, by saying that whoever is one of those praised by Jesus for believing without ‘seeing’, such a one has overcome the world; and his victory over the world is proved by the fact that he is spiritually alive and strong-in-Jesus without any requirement of worldly evidence.   Indeed, need for worldly corroboration could only signal a weakness in the spiritual life of a true Christian.

Now, why does John so emphatically praise such a faithful response to Jesus’ gospel?  In order to teach all of us just how sublime  is  our Catholic faith!  Because, ultimately, it is God -- the Father Himself -- Who introduces us to such faith, as John alone tells us in his Gospel (6:43-45):

Jesus answered the Jews, "Do not grumble among yourselves.  No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.  And I will raise him up on the last day.  It is written in the prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.

Worldly evidence cannot establish the spiritual realities of our Christian faith, it can only confirm faith’s basic rationality -- for example, we have greater historical testimony for Jesus than for Julius Caesar -- but the faithful, loving, embrace of Jesus’ Gospel can only come as a response to God’s inspiring grace enlightening our mind, moving our heart, guiding and confirming our will.

John is not against us using our natural intelligence to  grow in understanding of the Gospel of Jesus; on the contrary, he expressly tells us that is why he wrote his Gospel:

These (signs) are written that you may believe (that they may help you believe) that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

For St. John, the supreme function of the Gospel message is to provoke, awaken and promote our awareness of, our contact with and our response to, God Himself; and that contact, that response, though based essentially on the Gospel message, is not to be limited to or constrained by the written words of the Gospel.   The truth about Jesus, and indeed about God, is broader, wider, goes deeper and higher, is more intimately personal than the inspired but human words of the Gospels; that is why we Catholics accept the Tradition of the Church and acknowledge development in the doctrine of Faith; all, however, on the basis of, and never in contradiction to, the original, Apostolic Gospel proclamation.  And that is also why the Catholic Church has always recognized, revered and delighted in, her authentic saints as shining beacons and inspiring examples of that possibility, open to all her faithful children, of wondrous personal communion with God,  beginning here on earth and leading to its fulfilment through vision, as children of God in Jesus, in our heavenly home.

And so. dear  People of God, we have come to the essential characteristic of our Christian Faith.  It is not simply a faith to be learned, it is not a faith just to be obeyed; it is a faith to be learned, experienced, loved, and lived: not only in the sense of obeying its commands and fighting for its rights, but, above all, as a communion with the Father, in His Incarnate  Son our Lord and Saviour, by God’s great Gift, His most Holy Spirit.   Mother Church today is still called to prepare herself to be inspired by God, not indeed to write or proclaim a new revelation, but to understand yet more fully and appreciate still more deeply the revelation originally and finally given to her by God.

Mother Church is a mystical Church, where truth, rationally elucidated, and emotional awareness born of God’s beauty-perceived, though most gratefully appreciated are also necessarily subjected to the supreme authority of the Apostolic Proclamation, especially the transcendent words of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

All this is contained in those words of our Creed which say: ‘we believe in one, holy, CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC Church’.   Those words do not simply state that we believe the Catholic Church to have been founded by Jesus Christ, established on His Apostles, to be guided and preserved by His Spirit; they also mean that it is only in the Catholic Church -- only in her atmosphere, so to speak -- that we are able to breath fully as Christians, fully endowed and empowered to believe aright the fullness of truth  about God and His will for the salvation of mankind.

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

            The Spirit is the one that testifies, and the Spirit is truth.

Oh, you believing Catholics, rejoice in, and be grateful for, the treasure you have been given!  John, the Apostle whom Jesus loved particularly, regards us today, as -- in some measure -- better placed in relation to Jesus than he, John, was in the days of the Lord’s public ministry!!   Because your faith has been given to you at the instigation of the heavenly Father Himself Who has P/personally called you and introduced you to Jesus.  And that faith is being continually nourished and purified -- even to this very day, at this very hour – by the Holy Spirit of Truth and Love, in the womb of Mother Church.

Dear friends in Christ, you who are remnants -- faithful remnants -- of what was Western Christianity, you who are possibly being persecuted and killed, mocked and defamed, in the midst of a society become pagan; you who today are hearing strange things even in Mother Church herself, words and teachings that would try to conform her to modern society, you who remember those words of the Lord  (Matthew. 10:28):  

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna;

To all of you I say, let us all rejoice wholeheartedly in the Lord, for He is risen today, One of us, risen for the glory of the Father and for the salvation of all believers.

Easter Sunday, 2024

 

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

Today’s readings give directly, the Good News of Jesus’ glorious resurrection from the dead; and indirectly, a picture of the Church and her Scriptures that is both admirable and reassuring.

Let us look at the Gospel reading first, which tells us about the Apostles Peter and John, and the appearance of the tomb with its contents, along with a passing mention of Mary Magdalen and the previously opened (by whom??) entrance to the tomb.   However, all that we are told about what might have happened to Jesus is to be deduced from the following few words:

            As yet, they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise from the dead.

None of that is very surprising, People of God, to us who believe; because we know and appreciate that the Resurrection was a supernatural and transcendentally holy occurrence to serve God’s glory and mankind’s salvation, not an intriguingly mysterious event staged for the titillation of human curiosity.  Let us therefore turn our attention to what we are told directly about the Apostles Peter and (presumably) John, and indirectly about holy Mother Church, her Scriptures, and her proclamation of Jesus.

On hearing from Mary Magdalene about the empty tomb, Peter and the other disciple went to see for themselves:

Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there;  and the cloth that had covered His head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

The order of precedence is important because some have tried to use the following words of the Gospel account to the detriment of Peter:

Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.

They have carpingly picked up on the fact that John is there reported to have seen ‘and believed’, whereas Peter is only said to have seen.  This enhancing of John at Peter’s expense is shown in other ways by those who would say that John showed the greater courage at Jesus’ trial, by going into the High Priest’s house, whereas Peter remained fearfully outside.  And, of course, John – alone of the Apostles – stood by Jesus’ cross on Calvary with Mary.

None of this special pleading, however, detracts from Peter or disturbs the faithful who are well aware that John was a very young man who could lean on Jesus’ chest at the Supper, someone whom the Temple guards or Roman soldiers would not have regarded as a possible threat; Peter, on the other hand, was known to be strong Galilean fisherman who had a sword which he had already used in an attempt to protect Jesus.  As a result, the fully adult and manifestly strong ‘man-of-business’  was under far greater threat at the trial and thereafter, than John.  

There is, I believe, further thought to be given to the difference between Peter and John, between the fully mature man and the gentle youth, John.

Simon Peter came, and went into the tomb.  He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.  Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.

John – who would become the great mystic among the Apostles and author of the supremely spiritual Gospel – was youthfully impressed by the atmosphere of the tomb and what he saw there, especially the cloth -- that had been used out of respect for the deceased to prevent the bottom jaw of Jesus from sagging – which was carefully rolled up in its own place, separate from the other cloths.  Had he, John, ever seen one of those before?  It is not outlandish to guess that, as a youngster with mystic inclinations, John might have seen and appreciated much in that ‘removed and separately-positioned cloth’ which would later stir him to deeply consider the ‘never-to-be-silenced’ aspect of Jesus’ Gospel preaching in his own unique writings

Peter however, who -- as leader of the Apostles -- was also being  graced for that supremely responsible future role to be his, as head of the Church,  carefully weighed up what he found in the tomb.  He then went away, undoubtedly recalling what Jesus had said and done since he had known Him, and what the Jewish Scriptures had foretold about the coming Messiah.   Again and again he would have gone over all these considerations together with what he had seen in the empty tomb, praying so, so much, that he might appreciate how such insights would come together into the one whole, and essential, Apostolic truth about Jesus.

Thanks to our first reading today we have the result of Peter’s thinking and praying,  for there he proclaims the Good News, about Jesus, at the ‘command of God’ and in the name of the Church:

(Cornelius said) We are all here, in the presence of God, to hear all that you (Peter) have been commanded by the Lord. 

Peter then gave his summary of the Good News about Jesus:

He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.  And we are witnesses of all that He did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree. But God raised Him on the third day and caused Him to appear, not to all the people, but to us, who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead. And He commanded us   to preach to the people and testify that He is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins through His name.

There, People of God, you can appreciate the wonder of Jesus pictured and proclaimed by Mother Church through Peter, under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit: with the Resurrection of Jesus as the centre-piece --the absolutely essential centre-piece indeed -- but nevertheless, a piece that fits into, and binds together, an even more wonderful and coherent mosaic of divine truth: giving us a sublime presentation of God’s goodness, love, wisdom, and mercy for the whole of sinful mankind through all ages.

John, the contemplative, understood and revealed most beautiful and intimate truths of the relationship of love between Jesus and His Father, truths in which one can immerse ones-self – not to proudly investigate, but – to most humbly and gratefully admire, and hopefully imbibe some of the heavenly honey contained there. For the whole picture, however, in all its majestic embrace of God’s goodness and mankind’s needs and possibilities, look to Peter and the proclamation of Mother Church, passed down to us and interpreted for us today by St. Paul, the most providential link between the wisdom of the Old, and the revelation of the New, Testaments, and our own, special,  guide — as Doctor of the Nations – to a right understanding of the fulness of the Church’s doctrinal truth and heavenly spirituality:

If then you were raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ Is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

Good Friday, 2024

 

(Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1 – 19: 42)

Our first reading today began with the words:

            Behold, my servant shall act wisely.

And we are here today to learn from Jesus’ supreme wisdom, how to face up to the end of our days with love and commitment, for, as we were told in the second reading:

In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able save Him from death.

Our faith teaches us that the only wise way to lead one’s life, is, indeed, to “offer up prayers and petitions” with Jesus.  Today, however, lots of people want to just slip out of life easily and comfortably with assisted dying, drugs, or the oblivion of ignorance:

            The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." (Ps. 14:1)

We know, however, because the book of Proverbs assures us (14:16) that:

a fool is reckless and careless;

one who easily and quickly turns to evil ways and actions, actions that are but an outer manifestation of the inner folly of his thinking “There is no God”.  How could it be otherwise, because Scripture (cf. Job 1:8) assures us that only a truly wise person fears the LORD and shuns evil?

Such then is our philosophy of life as disciples of Jesus: to live wisely by seeking what is good, shunning what is evil, and offering up prayers and petitions to God.

However, it does sound somewhat strange when we recall the words of the second reading where it said:

During the days of Jesus' life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission.

How was He heard?? 

Jesus cried out in His troubles and He was not, it would appear at first glance, heard, because the cup, the chalice, of suffering was not taken away from Him.  Far from it: He was given the most atrocious cup of suffering to drink; that cup loathed and feared above all by even the cruel Romans who were aware and very appreciative of the world’s stock of tortures: Jesus’ cup was the cup, the chalice, the torment, of crucifixion.

But Jesus was wise and He did not let appearances or fear persuade Him that His Father had turned away from Him.  No!  He trusted all the more.  And this is what we have to learn, this is the elixir, the touchstone, of life: God’s wisdom is beyond our scrutiny, but God’s wisdom is infinite love, and is infinitely beautiful.

The Father was leading Jesus along ways He could not fathom, ways that threatened pain and promised darkness to His human eyes, but which were -- in the infinite wisdom of His Father’s plan -- ways of infinite love and unimaginable beauty.  Jesus trusted His Father, and in that He was, as the prophet foretold, infinitely wise.

Now that is indeed a difficult life question for many who merely glance at Christianity and then turn aside; but very that same question leads us who are disciples to the very fount of wisdom, as we were advised in the first reading:

            See (look carefully at, learn from) my servant acting wisely;

because if you learn aright from Him, you too, will, with Him and in Him:

Be raised, lifted up and highly exalted.

We, dear People of God, must learn this lesson from today’s liturgy: no matter how threatening the clouds of difficulty and trial may be in your life, if you are trying to walk according to God’s commandments, then His love will be infallibly enfolding and embracing you.  If you trust God, if you imitate Jesus who trusted His Father totally:

            Father, not my will but yours be done.  Into your hands I commit My spirit

(Luke 23:46) then, it will be the Father’s embrace that leads you on to what He has planned for you, something more beautiful than you could ever imagine:

It is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Maundy Thursday, 2024

 

This is a most holy and a most joyful night: it is a night of family feasting in grateful remembrance of God’s wondrous blessings.  It is indeed a family night because the Passover feast was from the times of Moses not a temple feast celebrated according to minute details of ritual, but a family gathering in the privacy of one’s home, a celebration with family and friends.

On returning home for this celebration and after prayer the head of the family gathering had to consider himself a prince, decorating his table with the best food and the most acceptable wines: in fact it was his duty to prepare sumptuously according to the measure of his possibilities.   We are told in the gospels that Jesus reclined at table with His disciples for the Last Supper as we call it today.  This was prescribed for faithful Jews;  they would have been seated for an ordinary meal, but for this special Passover meal they had to eat reclining, stretched out on one’s left side with head towards the food; it was a symbol of the liberty they were celebrating, the liberty God had won for His Chosen People by the wonders He worked in Egypt and throughout their desert wanderings to deliver them from slavery and bring them to the freedom they now enjoyed.  They had much to be grateful for and this was the night on which they gave whole-hearted expression to that gratitude in accordance with the Lord’s command.  Each generation of faithful Israelites was taught to consider that they themselves had been brought out of Egypt, saved from slavery, by the Lord; they were not celebrating something that happened in the past to their fathers only, no, they had to realize that they themselves had also been saved by the Lord.  The sages, the wise men, of Israel, when speaking of this night’s celebration, tell us that when it is celebrated in these dispositions the God of Israel, the Holy One Himself, leaves His normal, familiar, entourage of angels and of the righteous in the Garden of Eden, and comes, this night, to watch with delight the children of Israel here on earth rejoicing in the deliverance He won for them, gratefully singing His praises and loyally observing His commandments.

This was an occasion to which Jesus had really been looking forward:

And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (Luke 22:15)

We must be quite sure of this: the Last Supper was no sad occasion for saying “Good-bye” and our memorial of it too should be a festal gathering.  How on earth could Our Lord have “eagerly desired” to eat a sorrowful leave-taking meal with His disciples?  This was, on the contrary, something to be “eagerly desired”, something towards which His whole life’s work had been leading, something that would express the fulfilment of all His efforts and desires for His disciples and for us.  This was no leave-taking sorrowfully anticipating the end of a lovely relationship, it was the celebration and setting in motion of a new and wonderful future together:

And he said to them, “How eagerly I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

Why so eagerly?  Because this meal was both the symbol of, and the ultimate preparation for, that heavenly banquet celebrating the salvation brought by Jesus, freedom from sin and membership, as adopted children and members of Christ, in the family of God, where all can call Him “Father” and have a share in His eternal blessedness in the Son:

“Happy are those who are called to His Supper”.

That was the blessing the Son had come to bring to a humanity which had long been in darkness, had long been alienated from true happiness and life: a humanity created by God and for God, but deceived by Satan and enchained by sin; a humanity which stirred such compassion in the Father that He sent His only Son to share in and to save the weakness of human flesh by dying sinless and rising again; and in the power of His Resurrection pouring out His Holy Spirit upon those who would believe in His name, the Spirit who would form those disciples in the likeness of their Lord for the glory of the Father.

It was now so near to fulfilment; this was no time for sad reminiscences of the past but for ardent longings for what was to come: Jesus was indeed to suffer and to die but that was for a purpose which would surely come through His suffering and death.

Let us now just look at that suffering and death, which was so close at hand but which, Jesus refused to allow to deter Him:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:2)

It might have seemed that Jesus’ life was to be taken from Him by the superior power of death after having been betrayed and condemned by human treachery and hatred.  Had that been the case, then indeed, Jesus’ death would have been a tragedy and the Last Supper an occasion for agonizing farewells and deep-felt loss.  That was not what Jesus wanted and was not what Jesus was going to allow.  This meal and the morrow'’ crucifixion were to be occasions of deepest fulfilment, joy and love.  That is because at the Supper Jesus deliberately offered His coming crucifixion and death to His Father, because He would accept it and embrace it out of obedient love for His Father; it would not be the power of sin and death which would take away His life from Him, but rather, He was offering it, giving it, to His Father in obedience to His will and purpose for His Son made flesh.  Neither would that suffering and death be the tragic betrayal that Judas’ action would signify; rather that Passion and Death was dedicated and offered by Jesus now for our salvation, for love of sinful, suffering, mankind.  The whole tenor of tomorrow’s crucifixion was being pre-determined now, at this meal, by Jesus.  He would die out of obedient love for His Father, out of redeeming love for His disciples.

At the Passover Meal the Jews celebrated God’s wonders in Egypt which saved the nation from physical slavery; how much more should we, the new People of God, celebrate the wonder of God’s love for us in giving His Son for us?  How much more should we rejoice in the love which Jesus had and has for us; that love which led Him to endure the Cross and to scorn its shame so that He might enable us to have access, in Him, to our heavenly home:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Tonight Jesus rejoices that by dying He is going to destroy death and turn betrayal into supreme love; He rejoices that soon He will meet once again with His disciples in the supreme joy of a banquet shared among friends, for whom, in the meantime, He is going to leave this pledge and this food with the loving words: “do this in memory of Me”.

Palm Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians: 2:6-11; St. Mark:15:1-39)

In the Responsorial Psalm we heard that horrendous cry of Jesus:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

For a man like Jesus, that cry can only have been forced out of Him by unimaginably intense suffering.  For although Jesus was indeed a man like us in all things but sin,  nevertheless, we are ordinary people, and even the saints I have mentioned also began as ordinary people and only the gradual triumph of God’s grace over their sinful inclinations enabled them to became saintly people.  Jesus, on the other hand, began as man was loved and taught by Mary,  protected by Joseph, and grew up in constant favour with God and man and had been given the task of saving the whole of mankind, saints and sinners together: so just how deep were the sufferings of Jesus, sufferings which led Him to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Look at the psalm:

All who see Me mock Me:  He trusts in the Lord, let Him deliver Him.

It is hard to suffer unjust, ignorant, derision; derision from those whose life and actions could not stand any investigation at all: from those who have no principles, who will bend with every prevailing wind, and whose only courage is to join in with and enjoy the hounding and the violence of the mob.  But even those suffering in such circumstances, when they have been brought low, when their suffering and agony is visible to all, even those will usually hear some voices being raised on their behalf, will find some compassion and help from one or other a little more tender-hearted than the mob.  There were, indeed, some such more tender-hearted ones who witnessed Jesus’ agony.  But they were only tender-hearted, they had no sympathetic understanding of Jesus’ aims, why He was suffering thus: they only lamented like the women of Jerusalem as Jesus passed by carrying His Cross, or else, after the crucifixion, went home striking their breasts in sorrow as we are told.  None spoke up for Him.  And the persecutors laughed at His loneliness.  Laughed; but even worse, in their laughter they mocked His very thread of life:

          He trusts in the Lord, let Him rescue Him for He delights in Him.

How Jesus had trusted in the Lord, His Father!  Throughout His life He had trusted totally in His Father and He knew that His Father was totally trustworthy.  But now it seemed as if His life was closing and bringing about a totally opposite result to that which He wanted above all: He had wanted to lead the Jews to recognise the one true God they worshipped as the Father Whom Jesus alone knew and loved above all, and here were those to whom He had been sent mocking His Father, their God: “let Him save this fellow if this fellow is His friend”.

Compared to this agony the physical torment was as nothing, but physical torment it was: the cramps as He hung there; the horrible difficulty He had in breathing, continually struggling to raise His rib cage to find relief from the dreadful and continuous feeling of being about to be smothered to death.  The “holes in His hands and His feet” the blood pouring out and His terrible thirst.  Every one of His bones He could count!

We know that the psalm, which Jesus recited, went on:

          O Lord, do not be far off , O You my help, come quickly to My aid!

He did not give up trusting in His Father, and indeed the psalm closed with word of triumph:

I will tell of Your name to My brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise You. Give Him glory; revere Him, Israel’s sons.

The question becomes all the more pressing, however, granted that outcome: Why did Jesus have to suffer so dreadfully in order to complete His saving work, the work His most loving Father had sent Him to accomplish, the work of our salvation?

Jesus suffered to give us the opportunity to be free from sin.  Sin is such a horror and the extent and depth of that horror had to be shown to us. 

Think of some old person, even more try and picture an old person, better an old woman,  who has lived a bad life and one whose face now shows what sort of life she had been living for many years: the selfishness, the effects of degrading passions in her eyes and on her lips, the short temper and the vicious tongue, the greed and the hatred she has for her present state of old age with its weakness and suffering.  Look at such a person in your mind and then think of a picture of a young girl of three or four, how fresh and full of life, how simple and innocent, how charming and loving.  Such was the old woman years ago, and now, what a terrible transformation!  Sin had entered that young and beautiful person‘s life and turned her into a parody of a human being. Sin has entered and disfigured, and now seeks to ultimately destroy: destroy  by severing, through despair, the bond with God which had originally conferred such beauty to the child and had offered such hope for her future as a woman; destroy by finally robbing the body of the life which raises it above the dust.

Now that is how Jesus saw each and every one of us when He came into this world.  That is what made Him sweat blood in His agony in the Garden, that is why He hated sin so much: sin was trying to totally destroy what His Father had made so beautiful!

Through sin, suffering and death came into the world: suffering and death are the threats whereby the Devil holds the world in thrall.  Men and women will do anything to escape suffering  and death.  Modern techniques of torture can break down even the most determined and most courageous of people.  That is why, for example, spies are given the cyanide pill, or something else of that nature, to escape from the unsupportable.

Jesus had to feel abandonment, He had to suffer and to die as He did without yielding to despair, because He had to conquer for us the total threat of the devil: loss of God in the soul, suffering and death in the body.  Only by enduring and triumphing over the worst the devil could inflict could Jesus free us from fear of the devil and give us hope and power to follow Him on His way and with Him begin to free our world from the sin which weighs so heavily upon it today.

You were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.

You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.

(1 Corinthians 6.20, 7:23)

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.  He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. (1 Peter 1:18-21)