19th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-12; Luke 12:32-48)

 

The deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by Your people.  For by the same means with which You punished our enemies You called us to Yourself and glorified us.  (Wisdom 18:7-9)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, those words, from the OT book of Wisdom, which refer originally to God’s destruction of the pursuing Egyptian army in the Red Sea in order to bring His People out of slavery, find a two-fold relevance and fulfilment in the New Testament: first of all, when Jesus broke Satan’s enslaving power over us through the allurement of sin and the threat of death, by His suffering, death, and resurrection:

            You punished our enemies

and then by His ascension, went -- in the glory of the Spirit -- to His Father in heaven, where He now sits as Man in human flesh at the right hand of the Father:

            and (thereby) glorified us.

Those two distinct events of Jesus’ life, His suffering for us beginning with His agony in the  garden, and  His ascension into heaven in His glorified humanity -- are made active and effective in our lives -- become SALVATION for us -- through faith in Jesus.

This gift of new life with its promise of eternal glory is, so to speak, the overarching cover, the shielding and sheltering protection, of our lives as children of  God, enabling each of us to grow to individual, personal, maturity in Jesus by the Gift of Jesus’ Holy Spirit, our Helper in and throughout our lives.

A few words from the second reading explain why faith is so supremely important for our life in Christ:

      Faith is the substance of things hoped for.

Our Christian hope is for those heavenly realities and that heavenly fulfilment put before us by Jesus, in promises that resonate to the furthest depths of our being as  humans uniquely made in the image and likeness of God.  They cannot be apprehended by us here and now because they transcend us; but, in the ultimate realization of God’s providential plan, they will be our sublime fulfilment in the glory of Jesus.   Such blessings hoped for from God, according to the promise of the Scriptures, can, however, begin to be appropriated by us, here and now, through faith in Jesus, by the working of His most Holy Spirit in us, through the ministry of Mother Church.  We can, indeed, begin here and now, to truly appropriate and gradually appreciate such heavenly realities as we begin to really apprehend something of the fulfilment they offer through faith, which, as St.  Paul says:  is the substance of things hoped for.

We must turn to the Gospel, however, to learn an aspect of supreme importance within this broad outline of our salvation.  Jesus there tells His disciples:

Provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.

Now the reason why He tells them to provide a treasure for themselves in heaven is because, as He went on to explain:

      Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Because He is seeking to draw us, in Himself, to heaven where there is no gold or silver, no tight purses or secure safes, He draws attention to our heart -- the seat of human affection and attachment – for which personal love alone is the supreme and exclusive treasure. 

Likewise, when He advises His disciples to:

            Sell what you have and give alms,

He is not really interested in seeing us reduced to poverty: but He does want us to open our hearts, unreservedly and fully, to receive His Father’s gift of the Kingdom:

            It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom;

He wants us to unreservedly love the promise and the prospect of heaven where, He assures us, our dearest and most precious treasure -- our heart’s treasure -- awaits us.

And so we have this outline of our salvation:

The deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by Your people.  For by the same means with which You punished our enemies You called us to Yourself and glorified us. 

By the glorious Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, and through our faith in Him, God has called us to Himself.  And we have learnt, broadly speaking, how that glorious calling is to be realised: through the prospect and promises of hope, faith leads us to open our minds, hearts, and lives to the ultimate inspiration of divine charity.  That is the way we are to finally attain ‘our treasure’, our hope, or, as Jesus put it earlier, ‘the Kingdom of God’:

Seek the kingdom of God, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Jesus spoke repeatedly of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven; St. Paul, however, tells us that the Kingdom of God is also the Kingdom of the Son:

He (the Father) has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. (Colossians 1:13-14)

Why does Paul speak of the Kingdom of the Son whereas Jesus always spoke of the Kingdom of God?

First of all Paul speaks in this way because, ultimately, Jesus Himself is the Kingdom of God present in our world and in our lives.

And secondly, because the Kingdom of the Son, of which St. Paul speaks, will ultimately to be handed over to the Father, and in that way become the Kingdom of God, the Father.  Listen to Paul’s explanation:

In Christ all shall be made alive, but each one in his own order: Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming.  Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.  For He (Christ) must reign till He (God the Father) has put all enemies under His feet.  The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. … Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him (God the Father) who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:22-28)

Jesus is the load-stone drawing the affection of our hearts to God by the fact that He is God-in-our human-flesh.  Like loves like: and companionship in human flesh – gifted by Mary our Mother -- enables us to respond most deeply to Him Who is God, yet become One-like-us.  Our response to His promises, His example, and His call; our faith in Him and our human love for Him; will gently open our hearts to the working of His Spirit Who will then form us gradually in His divine likeness until we come to love God for His divine beauty and goodness.

From this we can see that our personal treasure will ultimately be the glorious Jesus when He returns to make the final proclamation and manifestation of His eternal glory, and to hand all that is His over to the Father, so that He, the Father, might be ‘All in all’.

Now we can, as it were, ‘pull all the strings together’ in order to get a complete picture, a full understanding.

‘Treasure in heaven’ is essential, as Jesus Himself said, if our hearts are to be fully, totally attached to heaven.  Faith guides us towards the attainment of our heavenly hope, but faith is commitment to the teaching of Jesus directly, and only mediately commitment to the Person of Jesus.  Love, on the other hand, being, most accurately, the gift of divine charity, commits our whole being immediately, directly, to the very Person of Jesus.  This personal commitment to Jesus – mediated, I say, by faith in His teaching, is directly attained through our sharing in the gift of divine charity, for Jesus is Himself the Kingdom for us.  And this love -- being, as I said, a heavenly gift, indeed the Gift of the Spirit -- transcends our present time and this visible world, and takes us into the eternity of God Himself where Jesus will ultimately, as we have heard, hand over His  Kingdom to the Father and lead us -- as members of His Body in and with Him -- to love, yes, to love divinely, the Father Himself, as Jesus would have us love Him; for the Father must become, as you heard, ‘All in all’.  

Faith is the ‘substance of things hoped for’; by our faith, we can, by a life of discipleship on earth, already gain some experience of what will be our heavenly fellowship with Jesus, before the Father, in the Spirit.  That experience, that fellowship, that love of charity, can and should deepen within us throughout our life on earth, but that can only come about in Mother Church, through our faith in her proclamation of the Gospel, and by the grace of her sacraments, which bestow on us the Spirit of Love and Truth Who unites and binds together Father and Son. 

And then, for all those faithful sons and daughters of Mother Church who thus grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus our Saviour, the words of the Psalmist are most beautifully appropriate and consoling:

Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.  I will deliver him and honour him and show him My salvation. (Psalm 91:14-16)

18th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23.  Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11.  Luke 12:13-21)

Watching a news programme on the television a few years ago, I saw a picture of a Mosque in Birmingham filled with men worshipping.  Then, and even more now, you could go, to Christian churches, even to Catholic churches, and find them half empty.  Why is this?  Because so many Christians, too many Catholics, are not living their faith today: they are either living for the world, for its pleasures and advantages, or in fear of the world in its denial of God and criticism of the Faith.  The Muslims I then saw filling the mosque, on the other hand, were there, at that time, because they felt themselves to be a minority somewhat under threat, and so they were rallying together round the one thing that, in a somewhat alien country and historically Christian society, most distinguishes them from others and most unites them among themselves, that is their Muslim faith.  It was like that in Ireland over a hundred years ago when Irish men and women, under persecution and oppression, held firm by rallying together round their faith, their Catholic Faith,  which distinguished and sustained them in the face of their Protestant persecutors and British opponents.  The same phenomenon occurred in Poland when Catholic Poles were under atheistic Communist rule.  When oppression more or less ceased in both Ireland and Poland, then the practice of the Catholic faith also began to fall in fervour as men and women, more at ease with an  apparently friendly world, began to enjoy living in the world more than they rejoiced in the practice their faith: with the world an enemy, the faith was a lifeline; with the world apparently friendly, should the precepts of Catholic faith be allowed to disturb that mutual acceptance and the approval of surrounding society?

Today especially, even where Catholics still value their faith, too many are tempted to live at ease with the world in which the ruling society most assiduously claims itself to be doing GOOD, by doing whatever is acceptable to modern men and women, by promoting whatever assimilates the great majority of them into one … a process that used to be  known as finding the lowest common denominator, but which is now regarded as political correctness, enforceable by criminal law.

Those modern Catholic and Christian believers and practitioners of whom I speak do not openly or totally give in to such temptation, but are prepared to make serious concessions to it, and so, they begin to talk about the need to make our faith acceptable to and popular with, modern society where people claim to have a much greater knowledge of science and a much wider understanding of  non-Western cultures than their forebears possessed, and a much greater awareness of and hatred for, racism, colonialism, prejudice, etc. etc., indeed for whatever divides or distinguishes.   In this way some come to justify singular interpretations of the Faith, indeed they seem to feel it their vocational calling to do all they can: watering down difficult teaching and brushing aside unwanted rules, all in order to make their presentation of the Faith as attractive and as easy to understand as possible, for others whom they hope to thereby persuade to accept the Catholic way of life.  People will come to the Faith it is thought and said, if, but only if, they find us nice people not overburdened with troublesome principles; only if they find our message accommodating and comforting, and if the portals of our church are open wide,  welcoming and obstacle free, to all and sundry.

This is a most fundamental and insidious perversion of the Faith.  Jesus tells us quite categorically that it is the Father alone Who draws disciples to Him:

No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. (John 6:37)

The Father draws and gives to Jesus disciples who have come to know Him through the witness of Mother Church and her children, disciples who themselves make Jesus known by proclaiming His Truth and presenting His teaching to all who are sincerely seeking God and His salvation.  But, People of God, how could anyone come to love the authentic Jesus if His followers are intent, first and foremost, on presenting themselves as nice Jesus-people?  How can followers whose aim is to offer a popularly acceptable message, rightly proclaim the teaching of Jesus?  Their want to present their own version of the Gospel, a version adapted to modern ideas and current preferences, not the Good News of Jesus as given us in the Scriptures and proclaimed in the traditional teaching of the Church.    They do appear to be ashamed of Jesus and of His words in the face of the world!           

Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.   For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her other-in-law;

And that possible rejection of both Himself and of His teaching Jesus foresaw and most deliberately condemned it, by going on to say:

He who does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.  He who has found his life will lose it , and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.    (Matthew 10:34–39)

This state of affairs comes about because people all too easily think only in terms of this world, as if everything is to be decided here on earth according to human judgements and expectations; and therefore our readings today are providential, warning us, most explicitly, about this folly, by proclaiming that this world is not the be all and end all of life for a Christian or a Catholic:

Here is one who has laboured with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; and yet to another who has not laboured over it, he must leave property. This also is vanity and a great misfortune.

In fact, this world and our experience of it, is but mankind’s essential preparation for what is to come, a life of either eternal fulfilment or eternal loss:

Then Jesus told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.   He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’   And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”  But God said to him, 'You fool! This night your life will be demanded of you; and then the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?'

The currently widespread persuasion that the Good News of Jesus has to be subjected to our adaptation is an unacknowledged capitulation to modern society’s craven worship of popularity.  Therein is the root error: for popularity has neither role nor authority in matters of faith; indeed, at the best it is irrelevant, while potentially it is most harmful.

There are some disciples in the Church today who follow Pilate rather than Jesus:

Pilate therefore said to Him, "Are You a king then?" Jesus answered, "You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."  Pilate said to Him, "What is truth?" (John 18:37-38)

What is truth? Pilate doubted there was such a thing as truth.  Today, pseudo-disciples give the same thought a different twist: the only true proclamation of the Gospel is one that makes Jesus and His teaching popular, we must therefore study modern  attitudes and practices carefully and sympathetically, so as to be able to make suitable adaptations to the Gospel message that will enable it to win more widespread acceptance.

Now that can never be the authentic Christian, Catholic attitude; we only need to look at and listen to Our Blessed Lord once more to realize that:

Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.  But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him Who sent Me. (John 15:20-22)

Today we need to renew our trust in God and in Jesus our Lord and Saviour; we have to stir up more courage on the basis of our faith.  The original apostles, the original Christians who were called Catholics from the very beginning, did not cower before the world's criterion of popularity as so many do today; for example, the gentle, loving, Apostle John  (1 John 4:6) says quite bluntly:

We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

And they had this confidence and strength because they firmly believed what the infallible Faith taught them, as we heard in the second reading:

If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Think on what is above, not of what is on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory.

In other words, they looked forward to a heavenly, not an earthly, fulfilment, and, in order to attain that blessedness they proclaimed a Gospel of Truth, knowing that only divine truth can form a human being in the divine likeness:

The new self is being renewed for knowledge in the image of its Creator.

That very truth required them to preach what would be unpopular at times.  Indeed, the essence of the Gospel message is that we can only find salvation through the Cross of Jesus, Who died for our sins before rising again for our salvation:

(He) bore our sins in His own body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24).

Therefore, even in the early Church, there were those who wanted to preach a Gospel without the Cross, a popular Gospel instead of the Gospel of righteousness.  Of them, the Apostle Paul said with incisive clarity (1 Corinthians 1:18-19):

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." 

And again in his letter to the Galatians (5:11):

Brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offence of the cross has ceased.

People of God, in times of trial we must cling to Jesus all the more closely in Spirit and in Truth, for:

This is a faithful saying: if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we endure, we shall also reign with Him.  If we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.  (2 Timothy  2:11-13)

17th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13)

Our Gospel reading today is all about prayer: Jesus gave us what we call the "Lord’s Prayer", and then He told us a parable exhorting us to persevere in prayer.

I was very struck by those final words of His:

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"

How many people, in their prayers, ask to be given the Holy Spirit?  Surely, most who, in their prayer, ask to be given something, ask for a blessing suited to this world: health, food, success, comfort, strength, or whatever, for themselves or for those dear to them.  Now, it is clear from the prayer Jesus gave us that He does not disapprove of such requests: for He gave us words asking for bread, forgiveness, and protection; and He Himself, in His own personal prayer, frequently asked His Father to strengthen and guide Him.  So how is it then that He speaks, in the verse I have just quoted, as though the heavenly Father gives only the Holy Spirit, no matter what we might request?

We have here a wonderful example of the hidden riches of Holy Scripture!  We do pray for all sorts of blessings for ourselves and, as the example of Abraham encouraged us to do, also for others.  When, in such prayers, we pray according to the will of God, He hears our prayers and grants our requests: but He does this through the Holy Spirit, ever secretly at work in our lives and in our world. 

Even more important, however, is the implicit teaching contained in those words of Jesus: namely, that we can ask for nothing better than the gift of the Holy Spirit: and this is because He is, Personally, the "Gift of God" which means that He, the Holy Spirit, is the Gift-above-all the Father wants to give us, and Jesus wants us to receive; and therefore He is, indeed, the supreme Gift for which a disciple of Jesus can, and should, pray.

Let us try to understand why.

In the first reading we had the vague hint of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity - three Persons in one God – found in the furthest layers of the Old Testament:

The Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the outcry against them that comes to Me.  I mean to find out.”  Then Abraham’s visitors walked on farther toward Sodom, but the Lord remained standing before Abraham.

Three "men" had come to Abraham's camp in the heat of the day and had accepted his hospitality; then, as you heard, they spoke as one: "The Lord said … I will go down to Sodom."  Not, "we will go down", but "I will go down".  However, we are then told that it was two of the three who "turned away and went toward Sodom” while Abraham was still standing before the Lord.  Somehow those heavenly guests of Abraham were one and three. 

As you know, the Son and the Holy Spirit were sent by the Father on earth -- as it were to sinful Sodom -- for our salvation.  The Son was born of Mary and was called Jesus because He it was Who would die and rise again to free us from our sins.  And in fact, after dying on the Cross Jesus rose to heaven as He had foretold (Luke 22:69):

        

Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God. 

Then it was that the Holy Spirit came down upon the Church to extend Jesus' salvation to all mankind.

This had been foreshadowed in Psalm 110:

The LORD said to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool."

Jesus, therefore, having conquered sin and death, is now seated at the right of God the Father in glory, while the Holy Spirit -- working in and through Mother Church for all men and women of good will -- makes His enemies and the enemies of our salvation into a footstool for His feet.

Now, perhaps, you can begin to see why we should want to receive, above all other gifts, this Gift of God, the Holy Spirit, into our lives.

For He is, first of all, the Spirit of Truth, Who alone can lead us to the fulness of truth concerning Jesus, His purposes, and His will:

When the Helper comes, Whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth Who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. (John 15:26)

Again, He is the Spirit of holiness:

Jesus Christ our Lord was declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. (Romans 1:4)

Who, therefore, can lead us to holiness of life more surely than the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of Holiness?

Moreover, He alone knows God's will for us, what He expects of you and me individually, and what He has prepared for us:

            No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 
            (1 Corinthians 2:11)

The Holy Spirit knows us through and through: for if, according to the Scriptures, no other human being can know us as we know ourselves:

What man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him.

How much more true is it then, that the Holy Spirit -- Who knows the things of God Himself and Who dwells in the hidden depths and secret folds of every human heart -- knows us infinitely better than we could ever know ourselves?

Finally, we should pray for God's Gift because Jesus Himself has put this request first and foremost in the prayer He taught His disciples:

            Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.

Only the Spirit of holiness can hallow the Father's name; and He, moreover, is the One Who has been sent by the Father to make Jesus' enemies a footstool under His feet and thus bring in the Kingdom of God:

            Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.

People of God, Mother Church is suffering greatly today for the sins of the world no doubt, but also for the sins of too many of her own children.  Mother Church suffers in, and is influenced by, a society that today, is bound, thwarted, and corrupted by a self-righteous political correctness, moral abandonment and spiritual lawlessness, which grows ever stronger among men in our western world.  The law, politicians, and government ministers of all sorts, here and abroad, strike attitudes and use pretentious words that, often enough, serve no other purpose than to hide, cover up, not only human ineptitude and institutional malfunctions, but also personal greed and malpractice of all sorts.  The desire for power over others and personal pleasure can and does lead men and women of apparent rectitude to do great evil in secret; while the desire for popular acceptance together with the fear of public disapproval, motivate many much more forcefully than does obedience to God or respect for their fellow man.  Therefore, we must remember:

We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit Who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:12)

We must treasure "the things freely given to us by God", that is, our faith, His truth and grace, and the hope which it inspires in us.  We have to reject the worldly craving for power, pleasure, and popularity if we would hope to have the Holy Spirit of God at work in us: forming us, secretly but surely, in the likeness of Jesus.  The world loves to plan and plot now for its own future profit and advantage; we, as disciples of Jesus, must live in the present in such a way as to give witness to the truth of Jesus’ Good News, and to sustain and nourish our hope for an eternal destiny of human full-filment and heavenly beatitude in the family of God our Eternal Father, with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of Divine Love and Life.   And that, we can only do by the active rejection of sin in the present and the persevering practice of prayer for the future.  

Which one of you convicts Me of sin? (John 8:46)

We can, as did Jesus in the desert, turn away from temptation and reject sin in our lives by His grace and the power of His Spirit Whom He shares with us; and in thus fighting to overcome sin in our lives we will, ultimately, grow in true virtue. The acquisition of holiness, however, is not within our sphere of competence, so to speak: we cannot plan to become holy of and for ourselves, for such endeavours, be they moved by spiritual simplicity or, more likely, by spiritual ambition, by virtue of their being fatally flawed with presumption, can result in nothing more than an imitation holiness for human appreciation and praise.  God alone is Holy, and true holiness for a child of God is not a worldly commodity to be humanly conceived and fabricated, so to speak; neither is it even the faithful following of a predetermined path apparently walked by saints or taught by spiritual guides: it is a human sharing in the very nature of God, and only persevering prayer can help us toward that which is essentially God’s Gift alone;  and even then, such prayer is largely a matter of listening and longing, looking, waiting and aspiring, trusting and delighting, come what may.

The Holy Spirit, the Gift of God, alone can lead us to that holiness which God wants of us individually: He is the Spirit of holiness; indeed, He is the Spirit of Love, and the love of Jesus is the only truly authentic holiness for human beings.  We have to humbly and perseveringly pray for that; firmly trusting that the Father, of His great mercy and goodness, will give it to us for Jesus' sake, in His own way and to according to His own measure, not as the world or our own pride would have it.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on a day such as this, let us confidently and whole-heartedly renew our hope in His promise:

If you who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

16th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Genesis 18:1-10; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42) 

Mother Church has set before us today readings from the treasury of her Scriptures which urge us to pay careful attention to the sort of welcome we give to Jesus in our lives.

The Gospel reading told us:

Jesus entered a certain village and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house;

and in the first reading we were told of a theophany in which Abraham:

(Seeing) three men standing nearby ran from the entrance of (his) tent to greet them; and bowing to the ground, he said: “Sir, if I may ask you this favour, please do not go on past your servant.  Let some water be brought, that you may bathe your feet, and then rest yourselves under the tree.  Now that you have come this close to your servant, let me bring you a little food that you may refresh yourselves; and afterward you may go on your way.” “Very well,” they replied, “do as you have said.”

Both accounts told of a sincere welcome being given to divine and angelic visitors.   Abraham, on the one hand, was as attentive as he could possibly have been: 

He took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree as they ate.

Martha, on the other hand, in our Gospel reading, was not so selflessly whole-hearted:

(She) was burdened with much serving, and Jesus said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.”

What was Martha so anxious about?  First of all, something that perhaps she did not recognize, namely, her desire not only to prepare well for Jesus, but also to be seen to prepare well. 

There was something else and Jesus had noticed that she was not only “anxious” but also "worried" about something.  Now Martha had a sister, a younger sister, Mary, and it may perhaps have been the case that Martha, being the elder, and also a dynamic sort of person, was accustomed to taking or giving a lead, and the difficulty, the "worrying" aspect for her today, was the fact that Mary was not following her lead, for:

Mary sat beside the Lord at His feet listening to Him speak.  

And so, it was not possible for Martha to be whole-hearted in her welcome of Jesus because she was both concerned about her own image, and, at the same time, irritated by what she considered to be her younger sister’s lack of consideration; and being an honest -- even blunt -- soul, could not restrain herself from making known to Jesus what was, indeed, troubling her:

She approached Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?  Tell her to help me."

Looking again at Abraham, we see that he had been well rewarded for his hospitality and attentiveness; but not only Abraham, for Sarah too had shared fully with Abraham by preparing food for the guests in the background.    Both, therefore, had been rewarded with the promise of a son, the child for whom they had prayed long and hard but who, they had come to think, would never be theirs. 

In the Gospel story, however, although Jesus appreciated Martha's work and solicitude, He considered Mary's attentive love and self-forgetfulness to be of another order, and so, speaking as bluntly as Martha herself had just done, He said:

Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.

Mary’s selfless commitment to, and appreciation of, the Word that Jesus was speaking, was a choice valid for eternity and it won her a blessing that would never be revoked.   Her love for the beauty and authority of Jesus’ message caused her to forget herself; whereas Martha, though she truly loved Jesus, most certainly could not forget herself: she could not humbly work whole-heartedly, as Sarah, Abraham’s wife had done before, when plagued with the thought that she was not being sufficiently appreciated.

Now we are all here at Mass to welcome Jesus -- all of us, I myself, just as much as you – and the welcome we give is, as our readings show, mysteriously significant and important.   Each of us must welcome Jesus, first of all, into our own heart, and then, all of us together, into our parish community and thereby into His universal Church, and finally, let us never forget it, through us and His Church He must be welcomed into our world:

Lord, may this sacrifice which has made our peace with you, advance the peace and salvation of all the world.

At this moment then, the Universal Church and the whole of mankind, are relying, to a certain extent, upon us, and upon the sort of welcome we give to Our Lord: because, the deeper, the more sincere and whole-hearted the welcome, the greater the blessing, for ourselves, for the Church, and for the world.

The apostle Paul, speaking to us in the second reading, said:

I became a minister in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me to bring to completion for you the Word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.

Let us now, therefore, listen carefully to him telling us something of the Word he had been sent to preach to us and for us.  It is, he says:

The mystery hidden from ages and from generations past, but now manifested to His holy ones, to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: IT IS CHRIST IN YOU, the hope for glory.

So, the apostle was to proclaim the mystery of Christ dwelling in all who become His faithful disciples in Mother Church: to make known the riches of this mystery by enlightening our minds with the prospect of eternal glory promised by Our Lord, and opening up our hearts for the influx of a joyous and inspiring hope through the gift of His most Holy Spirit. 

The question now is, of course, what sort of welcome are you and I giving, even here and now, to Paul’s proclamation and explanation of the mystery of Christ in us and at work in us through His Spirit?

For some misguided, half-hearted, Catholics Mass begins and ends with Holy Communion.  Now how can such people truly welcome Christ in Holy Communion when they ignore Him in His Holy Word, having no interest in the God-given power, privilege, and duty of Mother Church and her priests to proclaim and explain the mystery of Christ in the Scriptures and in us?  How can they welcome into their own lives Him Whom they can't be bothered to understand in His Body, the Church?  Who can be filled with gratitude for riches of which they choose to be ignorant?

Holy Mass starts at the very beginning of our assembly when we first ask God to free us from our sins.  We do that so that we may be able to celebrate the whole Eucharistic offering aright: first of all by hearing God's word with our ears, as it is read, and then appreciating it with our minds and embracing it in our hearts as it is proclaimed in the homily.  After having thus welcomed Christ in His Word we are thereby enabled and called to fittingly offer ourselves, in Him and with Him, to the Father for His glory and the salvation of mankind, before finally receiving Jesus and welcoming His Gift of the Holy Spirit into our very hearts and lives in Holy Communion.   That is the mystery of the Catholic and Christian life: CHRIST IN US through the Eucharist and Scriptures of Mother Church, and through our openness to the guidance of His most Holy Spirit in our lives.

It is particularly important for us today, however, to give attention to the welcome we accord to the Word of God, to Jesus in the Scriptures proclaimed by Mother Church.  Commonly, these days, people want short readings and almost demand short sermons; and it nearly always raises an easy and rather cheap laugh if this attitude is made into a sort of joke: "If you can't say what you want to say in five minutes, it's not worth saying".   This was not the attitude of the early Church, as can be appreciated from the following account to be found the Acts of the Apostles of a church meeting led by Paul at Troas:

On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread, Paul spoke to them because he was going to leave on the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.  There was a young man named Eutychus sitting on the window sill sinking into a deep sleep as Paul continued talking, and overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was picked up dead.  Paul went down, threw himself upon him, and said as he embraced him, “Don‘t be alarmed; there is life in him.”  Then he returned upstairs, broke the bread, and ate; after a long conversation that lasted until daybreak, he departed.  And they took the boy away alive and were immeasurably comforted. (Acts 20:7-12)

Obviously, what is prolonged for no good reason is not welcome.  On the other hand, however, no one, having some treasured possession, is ever content to look at it, rejoice in it, mention and show it to friends, just once, and then take no further delight in it.  Now the Scriptures are like a field that contains countless hidden treasures.  If you are computer-wise you will be aware of some programmes where certain words or links are signalled, which, if you press on them, up pops further information, further enlightenment.  Holy Scripture is something like that.  A Scripture reading might seem, at first, to be just a long sequence of not very interesting words, phrases and sentences, but, by the grace of God, any one of those sentences or phrases, indeed almost any one of those words, can be found to contain so much that is beautiful beyond measure.  Now, the only way to discover such treasures contained in the Scriptures is, by learning from the wisdom of Mother Church, and entering into a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit of Jesus, allowing the Him, Who first inspired those sacred words, to reveal something of their meaning to you.  If, however, you do not prayerfully approach the Scriptures, you will hardly be able to patiently hear them proclaimed, and most certainly you will not want to respectfully listen to explanations of them.  When that is the case, then the Holy Spirit will in no way lead you to find the treasures the Scriptures contain, for did not Jesus Himself once say to His Apostles (Matthew 7:6):

Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine.

However, those who do reverence the Scriptures, receive a blessing from the Lord Who spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying:

On this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.   (Isaiah 66:2)

They are the ones who, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, discover and delight in the hidden treasures of the Scriptures; for them, the words of the Scriptures are revealed as words of life, as Jesus Himself said:

It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'   (Matthew 4:4)

That is the manna God offers us His People as He leads us through the desert of this world to our home in heaven; it is the food we need for a journey which can be long, the food meant to be our comfort and strength here on earth while it leads us to eternal peace and joy in our heavenly home.  May all of us gathered here today be enabled to receive and experience it as such, through the loving kindness and mercy of God our Father, Jesus our Saviour, and the Holy Spirit Who is God’s Gift to each and every one of us in Mother Church.

15th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37) 

In the Gospel we were told of a Scribe, an expert in the Jewish Law, who approached Jesus in what is, truly, the only way in which Jesus can be rightly approached:

            "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

The Law (Deuteronomy 6:5) said, as the expert knew well:

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength;’

however, he went on to pay Jesus a notable compliment by asking Him:

            Who is my neighbour?

Yes, he was an expert in the Law, but here he was asking Jesus what the words meant in practice: that was the humility of a man sincerely seeking to find his way to eternal life. 

Jesus told him a parable about one travelling from Jerusalem down to Jericho falling into the hands of robbers,  an all-too-frequent occurrence that many had suffered before and many others would  experience in the future.  The bandits of the Judean desert did not scruple to kill at times, but in this case, having robbed the man, they were content to leave him, wounded and helpless, by the side of the road.   Many Jews working in the Temple and living in Jericho would make that same dangerous journey, and both the Priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable may well have recognized the victim as a neighbour, a fellow Jew indeed, perhaps a fellow priest or Levite.   And yet, both of them, out of considerations for legal purity possibly, for personal and family reasons, or because they simply did not want, or did not even dare, to get involved with him, passed him by.  Finally, a Samaritan arrived on the scene.

Now, Samaritans, though closely related, were regarded as enemies by the Jews, and, generally, Samaritans had a no friendship for Jews.  In this case, however, the Samaritan of whom Jesus spoke, having chanced upon the wounded man:

Was moved with compassion at the sight.  He poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.  Then he took him to an inn, and cared for him.  The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, 'Take care of him.  If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back' 

Jesus was indeed revealing the meaning of the word "neighbour" to the Scribe: for His story showed that that neighbour might turn out to be someone most unexpected.

The passing priest and Levite had the word of God on their lips, as Moses said:

            The word is very near to you, already in your mouth.  (Deut. 30:14)

That word they could repeat, discuss, dispute about, and perhaps use to display their learning.  However, it was so very easy, in such circumstances, to forget that Moses had gone on to say that ‘the word’ was also: In your heart, that you may obey it.

There have always been men able to use the Word of God as a weapon for personal advancement on earth.  On the other hand, those using God’s Word as a guide to our heavenly home, have to humbly ask, patiently knock and wait for, Him Who judges the hidden secrets of each and every human mind and heart; only then will they be enabled to proclaim and manifest something of His divine truth and heavenly beauty before men.

The Scribe, as a Jew, preferred to limit the word "neighbour" to his fellow Jews; but, nevertheless, He felt uneasy about it and so he asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" whereupon Jesus showed him that it was not possible to limit the significance of God's Word according to human  prejudices.  Nevertheless, even when -- at the end of the parable –  Jesus asked:

Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbour to the robbers’ victim?

the expert in the Law could not bring himself utter the words "the Samaritan", so ingrained was his Jewish prejudice!  He could only prevail upon himself to say:

            The one who treated him with mercy.

As we heard in the second reading all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus, and that is why we cannot try to restrict the effect of His Word in our lives.  We are called to become children of God in Jesus and, if we are to be found in His likeness, we must allow ourselves to be formed by His Spirit according to His Word.  We must allow His Spirit to lead us wherever He wills for  the Spirit alone knows the depths of God, He alone is Holy and Wise, and we must trust ourselves to Him.

Modern ideas of acceptable goodness usually involve soft words and accommodating attitudes; clear doctrinal teaching and firm discipline in moral matters are thought to be unacceptably rigid, totally unsympathetic.  And so, many modern pseudo-disciples of Jesus’ goodness (not of Jesus Himself!) can be found trying to imagine the guidance of  ‘His Spirit’ along the broad, loose, lines compatible with modern ideas concerning the total freedom of individuals, the ‘rights’ of those who find themselves in the wrong body (!),  and  society’s right to dispense accommodating ‘goodness’ with no reference to, or need of, any ‘God’. 

People of God,  beg the Holy Spirit to lead your life along the way of Jesus, to form you in Jesus’ likeness, and then try to answer God’s call to faith, trust, and love with a humble simplicity of mind and heart; do not allow your own prayerful thoughts and conscientious actions to be distorted or determined by the selfishness, prejudices and fears, or above all, by the excitement and pride , of modern society.

The Spirit first led Jesus out into the silence of the desert and then along the most unlikely way of the Cross: the disciple of Jesus is not greater than his Master; he or she too, must be obedient enough to humbly follow the lead of the Holy Spirit.  As Jesus said (John 3:8):

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  

Finally, let us look at what is perhaps the greatest jewel hidden in the field of today’s readings: Who was, Who is, the Good Samaritan?   How could he just postpone, or at least seriously interrupt his journey to spend a night at the inn, where he was not likely to have been popular as a Samaritan?   Why was he alone able to deal with the man’s wounds?  Why did he not just pay the hotelier extra for that first day’s extra care, as well as for subsequent days’ care, ‘bed and board’?     Was the Samaritan a real person, or was he, in actual fact, a picture of Jesus Himself?  For He interrupted His journey by His suffering and death on Calvary; He alone, by His Gospel provides essential medicine for fallen man.  Jesus did, indeed, continue His journey to His heavenly home and now seeks to cure mankind’s grievous wound by His own abiding heavenly prayer and intercession,  and the earthly ministry of His Church, the inn of help and healing for all seeking true rest and eternal life through saving faith and baptismal grace.

Today we are invited to humbly rejoice in the wonder and mystery of Jesus, to meditate on His goodness, His wisdom.  A Sunday can pass by quickly chewing such cud!                                                                              

14th Sunday Year C, 2025

 

(Isa. 66:10-14; Gal. 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20) 

In our first two readings we were given an appreciation of the essential character of Mother Church, for she -- and we who are in her and of her -- are, according to St. Paul:

            A new creation.

In the Gospel reading we then heard of the Lord sending out seventy-two others, disciples who had learned to delight in their proximity and communion with Jesus, and the strength it afforded them:

He sent (them) ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place He Himself intended to visit.

Their instructions were both simple and firm: first of all, they were being sent in His name, they were not beggars; moreover, they had a clear message to proclaim, they were not to be pleaders or cajolers:

Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand for you.’

As you can see Jesus wanted His disciples to be single-minded and sincere: they were not to seek money, but neither should they be embarrassed about accepting whatever the house or town could offer by way of food and drink, for "the labourer deserves his payment".  Jesus likewise desired that they should be humble, but in no way lacking confidence in their mission: for their message was from the Lord, not from their own imagination or fancy.  In His name they were to announce a fact, namely that "The Kingdom of God is at hand for you", and to those willing to listen to their message they were to bestow a gift from the Lord:  'Peace to this household.'

Whoever listens to you listens to Me. Whoever rejects you rejects Me. And whoever rejects Me rejects the one who sent Me.”

You can imagine how thrilled the disciples must have been when their mission proved to be a great success; however, notice what Jesus said in response to their enthusiasm:

Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.

Now that is what St. Paul had in mind when, as you heard, he wrote:

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 

St. Paul loved to teach his converts that belief in Jesus, together with baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, makes us members of the Body of Christ.  He believed this so firmly, and understood it so concretely, that he could then go on to say that, having become members of His Body, therefore we too, in Him, have been crucified with Him:

Through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Let us just try to understand what this meant for Paul.  In his contemplation of this union between Christ and the believer, Paul -- absorbed in divine truth and filled with an overwhelming desire to respond to and co-operate with the Father’s  calling  --  had been led to recognize that:

In Christ Jesus neither does circumcision mean anything nor does uncircumcision, but only a NEW CREATION.

No earthly pride, be it Greek, Roman, or even Jewish, nothing whatsoever that depends on us in any way, could save us from the destructive power of sin; only the totally gratuitous gift of God’s Spirit in response to Jesus’ self-sacrificing love on Calvary could bring us salvation.

Paul had been granted the insight that, -- through the power of Christ’s Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension -- we, who as baptized believers have become members of His Body,  are a new creation. Paul tells us that if one must boast, one should boast about what the Lord Jesus has done for us on the Cross, in His Resurrection, and by the gift of His Spirit.  Circumcision means nothing: that is, personal pride in one’s own holiness gained by legalistic observance of a written Law, and national pride in the exclusiveness of one’s birth; all that means nothing Paul says.  Uncircumcision too means nothing: the Greeks' boasting in their superior wisdom, the Romans' vaunting of their worldly power, all such things too, ultimately, mean nothing.  For a Christian there can be only one cause for boasting: what Christ has done for us and for all who -- whatever their race, culture, or natural abilities -- are being led to believe in Him as Lord and to obey His Spirit; a boasting centred not on self, but on God's goodness, in “our Lord Jesus Christ”, through the Gift of His Spirit:

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit who works all in all; (for) one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. (1 Corinthians 12: 6, 11)

He, the Spirit of Glory, alone can ensure that our names "are written in heaven". 

Therefore, People of God, we are encouraged today, by the prophet Isaiah, to rejoice in Mother Church: the Church Our Lord continually sustains, promotes, and protects through the working of His Spirit, so that, as He originally willed and enduringly intends, we may ever be able to drink deeply of, and find delight in, the abundance  He gives her.

We are encouraged to rejoice in such a way over Mother Church because, as Isaiah foretold, it is in her and through her that:

The Lord’s power shall be known to His servants.

This most sublime fulfilment is offered us today when, in response to His command, we have come together on His Sabbath Day -- in memory of Him and in the name of all creation -- to offer worship, praise and honour, glory and thanks, to God our Father for His great goodness to us.  On this sublime day we are drawn by the Spirit to share in the heavenly and eternal liturgy being celebrated by our High Priest and Saviour before the Father: a celebration where the whole of obedient creation is united by the Holy Spirit of God under the leadership of the God-man Jesus Christ: here where He does indeed come to us in Communion, but above all, He draws us, by His Gift of the Spirit, ever more and more with Himself towards the Father; He fills us, inspires and enflames us, ever more and more, with that Love which makes Him one with the Father, that Triune Fire of eternal Love which is the glory and very Being of God the Almighty and which can – O wonder of wonders!! -- be shared by us in Jesus as life everlasting; communion, both total and fulfilling; joy, ever fresh and at peace.