Palm Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14 – 23:56) 

We are gathered together here in solemn preparation for the Easter Passover of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ and, on hearing St. Luke’s account of our Lord’s Passion and Death we have been struck by the horror of His sufferings and by His wondrously patient endurance.  Embracing the Cross, on the left hand by His total commitment to us and, on the right hand by His absolute trust in and love for His Father, He was, ultimately Himself, resting in the peace and joy of total fulfilment as our Redeemer, and as the lovingly obedient, only-begotten, Son of the heavenly Father.

We need to be clear in our minds about the difference between emotion and devotion, for they are not the same, nor are they necessarily found together.  Emotions express and affect our natural feelings, whereas devotion is the sign and measure of our supernatural commitment; moreover, our emotions are largely instinctive and self-centred whereas devotion is subject to our will and centred on God.  Devotion benefits greatly when backed-up by the appropriate ‘power’ of emotions; however, devotion is not necessarily diminished by the absence of emotions; indeed, devotion can be at its greatest when deprived of them.  Emotion, alone, is of no worth, its function is to assist what is more worthy than itself; devotion, on the other hand, is always solely and supremely commendable before God

Dear People of God, we are sinners and God alone is holy.  All the good we have, or can have, is His gift to us.  Therefore, we must never be surprised at our own possible weariness, dryness, or lack of emotional feelings, even on occasions like today, for that is a true  picture of us, for we are, of ourselves, barren and fruitless.

As Catholic Christians, however, our attention and expectations are centred on God.  He is good, and He has given His own Son to save us from our sinfulness.  What we have to try to do is what the Suffering Servant, in the first reading, shows us:

Morning by morning He, the lord God, awakens; He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious, I turned not backwards.

Jesus, that is, woke up prepared to accept whatever His Father–of–Infinite-Wisdom–and-Love has planned for Him.   That seems simple enough for even us to understand, and beautiful enough for even us to imagine we would love to be able to accomplish it.  But oh! It is a course  that could and can only be lived out by One who was -- for love of His Father and for us -- totally self-less, patient beyond all measure, utterly committed to His calling as one sent by His Father, ONE  WHO NEVER EVER GRUMBLED against what His Father, in His infinite wisdom, knowledge, and love would or might ever, ever, ask of Him.

And that, indeed, is what we are, in fact, doing here today: we have put ourselves in Jesus’ way, waiting and listening in case He might possibly turn His gaze to see us and speak to us as He did to blind Bartimaeus, or even come to dwell a little with us as He did in the case of Zacchaeus.

However, we do most directly and earnestly beseech Him that whatever He does, He might lead us,  by His indwelling (thanks to Mother Church and Holy Mass) most Holy  Spirit, to greater and more sincere, more self-sacrificing, love for the heavenly Father, and thereby make us more worthy disciples of such a sublime Son Who put on human flesh that He might -- in our flesh and for us -- love the Father Who originally created our flesh as an expression of the divine goodness, bounty and beauty, of its Creator. 

5th Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

(Isaiah. 43:16-21; Phil. 3:8-14; John 8:1-11) 

Today’s gospel passage is famous, exemplifying, as it does, what is certainly the most popular, and perhaps the best-loved, aspect of Jesus: His compassionate understanding of our human weakness.   Let us learn therefore by taking a closer look at it.

After having ostentatiously proclaimed the charge against the adulterous woman, the scribes and Pharisees then asked Jesus to tell them the best way of dealing with her.  Jesus; by way of response, we are told He then:

Bent down and began to write on the ground with His finger.

Notice that in His compassion Jesus did not look the woman straight in the eye; He was not seeking to cause her further embarrassment.  He would look her in the eye later when offering her His saving grace and giving her a final warning.

The main purpose of the scribes and Pharisees, some of whom were experts of the Law,   was to ensnare Jesus in legal technicalities; He was their principal target, and that is why:

            When they continued asking Him, (Jesus) raised Himself up.

The woman was publicly humiliated; the scribes and Pharisees, on the other hand, were standing there, spiritually proud and secretly malicious: Jesus wanted to both knock down their pride and thwart their malice, and so, standing up and facing them, He said:

            He who is without sin among you, let him first throw a stone at her .

Those erstwhile accusers melted quietly, away one by one, until Jesus was finally left alone with the woman who was still standing for all to see, and to her He simply said:

            Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.

Now, dear  friends on Christ, what is for us the real meaning and significance of Jesus’ actions here?  Recall what the prophet Isaiah said in our first reading:

See, I am doing something new! for I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for My chosen people to drink, the people whom I formed for Myself, that they might announce My praise.

What would this NEW THING be? The scribes and Pharisees had recognized aright that the woman taken in adultery was a sinner.  What they did not understand, however, was that this woman’s ‘Law-lessness’, was a symptom of the sinfulness of the whole of God’s People, from which none of those present was exempt: she and they, ‘God’s chosen people’,  were still slaves, not, indeed, to Egypt, but to wilful SIN.  The scribes and Pharisees could not understand what the prophet Isaiah had foreseen: he had spoken of a new thing, a new act of God.  God’s new act would bring about a new creation, a new People of God able to sing a new song, expressing both the beauty and goodness of divine glory and human salvation.  How?  

Do you remember the Gospel reading just a fortnight ago?  There, Jesus told a parable about a landowner wanting to cut down an unfruitful tree whilst the gardener pleaded:

Sir, 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.

Jesus knew it would be Himself Who would fertilize the fruitless tree of God’s planting with His most Precious Blood; and that the orchard tree of the parable figured the whole root and stock of sinful Adam, represented today by the adulterous woman,  the self-righteous scribes and Pharisees, and the surrounding crowd of faithless onlookers. 

We are now in a position to understand the whole picture.  How could Jesus condemn this woman for whom He was soon to give His life on the Cross?  In fact, it would be easier to save her because she had just been made aware of and, we trust, ashamed of, her sinfulness.  Jesus was going to give all sinners, like her, one last chance -- such was the very purpose of His life, death, and Resurrection: He would loosen the bonds of sin by pouring out His own Most Precious Blood in sacrifice on Calvary.  His final words on both these occasions have the same significance:

It may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.

Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.

The scribes and Pharisees, refusing to recognize and unwilling to admit their own sinfulness, thereby made it much more difficult for Jesus to set them free. For their own sakes, therefore Jesus tried to make them realize and admit the truth about themselves:

Let the one among you who is without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her.

Many sinners today neither have nor want a clear understanding or true knowledge of Jesus and His teaching; they are stuffed up with pride at their supposed ‘human right’ to live as they see fit, and find delight in their lustful ignorance of God and the reality of sin.

But we, Catholics and Christians, most grateful disciples of Jesus, must never forget that  our God is a God of both Truth and Beauty; and that, as physical beauty is built upon the sure basis of a good bone structure, so spiritual beauty calls for a firm foundation of obedience to God’s will and Christian truth.  The Goodness and Holiness of God are likewise co-ordinated, for His love for us can only be fully realized by calling us upwards, out of our earthly condition, towards Himself as ‘sharers’ in the holiness of His Son.  He, in no way, intends to allow us to live for an earthly destiny: Jesus was sent, and He still intends, to lead His own, with Himself, heavenwards to their Father.   Remember what the prophet Isaiah in our first reading said:

I have formed My chosen people for Myself that they might announce My praise.

That is indeed our ultimate calling and privilege in Jesus: to sing the praises of God in heaven for all eternity, in ecstatic joy, blessed peace, and total fulfilment, with Jesus our  saviour, by His most Holy Spirit our most intimate Guide and ‘other self’, to Him Who is our Father.  And so that we ourselves might attain to the Resurrection from the dead,  and live, praising God for all eternity, Paul tells us:

Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

Let us also, aspiring to maturity in and with Christ, adopt this attitude with him, the  self-styled ‘unworthy Apostle’,  who nevertheless proved to be the greatest sufferer-for-Christ of them all. 

4th Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

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

For long, long years, after the ever-present threat of beatings at their place of work, the Israelite slaves found that the short nights at home with the provided ration of Egyptian food had been the sole, and most deeply consoling opportunity, for them to experience human peace and bodily rest. That partial satisfaction of their hunger together with a few snatched hours of sleep and family communion was the only joy to which they could aspire.  Long years of such slavery meant that those Israelite slaves found the thought of freedom decidedly un-attractive if it involved long struggle with as yet unknown dangers, and loss of regular food, to attain it.  Consequently, during the trials of their desert journey they were, at times, much tempted to return to captivity once again for its regular provision of life’s basic necessities.  Only after years of guiding, supporting, strengthening, by God on their way through the desert, did the Israelites learn to recognize their new-found freedom and appreciate their own personal human dignity; and only at the very end of that long journey to the Promised Land, was the Lord able to say to Joshua, those most beautiful words:

Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.

In our second reading St. Paul spoke of himself as an ’ambassador for Christ, imploring us to be reconciled to God’.   Now, the elder son in the Gospel parable had a somewhat similar office of reconciliation to fulfil with regard to his younger brother remaining in the family, but he, obviously, had been unable to prevent his younger brother claiming the money his father had planned to give him later on, in lustful dash for immediate pleasure in a distant  country where – unknown -- he could feel free from notice and responsibility.

The elder brother could only accept his brother’s return out of reverence for his father … but he seems to have had difficulty in accepting his father’s extreme joy at his younger son’s return home. Nevertheless, the old man remembered his words to his first-born -- ALL THAT I HAVE IS YOURS – so that, although the elder brother could not appreciate or share in, his father’s overflow  of paternal emotion, he ought – mindful of  his father’s firm remembrance, and his own resultant security -- to have made himself accept his brother’s return with respect because of the almost inexpressible joy it gave his father.      

The elder brother in Jesus’ parable seems, indeed, to have given good example to his younger brother in so far as he was always obedient and respectful to their father; and,  In that respect, he is something of a model for senior Catholics today who obey the commandments of God and Mother Church consistently enough, but who can never stir-up enough zeal to give  personal witness to Jesus and the heavenly Father, by showing and sharing their joy and delight, their peace and hope, in the Faith, with others,.

Many young people find such passionless obedience given, they think, more out of fear than love, unattractive; and being unable to fathom the difference between servile fear and the reverential fear, and filial love, of God, they compound their own lack of wisdom by totally ignoring what they cannot easily understand

Failure to delight in the Lord is usually a fault in the believer; don’t we have age-old popular songs telling us to ‘Count your blessings one by one’?  In fact, it can be truthfully said that, no ‘good’ can be suitably appreciated apart from the human instinctive practice of recalling, reviewing, and rejoicing over what has been gained or granted.  And the Psalmist (105:3-5) recalls this human, psychological, fact when he so urgently tells :

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. 

People of God, I suggest that, on this ‘Laetare Sunday’, you dedicate yourselves to spiritual rejoicing, By that I mean, that you should try, first of all, to look honestly at yourselves and recognize, remember, and delight in, the many blessings you have received over the years, and even begin to look to the promises given us concerning our future in Jesus.

Finally, may we – as the Psalmist said -- be God-graced so as to transfigure our old, private and hidden, obedience, into public confession of, and praise for, God’s great goodness,  since:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come!                        

3rd Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

(Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; St. Luke 13:2-9) 

Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel reading warrant serious attention because He chose them both seriously and deliberately; and they demand, considering the state of our blatantly sinful world, our most serious consideration:

            I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

We may learn how very seriously  Jesus viewed what would be such a travesty of God’s saving desire. by the fact that, He first of all doubled-up on His original account of the tragedy of the Galileans by recalling those Jews so surprisingly killed at Siloam, and then repeated emphatically His own words: IF YOU DO NOT REPENT, YOU WILL, ALL, PERISH AS THEY DID. 

PERISH AS THEY DID: People of God, notice that Jesus is saying that, for those of His hearers who remain unrepentant, death WILL come upon them just as unexpectedly and disastrously as it had befallen those Galileans and Judeans He recalled.

What does that word ‘repent’ mean in that context? 

Our first reading was all about Moses himself having to understand more deeply the sublime HOLINESS of God before speaking, in His name, to the enslaved Israelites; our second reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians was a warning against spiritual self-satisfaction, attending only to the formalities of Christian worship while ignoring the duties of Christian morality and witness in their daily living; as for Jesus in our Gospel passage, you have heard how He warned explicitly about the lack of repentance and humility before God, and of the dangers inherent in a fruitless Christian life:

He told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’  He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; (by My Gospel Truth, My  saving Death and life-bestowing Resurrection), it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.’”

Bearing all these aspects in mind, we can say that ‘repent’ means ‘a change of  mind’: a TURN-FROM careless, unthinking, evil ways, a TURN-TO serving, looking for and responding to, the God of all holiness and goodness.  Indeed, ‘repent’ can be regarded as being on a level with Jesus’ deliberately provocative warnings such as:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.

There, Jesus’ teaching is to be understood according to His other words such as: love your enemy; or, If your leg, arm, eye hinders you in God’s service, cut it off, pluck it out: Intentional exaggerations to emphasize a most important spiritual teaching:

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  (Matthew 10, 34-39)

Dear friends in Christ, ‘Repent’ can be accurately understood as the decisive effort a disciple needs to make in order to understand more, appreciate better, and more humbly try to adopt into his own style of life, all of those words of Jesus where He demands first place and supreme love for God and for Himself as Son sent by the Father, and our, His disciples', total death to selfishness.

We are all called to Our Lord, to Holy Mass each Sunday, as was Moses called in the first reading, Moses! Moses!  Moses answered, Here I am Lord as he walked towards the burning bush:

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

Moses had been drawing close to God from curiosity:

I must go turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned.

The ‘repentance’ God so urgently required of Moses was shown as he drew nearer to the bush:

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

We too should present ourselves at Sunday Mass with a sincerely repentant attitude; not necessarily  an emotional one, however; that is, a sincere intention to worship God as best we can; to try to  learn more of His glory and goodness, wisdom and beauty; to seek His will, His way forward for us, as we hear the Scriptures read and the homily delivered; and, above all,  we should be most intent and committed in offering Jesus’ self-sacrifice of love through the ministry of His priest: most humbly  joining our own sacrifice-of-self with that of Jesus, to His Father, for the praise and glory of His most holy Name.

Finally, it is most desirable for us to leave Holy Mass not only with a repentant and grateful heart, but also with a certain awareness of how we can make progress in our efforts both to please, and draw ever closer to, the God and Father Who so loves us.

Saint Paul gave us such advice adapted to our every-day living:

DO NOT GRUMBLE; You are trying to put yourself into God’s hands; God is now --- if you will let Him -- arranging your life; learn by patiently, consistently, persistently,  trying to do His will as best you see it in those unexpected – but not infrequent -- times of apparent ‘nothing-ness’ or perplexity;  and, whoever thinks he is standing secure, take care not to fall.

Do you fear that all these warnings might make life burdensome and tiring for you?  Dear friends in Christ, His warnings are not against you, they are to protect you, and they are covered in the saving, fertilizing, blood of Jesus, so that they may:

           Cultivate and fertilize (your souls) that (they) may bear fruit for the future.

Rescue us and lead us into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey,

our very homeland, where the Father is waiting to embrace us as did the all-forgiving father in Jesus’ parable:

 This son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ (Luke 15:20–24)

The ‘boy’ had suitably repented …. so may we all do likewise, in Jesus, by His most Holy Spirit, before the Father.

2nd Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

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

In today’s Gospel reading, God the Father -- speaking from a cloud -- told the disciples Peter, James and John:

          This is My Son. My Chosen One; listen to Him!

There was to be no heavenly – mysterious and potentially terrifying -- voice from a cloud addressing the new Israel, but the earthly words of Jesus alone would be all that could be desired or would be needed. 

There, indeed, we have the first of all commandments for Christians, a command which Jesus Himself confirmed:

If you love Me, keep My commandments. (John 14:15)

But there is more in the Father’s words beside the commandment to ‘hear’ Jesus; there is also a most intimately Personal invitation or call – This is My chosen, My beloved, Son, hear Him – to hear Him in such a way as to learn to love Him as well as to obey Him; the implication being that the only true knowledge of Jesus (‘hear Him’) is that which results, fulfils itself, in love for Him.

Our ‘Father’ in faith (God’s gift) was and is Abraham, our ‘Mother’ is Mary (Jesus’ gift) immaculate in faith and body.

Abram (willing to sacrifice his own beloved son at Gods command) put his faith in the Lord, Who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

Described by St. Paul as one whose ‘citizenship is in heaven’, Abram was subsequently named Abraham and, as befitting our Christian awareness of him as our ‘father in faith’, he lived St. Paul’s exhortation in today’s second reading, in the most exemplary manner:

          Stand firm in the Lord.

People of God, let us closely observe and carefully imitate both Abraham and Mary.  Yes indeed, let us keep our eyes firmly on Abraham whose admirable faith in God was  confirmed by the Lord’s mysterious and fiery self-manifestation exemplifying His acceptance of Abraham’s sacrifice; let us keep our eyes even more firmly fixed on Mary, whose supreme faith in God’s promise was confirmed both by the beautiful mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation brought about in her womb, and by the consummate mystery of the His Passion, Death, and Resurrection given us for our confirmation and constant growth in the faith we have received from God the Father Who first drew us to Jesus.

Today, God renews His choice of us by calling us anew to ‘hear’ His Son -- Who speaks clearly and surely to us in and through His Church -- and on hearing Him, to love Him by His Spirit, now gifted us in Mother Church by God for that very purpose, that we might in some measure become consumed with the Father’s own love for His Son.  Only in the fulness of an authentic Divinely-Human Faith is the Christian Way able to communicate its awareness of, and response to, the fulness of Divine Goodness in Jesus.  Therefore our Catholic – original and universal experience of Christianity -- is founded on literally (humanly) unimaginable promises and mysteries which are literally (humanly) unfathomable.   There, indeed, lies an inescapable tension, but it is one designed not for our destruction but for an ever-continuing and harmonious development of all our human capabilities originally given us as the ‘image and likeness of God.

8th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Eccles. 27:4-7; (Cor. 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45) 

Can a blind person lead a blind person?

It can happen that adults who have long thought of themselves, or been approvingly considered by others, to be practising Catholics -- when they get ‘bogged down’ in certain troubles, trials, and difficulties of life -- begin to say to themselves, ‘many Catholics that I know are doing this or that … surely it can’t be wrong if so many are doing it’.

They think in that way because they are not wanting -- as believing adults should want -- to find out what Our Lord would have them do, what His Church teaches, what their own conscience urges;  they want, above all, a sympathetic hearing for their troubles and for ‘sooner rather than later’ suggestions for a way out of their very worldly difficulties. 

As disciples of Jesus, however, in all our difficulties we need to learn from Him, that we might learn from, and become more like, more closely united with, Him:

Everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

Now it is indeed a ‘slap in the face’ for Our Lord when His supposed disciples – in their need -- turn to worldly and sinful human beings rather than to Himself Who died for them, or to His Church – the Body of which He is the Head -- or to whoever they think best knows and loves His Gospel and His Person. 

Too often advisors are chosen whose advice comes either from their own worldly experience and learning, or from that ‘wisdom’ which is acceptable to men and  has been described the Lord as an ‘abomination’; that is from advisors who are usurpers, Our Blessed Lord authoritatively declares, because He alone has been, and is sent to save human beings otherwise destined to death, as He said to His disciples:   

I am the true Vine you are the branches.  Unless you eat My (fruit), (that is) eat My flesh and drink My blood, you do not have life in you.

PEOPLE OF GOD, NEVER FORGET THAT THE WAY YOU TRY TO MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY IN THIS WORLD WILL DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT YOU FIND REAL HAPPINESS IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 

If, as a disciple of Christ, you want to know how best to walk along Jesus’ ways through your troubles, we are told by St. Luke (8:18-19) that one day when Jesus was walking the paths of Palestine,

             A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal                    life?"

The immediate response of Jesus, showing just how much it meant to Him, was:

Why do you call Me good?  No one is good-except God alone.

In other words, seek God’s advice in issues concerning serious sin or eternal life.

Jesus is now risen and is to be found at the right hand of the Father in heaven.  Jesus is the only good Person, good Teacher, indeed, Jesus alone is good, and we -- as true disciples of His – look to Mother Church as we seek only His guidance and teaching.

In Mother Church we seek not facts – whether doctrinal or historical – we seek grace from Jesus’ Personal “Gift” to His Church, His own most HOLY SPIRIT abiding in Mother Church, and bestowed on us through her sacraments; the Holy Spirit Himself Who, when welcomed into a heart seeking Jesus alone, breathes in us, like the good man described by Our Lord

(Who) brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart.

There is only one Sacred Heart, and from that heart of Jesus poured water to cleanse us and blood to revitalize us all.  Dear People of God, turn to Jesus in your need, draw close to His most  Sacred Heart and you will find real, not emotional, sympathy, light to give you understanding, and grace to help you do whatever is necessary to rise above your troubles.  You will experience what the prophet Isaiah (40:31) had foretold:

Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

7th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

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

Today’s Gospel tells us of Our Lord devoting Himself to teaching His disciples with the following essential teaching expressed in most carefully chosen words:
 
 I say to you who hear, Love your enemies do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
 
He went on to give various illustrations of the general trend of His thinking – not examples for direct imitation – before, finally, returning once again to His original words and the most succinct expression of the essence of His teaching:
 
Love your enemies, and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, … and you will be sons of the Most High.
 
St. Paul in the second reading set before us – as only he could -- the background for those divine words:
 
Just as we have born the image of the man of dust (sinful Adam) so shall also (sic!) bear the image of the man of heaven (Our Lord, Jesus Christ).
 
Going back hundreds of years into the millennia  of Israel’s preparation as People of God, our first reading gave us a most beautiful foreshadowing of Our Lord’s teaching, in the words of the very human David, a man struggling, in his very human weakness to follow the leading of his heavenly star;  a struggling man, deliberately chosen as such to serve in preparation for His Lord Who would Himself come on earth, in sublime fulfilment, as full and perfect Man:
 
As your life was precious this day in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord.
 
Notice that Our Lord spoke explicitly, “I say”, to those “Who hear”:
 
            LOVE your enemies, and DO GOOD expecting nothing (earthly) in return.
 
He speaks of what is divine, using divinely fashioned-and-intended words, to those who -- thanks to His saving grace, the “Gift” of His Most Holy Spirit -- will alone be able to  understand aright the intention of that divine command, will alone be able to learn from Him their Lord and Saviour, how to exercise divine love, here on earth:
 
            LOVE  even your enemies, and DO GOOD expecting nothing (from men).
 
Dear friends in Jesus, can anyone -- seeing our world today, hearing those claiming to be its leading, i.e. most powerful, representatives -- fail to SEE, HEAR, and ACKNOWLEDGE, the hypocrisy and  devilish pride of modern disbelief which, though denying Christ as Saviour, ‘religiously’ prepares’ -- each Christmas and Easter -- gift’s for those innocents still being born in its midst; a pride which “oh so boldly” promises to bring peace and fulfilment to those older ones whose faithlessness is leaving them -- however learned and cultured -- upon the shores of modern worldly experience like whales which have followed currents of deceit, falsehood and pride to a ‘dragged-out’ death,  and the horror of cultural corruption.   

6th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

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

Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. 

Raising His eyes towards His disciples Jesus said; Blessed are you who are poor, you who are hungry now, who weep now.  Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude, and revile you, and spurn your name as evil’ on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice, your reward is be great in heaven.

Dear friends in Christ, Our Lords words were for all time, but those final words are most closely expressive of our present Christian experience.

First of all, we should appreciate that Jesus curses no one, He nevertheless does most authoritatively declare that whosoever trusts in man, and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord, is cursed, has indeed cursed him(her)self.  That is the great danger for all who, denying Jesus as Lord, trust in the goodness they themselves, and many others like them, are doing for sufferers every day.  There is no Satan they say, no evil force at work among men, the only evil is the suffering they see and want to remedy, in the only ways they approve of or understand.

Raising His eyes towards His disciples Jesus said, blessed are you:

Poor, who look to God your loving Father and Jesus, your Saviour and Redeemer, to help you work His will, bring-about His Goodness in this world, by the grace of His most Holy Spirit, bestowed on you by Mother Church’s sacraments in order that precisely such blessings may be bestowed on our arid word, full of tempestuous words and ever-deeper, and secret, offence, anger, and even hatred.

You who are hungry, weep now, because you cannot delight in the sinful pleasures that delight our world today, because the world’s evils are ever-increasing through its wilful following of blind guides.

Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude, and revile you, and spurn your name as evil’ on account of the Son of Man.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ if you cannot delight in the world, if you will not allow yourself to rejoice with the world, you are well on the way to being hated, excluded, and reviled; for the world does not want any memories of better, disciplined, ways of loving obedience for and with the One who is in all, above all, and through all; the One who thus is with us and can love us in ways that are as numerous as there are individuals capable of responding to such love.

All such delights in the One above all, are to be received only in and through Jesus Christ Our Lord and Saviour, the only-begotten and most beloved Son who came into our world because of His Divine Love for His Father,  a love He wished to spread to all humankind for their individual human happiness and fulfilment; and for their divine fellowship as members of the Father’s long-loved, long-sought for, and fully to be embraced family, as His adoptive sons and daughters in Jesus, whose members they all are.   

5th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

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

Our Gospel today details the wonderful effect Jesus’ divinely human Personality had on a surprisingly humble man of outstanding character and enormous potential.  

Jesus was wanting to instruct the people who had gathered by the lake of Gennesaret to hear Him and He was evidently having difficulty – for the crowd was so big that He could not be seen by many of those gathered around Him, and only a very small minority could directly hear Him.  Therefore, looking round:

Jesus saw two boats by the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

The fishermen -- tired after a whole night’s fishing -- were not interested in listening to this travelling preacher; for, on leaving their boats, they had separated themselves somewhat from the crowd so that they might be able to  spread out their fishing nets and set about the work of washing them clean.

Simon, leader of the fishing partnership, was, however, encouraged to give at least some attention to Jesus, because, being, as it were, smothered by the crowds gathering around Him, Jesus ;

Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, asked him to put out a little from the land.  And He sat down and taught the people from the boat.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the Galileans were more interested in the character – ‘what sort of bloke is he?’ – of new-comers, rather than, as in Judea and, above all, in Jerusalem, ‘what does he think about this or that question?’

Simon, after having seen and heard something of Jesus’ dealings with the crowd which was exceptionally large for Capernaum, had now -- along with his brother Andrew -- to  leave the bulk of the net-washing-and-mending so that they might take Jesus in Peter’s boat a little way into the waters of the lake, where He could at least be seen by almost everybody and heard by those nearest the boat, who then had the duty to pass Jesus’ words backwards to those out of direct hearing.

As for Simon himself, however, although still able to clean some nets with his brother in their boat, he gradually became interested by what he could not avoid hearing, and he began to give more direct attention to what Jesus was teaching the crowd from his boat.  Jesus’ wisdom – overheard, in that way -- made a deep impression on Simon, for it seemed to him that Jesus’ words did not just give expression to the thoughts of His mind, but they seemed to come from His heart and indeed from His very soul as He told the people His ‘Good News’ about Israel’s God now being revealed as Father.

Simon was ‘a big man’ in many respects, and the impression Jesus’ words,  and the ‘Good News’ He  proclaimed,  was such that, having once penetrated the rocky surface of Peter’s outer sensibilities, Jesus’ message found material – all of it naturally combustive, of course, and even explosive! – that was ideally suited for total love and commitment if fully inflamed and purposefully guided.   

When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

Now Simon was a professional fisherman, as was his brother Andrew, their livelihood depended upon their skills as fishermen; Jesus was clearly not a fisherman by trade and yet He was telling Peter to move out to deeper water and let down his nets.  Simon, Andrew, and their whole local team had been fishing all night and had caught nothing; and now it was bright daylight and quite unsuited to fishing  -- fish don’t normally swim joyfully into nets they can clearly see! -- and here was this man telling Simon to go further out from shore and take a catch!

Simon answered, "Master, (notice the reverence Jesus’ Personality and teaching had awakened in Simon’s attitude!!) we toiled all night and took nothing! But at Your word I will let down the nets."

There might have been a very slight touch of irritation in those words, but there was most certainly a large, indeed great, measure of respect.   Simon was indeed a strong, even forceful character, but he was not a proud man … and there in that boat, having been listening to the words of Jesus, he had come to recognize something mysteriously different about Jesus which led him, Peter, to reply with words beginning to witness fissures – nay, serious leaks -- in the hitherto rock-hard outer surface of  Galilee’s master ‘fisher-and-business-man’:

            Master, at you word I will let down the net.

Yes, Simon was humble in the presence of this one Man of strange dignity and superior authority!

Later on, being known as Peter, he would give full expression to those early intuitions, vague feelings, by those world-famous words:

            YOU ARE THE CHRIST, the Son of the living God!

For the present, however, his still vague feelings were about to be totally shattered before being deepened and confirmed, when taking up the nets, for he and his brother found:

            A large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

Peter and Andrew had to call to their partners in the other boat to come and help:

            And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

This was indeed most wonderful: a partnership of professional fisherman having failed to catch anything overnight were being literally swamped by a daylight catch made thanks to a local rabbi!!  However, there was no dancing from delight at such success from Simon; for his heart and mind had now become too big to be filled with thoughts of  fish, profit or prestige, for he had become -- irrevocably, in the depths of his own most self-secure heart -- a disciple of this new Galilean, proclaiming the only, truly GOOD NEWS!!

There was something yet more strange to come however., for:

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"

Notice how, for the first time Simon has been called Peter, ‘Simon Peter saw it’.  Simon the son of Jonah at this point becomes Peter the disciple of Jesus.  Now we begin to glimpse something of the character of the man whom Jesus would make into His foremost disciple, now we begin to catch sight of the essential Peter and also to understand what was that mysterious aura he had sensed about Jesus as he had listened to Him speaking from his boat to the people on the lake shore.  It was indeed an aura of authority which had led Simon to obediently let out his nets again; but that was not all; no, there was pre-eminently, an aura of holiness which now compelled Peter, or rather, drew him, to:

Fall down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"

Now we can recognize something of the significance of this Gospel event.  If Jesus had difficulty speaking to a crowd by the shores of Gennesaret, how would He speak to all men of all times and places?  He would need a boat, a platform, some means whereby He could address, save, and guide, the whole of mankind, and that platform, that boat was to be His Church.  Jesus would choose Peter to be the head of His future Church because His Father had brought this fisherman to Jesus’ attention, he had generously served the needs of Jesus’ preaching, and what was far more, he had shown himself to have been led to an  awareness of and responsiveness to Jesus that was more than natural; here was a future leader, big-hearted on the human level but humble before God; a man able to be guided by the Spirit of Jesus, and one who – thanks to this day’s events -- would never fail  to  recall and recognize his own complete dependence on Jesus for fruitful harvesting, for plentiful fishing.

Let us now have a final look at all three readings today from this point of view.

Peter, Paul and Isaiah, three wonderful men of God, three specially chosen to proclaim the glory of God once they had learned humility before God: Isaiah had a vision of God in heaven, Peter recognized the holiness of God in the mystery of Jesus, Paul was led to acknowledge the holiness of the Church, which would come to be known as the Body of Christ because Jesus was and is absolutely vital to her very being.

My dear People, when we are gathered here as Church, with Jesus in our midst, in the Eucharist and by His Spirit we are, indeed, in the presence of God,  Do we respond to Him, in the first place, with humility, with an awareness of His supreme holiness and our own sinfulness,  or are will still blind or hard-hearted … chatting with our neighbour, watching others around us, aware of so many people but not of God?  Let our worship today be such as to lead us to ever greater,  deeper, and more sincere, humility, so that God Who sent Isaiah, Peter and Paul to proclaim His glory, and to prepare the way for the coming of His Kingdom, may also be able to use us for His glory, for the exaltation of Mother Church in our world today, and for our own salvation.   

Presentation of Our Lord Year C, 2025

 

(Mal. 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40) 

There are a few things we should note about St. Luke’s gospel account of Mary and Joseph bringing the Child Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem.  First of all, since it was not necessary for them to bring the Child to the Temple, why did they choose to do so?  Secondly, Luke tells us:

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,” 

However, the Law prescribes that the firstborn of man should be ‘redeemed’, not ‘presented’ 

You shall dedicate to the LORD every newborn that opens the womb, and every first- born male of your animals will belong to the LORD.  Every human firstborn of your sons you must redeem. (Exodus 13:12-13)

The price of redemption was five Temple shekels, the money going towards the upkeep of the Temple worship and the support of the priests of Levi who had no land in Israel in order to be totally devoted to the worship of the Lord.  Since no redemption price was paid for Jesus -- only the sacrificial offering of a pair of turtle doves for Mary’s purification according to the Law -- there is no question of Mary’s first-born Son being bought back, redeemed, as the Law laid down, and that is why Luke changed the wording of the Law and spoke of Mary and Joseph presenting the infant Jesus to the Lord.   That very presentation -- doing something unique for this unique Gift from God -- was the reason for their bringing the Child to the Temple in Jerusalem: in the mind of Mary there was no question of ‘redeeming’ -- buying Him back -- from God, on the contrary, in acknowledgement of His ‘gifting’ to her (and to us) by God, Mary was, of her own initiative and  free will, bringing Him to God’s Temple in order in order to present Him to His Father: to offer Him along with the childhood-long years of her own worshipful service of maternal love, cherishing, and teaching, to present Him to His Father, God, for God‘s purposes on earth:

They took Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer (for Mary’s purification) the sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” in accordance with the dictate of the law of the Lord.

Just as Samuel had been given to the Lord in the old Temple of Shiloh by his mother Hannah in thanksgiving that the opprobrium of childlessness had been taken from her, so here Jesus is presented by Mary to the Lord in the Temple at Jerusalem.   He was consecrated to the Father before His birth on earth and in His birth; here His Mother acknowledges God’s claim on her human Son and, yielding her own claims upon Him, presents Him to His Father in the Temple, with a sense of gratitude immeasurably greater than that of Hannah (Lk:46-48):

Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.   For He has looked upon His handmaid’s lowliness.”

See how wonderfully that holy Mother co-operates with her Son in the work of our salvation!  At this, her very first opportunity, Mary does what her Son cannot yet Himself physically do: for, graciously aware of the depths of her own lowliness she offers Him – out of heart-felt personal gratitude and with wondrous sensitivity to the working of the Spirit of the Son within her -- to His Father of Whom we are told in the letter to the Hebrews (10: 5-7):

For this reason, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in.  Then I said, ‘As is written of Me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.’”

Here Mary is shown as the perfect realization of the ‘daughter of Sion’, following in the steps of Abraham, who, when leading his son Isaac on the way to sacrifice on Mount Zion, said:

            My son, God will provide for Himself the sheep for the burnt offering. (Gen. 22:8)

Abraham became the father of Israel and indeed our father in faith because he had been willing and prepared to sacrifice his only, beloved, son Isaac, in obedience to God.  However, at the point of sacrifice, the Lord intervened and said:

Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.  (Genesis 22:12)

Isaac was not the lamb of God, nor was Abraham‘s obedient -- though heavy -- heart a full foreshadowing of the future.  For, when the old covenant was come to its fulfilment, Mary, the supreme daughter of Abraham was offering, presenting, her Son entirely to God His Father with a most wonderfully grateful and rejoicing heart:

Mary said: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.

The New Covenant was at hand, and this Presentation of the Infant Jesus is the very first fully, purely, Christian act, Christian sacrificial act … Mary offering her Son to His Father for His, indeed soon to be, both Their, purpose(s).  As the annotators of the of ‘The Jewish Annotated New Testament’ make perfectly clear, “no law prescribes this presentation, presenting children at the Temple is not a recognized custom”. 

It is true that Mary did not as yet know what would be asked of her: she did not foresee the Crucifixion.  Nevertheless, her offering to God was given in total faith and sincerity, complete trust and self-abandonment.  Therefore, having presented Him to the Lord, she was not called to leave Him in the Temple as Hannah had done with Samuel.  Samuel had been left with Eli the high priest; here, there was none worthy to bring up Jesus save Mary His immaculate mother, and therefore He went back with her to Nazareth and began learning, as we are told:

To grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; with the grace of God upon Him.

God accepted at the Presentation Mary’s offering of her Son, as an implicitly sacrificial, TOTALLY CHRISTIAN offering made under the supreme guidance and sublime inspiration of the Spirit of her Son, the Holy Spirit of Truth and of Love, already working fully, freely, and unrestrainedly, in her.  In the subsequent hidden years of life in Nazareth she helped her Son become a man before God:

He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest. (Hebrews 2:17)

Unbeknown to Mary, the Spirit of her Son was already leading her, preparing her, for the time when He would leave her, first of all to enter upon His public mission, and when, finally, He would be taken from her in the Crucifixion.  This preparation began to be revealed to Mary almost immediately after she had presented her Son in the Temple, for the prophet Simeon came upon the scene and said to her:

Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed -- and a sword will pierce even your own soul -- to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

And we can glimpse how gently God would lead her over the years ahead, for, lest those words of Simeon should hang around in her memory like some small but threatening cloud on the distant horizon, the prophetess Anna came shortly after Simeon with a paean of praise for the Child and for God:

She began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of (the Child) to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

It was with such mysterious words of wonder, joy, and hope that Mary and Joseph:

            returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth.

The work of our redemption was beginning with God and man, One in Jesus; and with Mary co-operating in wondrous responsiveness to the Spirit, both in the birth, and now in the Presentation, of her Son.  This presentation of her Son by Mary was no blind gesture, rather it was the occasion when she seized with both hands a blessing offered her by God, affirming it most solemnly in the Temple at Jerusalem; and then, over the subsequent thirty years,  confirming it by her daily, humble, faith and prayerful trust under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, as He prepared her to be able to fully and finally live out the offering she had so spontaneously and whole-heartedly made in the Temple.

It is frequently like that with us, People of God.  We can be called, invited, to respond to God with decisive self-commitment, and that moment is not the time to want to think out, anticipate and foresee, all that might result from such an invitation.   God wants our response of humble trust and total commitment; for He Himself will enable us to carry out what He has encouraged and invited us to take on.  Mary was totally pure, and that does not simply mean sin-less, it also means totally self-less before God, totally unselfish in her response to His will … God often wants to find something of that purity in us her children too.